Bent Words

Bent Words

February 25, 2010

So we searched the condo over for a shot glass, an ashtray and a bowl big enough to hold all the pasta salad my mother made.

Kinda gives you an idea of the sort of people we are.

We didn't find the shot glass (trying to make martinis) perhaps because most people in this family just use a coffee mug if they're going to hit up the hard stuff -- go big or go home -- but we did find a martini glass which we neglected to utilize. The tumbler turned out to be a good substitute...

The bowls were all too small to encompass the copious amounts of super awesome pasta salad so I had to eat some before we could put the rest in a smaller bowl in the fridge.

We did finally find an ashtray. Four days after our initial search, I climbed onto the kitchen counter to search the upper cabinets and found the gift shop ashtray with the fish pictured on the bottom -- West Palm Beach. I didn't alert the 'rents of this find straight off for I couldn't get the memory of when we purchased these ashtrays out of mind. It was years ago (2003?) and I had taken two of them home with me. One for me and one for Shane.

The flight home was sketchy. Six inches of snow had just fallen and the pilot needed to apply the 'air brakes' to make a safe landing on the slippery strip. As we approached to make a landing, the whole plane suddenly shifted to the left and all you could hear was the simultaneous "huuuuuuhhhhhh" from every passenger. Rather daunting.

When I walked out of the concourse and saw Shane, I dropped my bags and raced to his arms. It was, looking back, like something you would catch from a movie -- I saw no one else, heard nothing else and felt nothing but elated to be enveloped as I was. He was evidently very happy to see me, too, and nothing in the world feels better than that.

Rather than fetch my bags right away (back when I did the whole check-in luggage thing), we decided to hit the airport lounge and have a drink. One drink turned into several and I presented Shane with the ashtray from the West Palm Beach airport. It had gotten so late that my luggage had been taken away to a room where unclaimed luggage gets tossed. But it was worth to sit across from each other and stare into each other's eyes and request kisses every now and then.

I don't know what happened to the West Palm Beach gift shop ashtray I brought back for myself -- haven't thought about it or seen it in years. Perhaps it was broken, like the Timberlake Inn mug, and tossed away long ago.

No matter. Ya can't break perfectly solid memories.

Written at 2:23 p.m.