Sunday, August 20, 2017. MA spent a big slice of the day trying to arrange her flights to Los Angeles tomorrow. Usual complicated negotiations with the airline and its buddy passes. The less you know about these standby tickets, the better off you are. I refused to become involved, myself. On the other hand, left to my own devices, I'd take the two-day-each-way train. But I know better than to suggest this to my spouse, who considers my love of trains idiotic or worse.
MA's trip is more urgent than usual. While she will spend most of her time playing with and reading to our twenty-two-month-old grandson Jackson, there is another ball in play. Our son Jude is soon to begin a terrific new job, one that will require him to take a week-long orientation out of town. His wife also works full time, so some gaps in childcare need to be filled. Mary Ann could not be more delighted than to be tapped for that job. She'd move to Los Angeles and be a full-time nanny for Jackson if she could.
Not to discourage this, I told her that she might have a problem getting a flight scheduled to fly on Eclipse Day. Millions of people are traveling around the country over the next three days, and filling all the transportation. (Except, probably, the trains.) But this didn't appear to be the case, as people try to figure out how to observe the event at home.
MA felt as though she can't leave town without blessing me with a special dinner somwhere I like. First thought: La Provence. But they're not open after the radio show. I tell her it really doesn't matter to me where we eat, as long as we can be together. Last chance: Ox Lot 9. But it's full. We wind up a block away at Mattina Bella, which requires about a half-hour wait for a table today.
We have just enough time for us to sit down, eat quickly, and get back home so I can present the radio show on time. And that about does it. She will leave tomorrow morning before dawn, and I resume my familiar pattern of living for one. I am only a little reassured by the thought that I lived alone reasonably from 1970 until 1989. Blowing that idea away is the fact that I have been married for twenty-eight years now.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris August 23, 2017 12:01 in
