Yesterday, I posted about our flight down to Florida last week.
Our flight home was slightly less eventful. Much less running at least.
We flew in to Atlanta without a single issue/delay. Our two hour layover was just that.
Every. minute. of. it.
We boarded our plane back to Indy. No ice on the wings (I checked). We were fueled and ready to go.
Taxi out to the runway. Then it happened.
The lady in a seat four rows up turns on her attendant call light.
Two flight attendants hurry to the seat - panicked faces, wide eyes. One skitters toward the cockpit. The other turns and utters the words I've never heard in a real-life situation...
"Is there a doctor or nurse on board?"
She asked them to turn on their call button if they were.
Honest to god, 10 lights immediately turned on. We were on a tiny plane - 5 seats across! The odds...
Allegedly, the woman had taken a Xanax and had an allergic reaction (others suspected low blood sugar or other causes) - either way we could not take off. We pulled a plane-uey and headed back to the gate. Paramedics, nurses, teeny tiny wheelchair, restocking of supplies, paperwork, round of applause for the good Samaritans...and 45 minutes before we left ol' Mom Earth to head home.
We landed in Indy - cold, snowy, icy Indy. Gray, gray Indy.
Hubs was picking up our suitcase at the luggage claim, and I was charged with layering Babygirl with every winter article she has to trek out to the car which had been freezing and icing over since Tuesday.
An older (70+) woman approached me with a clipboard of surveys. She asked if I'd be so kind as to take one. Then she asked to sit down on the bench beside our heaping pile of travel shit.
The questions were about the airport, our service, our ability to find everything. Yadda Yadda. Then at the end were the typical demographic questions - age, education, income, profession.
At profession, without asking, she looked up at me and then Babygirl and said "Housewife, right?"
Stifling my scoff...
"No" and I found the appropriate category for the my job - the same one that had paid for my flight and was my purpose for being in the airport. The same one that pays half my mortgage, most of the utilities, all of my penance for past credit card sins, AND child care for the squirmy purple fleece and nylon wrapped screaming blob in the stroller.
I know she is from a different era. I know she meant nothing by it. I know that under different circumstances I would embrace being a SAHM, but I can't so I'm not.
I work 40 plus hours a week to provide for my family in addition to the general tasks I still have to do in my house for my family. It's a balance that has taken me 14 months, and several hours in a therapists chair, to achieve. I'm a recovering I-can-be-everyone's-everything-always-no-matter-what-aholic and proud to say that I'm doing quite well.
UGH! Who says "housewife" anymore anyway?
Of course being the sweetheart you all know me to be - instead of kicking her in the shin and walking away, I politely helped her up from her seat. She gave me a small tube of cupcake "flavored" hand sanitizer for my kindness. (Just what I need for my hands to smell like the food I'm craving...)
Housewife...meh
1 comment:
I would have been quite upset and yes I would have behaved the same way you did simply because she's from an older generation. If it were a young person though, I'd have given them a piece of my mind.
Isn't it funny that a man traveling with a ton of baby "things" would never have been pegged as Stay at Home Dad? More work for us to do then. Happy Holidays!
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