That particular airline has a deal where you can request your travel companion gets upgraded when you do. It’s an all-or-nothing situation, either both of you get upgraded or neither of you do. HCFG told me about this, and then casually mentioned he had asked for us both to be bumped up to First Class on the ride back. I was thrilled!

You can guess what happened next…

He got upgraded and I didn’t.

The *#&^% Bastids!

HCFG received a “congratulations you have been upgraded” text message. Given his suspicious nature, he immediately called the airline and reminded them of his prior request. They said sorry but only he received the upgrade. Adding insult to injury, they added not only could they not upgrade me, but they couldn’t even give him his original seat back as it had already given away to one of the 85 people, (no exaggeration) traveling standby.

I was pissed that we weren’t going to be sitting together. HCFG felt terrible. Being the gracious guy that he is, he offered me his First Class seat. I have to admit I considered it. For a minute anyway, (a very long minute) those free drinks and extra legroom were really tempting! And then I remembered how HCFG spent a large part of the weekend helping my Mother set up her new computer. He transferred all her software, installed programs, showed her shortcuts, and debugged problems.

Sigh.

I bit the bullet and graciously sent him up front to the good seats. I even smiled at him when he brought me his warm nuts from First Class. I decided not to make a fuss because there was nothing we could do about it. Besides I scored MAJOR girlfriend brownie points.

And the best part of all? He’s gonna owe me big for this. For a long time. A VERY long time…

(This post originally appeared on Kizmeet)

Click here to continue

Lisa: “What would you like to do today? The weather is glorious, all crisp and cool – great walking around weather. Shall we just go wander or do you want to do something special?”

Mom: “I would like to cook supper for the two of us and HCFG tonight. Where’s a good place to shop?”

Lisa: “Yum! If it’s not too much trouble then that would be awesome. How about if we go down to 14th Street? The Farmers Market aka the Union Square Greenmarket is running today. I remember you really enjoyed it last time. We can get lots of freshly grown veggies and fruit and eat quite healthy tonight.”

Mom: “That would be wonderful. I definitely enjoyed going there last year, their produce was very nice. And when we’re done buying all that healthy stuff, let’s go to 2nd Avenue Deli and eat pastrami sandwiches.”

Lisa: “Sounds good to me!”

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess…

Translation = I’m in Texas for our 20th annual Tea Party! Mom and I are busily baking assorted lovely treats. We are expecting more than 60 women from all over the country.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

I’ll update more later.

“Mom, I can’t remember, what is it called when companies do corporate synergy? You know where they plug their other stores and products, and when you buy one thing they make you buy the other unrelated thing for the bargain? What is that called?”

Mom replied, “Collusion?”

Go Mom.

Be back next week!

Lisa: “I wish we could spend my birthday together.”

Mom: “I do too, dear. Are there any cheap flights right now?”

Lisa: “Let me look online… Hey there are! So if I come to Texas for my birthday will you take me out to supper?”

Mom: “I’ll even buy you a steak.”

Go Mom.

Off to Texas to for the festivities. Be back next week…

“What the hell?”

RING! RING!

“It’s 4:00 in the freaking morning, why is my alarm going off? OHHHHH. Black Friday. Crap.”

And so it began…

We arrived at Wal-Mart at 4:45 a.m.. Yes you read that time correctly. Yes we are nuts. Your point? Anyway, the sale began at 5:00 a.m.. It was a 24 hour store so we were able to wait inside. Mom had looked at the ads the day before and decided she wanted a portable GPS. Garmin had a good one going for a great price. We had never shopped at Wal-Mart on Black Friday before but had heard how crazy it gets. We were a bit nervous.

We went to the electronics department and couldn’t find the GPS. We were told they would bring it out in a crate and unload at exactly 5:00 a.m.. They didn’t know precisely where in the electronics department it would be but somewhere. How helpful.

Lisa: “Mom, you stand over there, and I’ll stand over here. Between the two of us, one of us will see where they unload.”

Mom: “Good idea.”

