Home again, home again, jiggity jog

Well, H and I made it back from Kentucky yesterday afternoon, which felt like yesterday night, due to the 3-hour time difference and also the fact that 4 hours real-time on a full plane with an 8-month old is the equivalent in felt-time to 8 hours. I do not want to play finger puppets, peek-a-boo, "this is the way the lady rides," or read That's Not My Dinosaur again for a loooong time. Let's just say it's good to be home! Here's a summary of the trip . . .

The lows of the trip:

• The plane rides with curioso H, who did not sleep a wink the entire 4 hours of the flight out and only took a short nap on the flight back. And that nap only occurred after a nice little dose of Benadryl and almost an hour of crying as I stood in the aisle and jiggled him. (At least I got a quad workout, as the man behind me so generously noted.)
• The UMass dinner, which is usually a high of the trip. This year, the food was lousy, we waited 2 1/2 hours for that lousy food--until 10:30pm, H was with me (and did I mention it was 10:30pm?!), H choked on a piece of pita bread and threw up all over himself and me, and I was awkwardly seated next to someone who had called me a "Mormon freak" in the past. Lovely times.

Other than those 2 lows, it was such a nice conference and such a nice trip!

• My session was really well attended!
• One of the attendees was Beth Daniell, whose well-known work in literacy studies and literacy and spiritual practice has meant a lot to me in my own studies. She introduced herself to me afterwards and thanked me for my work.
• I attended some really interesting sessions, which I'll summarize this week in another post, if you're interested at all in what I do at conferences :)
• I got to see all of my old Umass friends, who I genuinely care about; BYU friends, two of whom are old students of mine; and my fellow mother/ph.d. friend
• I got to stay with my cousin and her great family. They were so hospitable and it was so fun to talk with them and get to know them better. And they took me to a great restaurantto make up for my lousy dinner the night before.
• I made the flight home! (This was doubtful for a while, thanks to eating at the great restaurant and closed freeways.)

(Image from www.pa-legion.com )