Tuesdays with Maureen

(Sorry, couldn't resist -- plus the only reading material I had with which to occupy my time on the plane was the Northwest Airlines magazine, which had a big story on Mitch Albom. The article devoted a somewhat inconceivable amount of space to his discussion of favorite restaurants in cosmopolitan Ferndale, Michigan. For the non-Michiganders, if it's any indicator, the city's official website features a photo proudly highlighting their Old Navy store. You just can't make this stuff up.)

Yesterday was our last day in Michigan. It was a really nice trip, filled with so many loving family and friends fawning over Zachary, and for the most part decent if somewhat humid weather. We of course spent the most time with grandma (Missy/Maureen, hence the blog entry title), having fun at restaurants, home, walking, as well with furry uncle Gus (hm, does that make him my brother?), who unlike Korby, showed enormous interest in giving Zachary kisses at every possible opportunity.

For his end, Zachary did quite well -- no major meltdowns (besides being fussy at the pidyon ha-ben), did fairly well in the hotel, and on both flights, he primarily slept, occasionally ate, and less frequently was looking around cutely primarily at the various light sources. We got to successfully eat in several restaurants, Zachary discovered mirrors (as blogged about previously, see the cuteness to the left), we had a very enjoyable pidyon ha-ben, and Zachary got to meet his grandpa and see him almost every day we were there.

The flight back itself was less than perfect, a little more than 2 hours late once all was said and done. (That makes 3 of the 4 flights I took in the past week and a half late. The fourth claimed to be 30 minutes early, but by the time we taxied and got to the gate, it was still pretty much just on time. I could go on a rant about how planes should be able to make up time in the air, and airlines should be more intelligent about shuffling equipment when planes get held up, but I'll save that for a slow Zachary news day.) We got to the airport and through security fine -- we all got to take a spin in the new air puffer machines that DTW has in lieu of old-school metal detectors. A neat change of pace, though still lame that you have to drop all of your bags, remove your shoes, metal items, etc. Meh said that Zachary appeared to actually like the puffs. Then we walked the fancy McNamara terminal (one benefit of the direct flights; every other time we've had to use the aging Smith terminal) with Zachary, pretty much from one end to the other, since we had a bit of time to kill. I could've sworn one of the stores carried Mackinac Island fudge that sounded yummy to Meredith, but I couldn't find it. Ah well, eventually we parked at the gate for the long wait.

Funny story: when our plane finally did arrive at the gate (it had been delayed due to weather), I ran into one of our family friends from the pidyon ha-ben, who had been on the incoming flight! Small world.

Anyway, it's good to be back home, where we can hopefully start getting back onto a more normal sleep schedule after our initial 12:30 am arrival at home last night (er, this morning). We brought Korby home today, and he seems as crazy as ever. Meh reports that in our absence, our back yard's pear tree produced its sole pear for the year -- and Korby found and ate it. There's a nice smell of fresh pear out in that section of our yard, but we'll never know how the fruit actually tasted.