![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
CA, and getting there and back
Oct. 15th, 2020 09:12 pmSo I went to California. My mother is doing okay, but not great. Interpersonal relationships are a disaster. People who don't want to take charity are a problem. I could provide money for things, but my stepfather just says "but we can't afford that", ignoring the "here is some money to let you afford that" part. Of course, it's also the case that any of these options would require a lot more effort than what is currently happening at my sister's house (that is, moving is a lot of work, no matter what the circumstances), so the path of least resistance is to just stay there, although it's also the path of most emotional turmoil. I had been hoping that this trip would be calm, but that did not turn out to be the case.
The flight home was terrific: I had a row to myself, and both the row ahead of me and behind me were empty. Social distancing to the max. I think it's worth sitting in the way back of the plane in order to get this; it's really not that much extra wait to be the last one off the plane.
The flight there had an interesting escapade: a couple of rows ahead of me there was a couple who were traveling with their small dog. Before takeoff, the dog was not in its carrier, but on the lap of one of the owners, and the flight attendant said "please put the dog in the carrier and put the carrier under the seat in front of you for takeoff." The people said "the carrier is broken and she will get out." The flight attendant was like "you brought a broken carrier on the airplane? Really?" (She was more tactful than that.) Anyway, they didn't throw them off the plane at that point, saving us an hour or so of foofoorah of returning to the gate and so forth. However, during the flight, the dog was again a lapdog, and a flight attendant offered them some service (trash, snack, whatever) and the dog lunged at the flight attendant, snapping and barking. This did not go over well. A different flight attendant came back a little while later to say that the dog had to go back in the carrier (remember, this can't be done), and gave them a written warning saying that they were bad customers, and they should never do this again, or they would be banned from JetBlue. The flight attendant said a scary thing, which was that the captain wanted the dog off the plane, and was considering diverting to another airport in order to eject them. This terrified me, because I knew that would cost all the passengers on the plane potentially many hours. Fortunately, they didn't actually do that, and we managed to land on time.
The flight home was terrific: I had a row to myself, and both the row ahead of me and behind me were empty. Social distancing to the max. I think it's worth sitting in the way back of the plane in order to get this; it's really not that much extra wait to be the last one off the plane.
The flight there had an interesting escapade: a couple of rows ahead of me there was a couple who were traveling with their small dog. Before takeoff, the dog was not in its carrier, but on the lap of one of the owners, and the flight attendant said "please put the dog in the carrier and put the carrier under the seat in front of you for takeoff." The people said "the carrier is broken and she will get out." The flight attendant was like "you brought a broken carrier on the airplane? Really?" (She was more tactful than that.) Anyway, they didn't throw them off the plane at that point, saving us an hour or so of foofoorah of returning to the gate and so forth. However, during the flight, the dog was again a lapdog, and a flight attendant offered them some service (trash, snack, whatever) and the dog lunged at the flight attendant, snapping and barking. This did not go over well. A different flight attendant came back a little while later to say that the dog had to go back in the carrier (remember, this can't be done), and gave them a written warning saying that they were bad customers, and they should never do this again, or they would be banned from JetBlue. The flight attendant said a scary thing, which was that the captain wanted the dog off the plane, and was considering diverting to another airport in order to eject them. This terrified me, because I knew that would cost all the passengers on the plane potentially many hours. Fortunately, they didn't actually do that, and we managed to land on time.
