the girly who shall end all girls

And i am safe at my parents' house.

All went well, even the part where I had to cross the entire Philadelphia airport in under 30 minutes.

It turns out the roads were terrible last night so it would have been bad for my brother to pick me up in Wilkes-Barre, it would have been bad for me to have tried to rent a car from Newark, and this hot mess was probably the safest of all outcomes.

I have snatched a bite of my cold pastry, and soon we are having grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch which is the great comfort meal of my childhood.

And then, fortified, off to Pittsburgh.

Now I get to spend the night in Chicago.

backdated to the right place in the narrative. i had this written and never posted it.

Dad has meningiomas, which grow back to impairment size every 7-10 years. see the braaains tag for some backstory.

i'm heading for PA pre-dawn on Sunday. ticket is booked, ride from the airport is set, i finally knuckled under and bought a real laptop bag.

we're choosing to plan as if dad will survive surgery, so i'll be the one with mom at the hospital.* care rotation is set up with A and D; i'll hand off to A (after she's cleared to travel post-surgery on her eye), A will hand off to D (allowing him to go on his planned vacation). B lives in the area and will pinch-hit as needed.

currently i am most concerned that i could get sick. i feel rough, but i am so emotionally wrecked with worry for my parents and pre-missing C and father-in-law D getting some ugly screening results that i'm not really able to tell the difference between allergies and viruses and stress chemicals.

***
making things to hold back chaos:
i've been obsessing over packing knitting for the trip. i think i have myself down to three projects: the sweater that will be good chart work for the plane and a nearly mindless project as soon as i get into the body, the very portable socks in the prettiest yarn, and the very portable cowl that is so soft. i quickly talked myself out of packing my wheel (the sidekick is wee enough to possibly be a carryon, but i would have to check the rest of my stuff) or a spindle (the mindlessness is good, dropping and damaging my purpleheart spindle because of stress butterfingers would be bad).

clothes:
when i do one of these trips, where shit could go horribly wrong, i always debate about whether to wear favorite clothes or not. am i willing for this item to be the thing i was wearing when dad died? vs shouldn't everything i bring give me joy and make me feel confident?



*my siblings are half-siblings; their father died of cancer when they were kids. i'm not discounting their relationship with dad (mom remarried while they were still pretty young and he is beloved) but i do what i can to keep them out of the hospital. i'm also the most fascinated/least squicked by medical stuff.