Ne intoarcem

I know my last post was a bit of a downer.  But really, I wan't capable of anything upbeat.
I'm still teetering on the edge but trying to pull myself over.

Jet-lag, 30+ hours without sleep, culture shock, the exhaustion of modern day air travel, all of those things will take their toll.  Even without my own emakou.

From the list above, the only thing that took me by surprise was the culture shock.  Honestly, this is the country in which I was born and raised, how could being away for one year out of 40 render me unable to remember how to flush an American toilet?

I don't know but there I was, the first morning at my sister's house, standing and staring stupidly at the top of the tank looking for a button that wasn't there.

My first trip to the grocery store found me equally confused when faced with the task of figuring out how to pay cash for the items I had chosen.  Items I haven't seen in a year such as sliced bread, avocados and maybe even a box of transfats with the Hostess trademark on it.  (Oh yeah, I did it.)

But the money.  Well, it's all green, it's all the same size and the sums are so oddly small: twenty four ninety-nine? What kind of a total is that?  And how do you make that from a hand full of monochromatic paper?  I fumbled about, sweating and looking sheepish for so long that it's no wonder the cashier held up the bills to the light to check for counterfeit cash.

While I bungled and fretted, the bagger asked the quintessential American question: "Did you find everything alright?"

And I replied in surprise: "Oh, you speak English!"

So that I don't appear completely retarded may I now include the fact that I can hear nothing out of my left ear since landing in JFK.  The result of flying with a cold.  That alone can make a person behave somewhat aberrantly, right? Say it's so.

And speaking of air travel; shall we commence with our latest tale of adventure and woe?

Whenever we fly I swear to myself that the next time we take a plane, I will make certain we are streamlined but it just doesn’t seem to happen.  

For this trip we had four laptops and a Wii in our carry on.  Most rational people would understand straight off that in this post 9/11 world, this is a bad idea. We knew it was a bad idea but there wasn’t much we could do except suck it up and accept the fact that we were going to be pulled out of line at every security check.

And between Bucharest and Florida there were three such gauntlets through which we had to pass.

Bucharest doesn't really count since I could probably put a bag of fireworks, a six pack of beer and a gallon of bleach in my purse and get on the plane with it.  Every time I ask the airport employees if they'd like me to remove something suspicious from my luggage they wave a hand laconically and say "Just keep moving".

London is, as you can imagine, a different kettle of fish altogether.  They've seen a fair amount of violence in the past few years so security is a bit less complacent.

However, when I was pulled out of line they were so polite about it that I felt as if I were being invited to tea. Before the security guy began to go through my carry-on, he actually asked permission.  

One by one the items were examined and all was well until he pulled out this:

Will you cringe if I tell you that the first thing that came out of my mouth was:  "That's not mine."

The second thing was: "I'm just transporting that for a friend."

Bravo to the British security official, he didn't over-react in the least.  He merely looked at me with an expression that said "Please ma'am, it's been a long day and if this turns out to be what it looks like, I'm going to be stuck here for hours and I'll end up missing the game and the pot roast my wife has in the oven will be cold by the time I get to eat it." 

So I said, "Um, that is...a bag of...herbs."

He opened the bag, took a sniff, eyed me dubiously, took another sniff and then concluded "These are herbs for cooking."

"Yes." and then he politely indulged my nervous babble as I explained what an excellent cook my friend is and all about the lovely home she has in Vaideeni where she grows said herbs.

He waved me through with a relief he could not disguise.

Last was JFK.

Ah, New York, we meet again.
No courtesy and polite manners here, just eye rolling and sarcasm and unclear, contradicting sets of instructions from the short-tempered TSA employees.  Broken elevators, a $5.00 baggage cart rental fee and $200.00 to transport our bags down to Florida.

Good-bye Europe.

Welcome to America.