I looked away for a minute in my bleary-eyed, coffee-deprived state. When I looked up, I saw Mom power walking down the aisle chasing a big man with a crate. I took off running after her and still couldn’t catch up. People around me were pushing and shoving. When I finally did reach Mom she was beaming as she held on tightly to her GPS. People all around her were snatching inside the crate. The store ran out of them within 2 minutes.

Go Mom.

Whoops, wrong holiday. My bad.

Anyway, I’m off to Texas to count my blessings, y’all. I’m going to be spending Thanksgiving week with my lovely Mom. Plus I get to see my extended family and friends, so there will be mucho fun. I leave in a few days, but am crazy busy trying to get organized so I can get the heck out of Dodge.

Ally da Pup will sniffle not be joining me. She is staying at a friend’s place. She loves our pal though, and will probably score a piece of white meat or two.

I’ll be checking in. And I’ll be sure to update you on my usual Black Friday madness.

Among my many blessings, I’m grateful for YOU.

Happy Turkey Day in advance.

Adios Pilgrims!

Me – “Here you go, do you think you should throw it out?”

Mom – “It’s fine, I believe in the 10-second rule.”

Me – “Actually, just so you know, it’s called the 5- second rule.”

Mom – “Whatever. That’s just for people who keep a dirty house. My floors are always clean so it’s the 10-second rule around here.”

Go Mom.

Wednesday night Se7en flew back to Texas. He arrived kinda late so we just hung out at Mom’s house. Come Thursday, we were busier than one armed paper hangers. One of the perks of travel is meeting your blogging buddies. We met Jules for breakfast and she was lots of fun! I always love it when that happens. Jules is a sweetie! And she wrote a hilarious post about our time together – check it out. Afterwards we went our separate ways for a few hours, Se7 went to lunch with his sister, and I went to lunch with Tish and her fabulous family. Tish had to come to town for an appointment so it worked out perfectly. Good times! The rest of the day was friends and family which is always a treat.

Friday morning the alarm went off about 5:00 a.m.. We had breakfast and a keg of coffee, loaded up the car, and hit the road about 7:00 a.m.. Ally da Pup didn’t want to leave, she planted her feet on the tile and refused to move. I finally picked her up and put her in the back seat. She loved being with my Mom – they had a good time together. Ally also scored lots of scraps when Mom thought I wasn’t looking! Most of the Texas folks knew Ally from when I used to take her on the plane with me. Now she’s too big to travel under my seat, (and I absolutely refuse to crate her and let the airlines be responsible for her. I’ve heard way too many horror stories.) Anyway, Ally has lots of friends in Texas and they all made a huge fuss over her. She had a ball. Me too.

It was so great to be with Mom, we always have fun together. It was very hard to leave her… And I’m delighted to report our friend John is out of the hospital and back at home. He is on the road to recovery and doing fabulous. Modern science is absolutely amazing! Plus he wants to get back to full health so he’s working very hard. We are all thrilled with his progress.

Back to the drive… so Day 1, we traveled to Memphis, Tennessee. I wanted to see Graceland and dragged Se7 along. It was tacky as hell and wonderful at the same time. One of my favorite things was a round fur bed with a canopy that had a built-in stereo directly above it. Elvis you studmuffin, you! I also enjoyed the trophy room – lots of gold records, movie posters, costumes, and footage of old shows and concerts. Loved it!

Afterwards I was eavesdropping on someone who was talking about what good barbecue they have in Memphis. One of the names he mentioned I remembered from the book The Firm. Off we went to the Rendezvous. OMG, yummy pork ribs with all the fixin’s. So good! It’s located in an alley in downtown Memphis and the place is huge. And it was very crowded. Talk about a happening place!

After supper we walked a couple of blocks to see The Peabody Hotel. They have the famous duck walk but it was too late at night to see the ducks. The Grand Lobby was absolutely gorgeous, both elegant and cozy at the same time. We were going to go to Beale Street but we were both wiped out, and we didn’t want to leave Ally too long at the motel by herself. So back to sleep we went.

This post is getting long so I’ll write the finale in few days. Just to tease you with a few highlights… we drove through a flood, experienced rolling hills, partied with another fun blogger, and FINALLY made it back to NY.

Stay tuned!