Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "The Sequel"

(mostly written the morning we left, with some edits made after our return)

 Hi all.

Well, there is a lot to talk about going on in the background, and I alluded to that in my last entry here, but for now, it's time to talk about the trip to visit my parents in NC. I will go back and cover the other stuff when I can, of course.

So as you may or may not know, soon after our return from Canada (during which I zeroed out any and all PTO I had stored), I began making calculations and running some numbers to see whether we could feasibly, somewhat inexpensively, visit my parents in North Carolina this fall. Flights were looked at with varying departure dates, varying departure times, and of course variable prices. I knew and only knew the following:

1. I did not want to leave on a first-AM flight that would require us to be at the airport at like 4am

2. I did want to fly directly into Wilmington instead of Raleigh this time around, to eliminate the 3-4 hours of driving time in the rental car before we were even to the island upon which my parents live; Wilmington is 30ish miles from my parents' house versus 170-180 from Raleigh

3. I did not want to get a departure flight home that wouldn't get us back in Omaha until well after nightfall

4. I did not want non-refundable tickets 

5. I did want trip protection insurance, seat selection pick guarantees, and priority boarding (I paid extra for all of these things -- the priority boarding I added when we checked in for the flight online about 12 hours before leaving)

6. I did not want to check baggage for a five-day trip.

I had some, ahem, points of contention with the wife for that last one.

"[Daisy], all you really need is like three outfits and your swimsuit. And some sandals. My parents have a washer and dryer -- we can wear the same shit more than once, after it's washed of course," I said.

You know that old adage that some people plan and pack for a trip months in advance, and some throw a random smattering of shit into a suitcase the day of, and they marry each other? That's us. Want to guess which one of those two I am?

Okay, just to eliminate the guessing game, I'm the one who had his bag for this trip -- and it was indeed a bag, a sturdy canvas backpack -- packed fully by sometime around the second week of July. In fact, when the power went out and we were in the dark ages again, I had to go to that bag to pull out my iPhone charger to take to the parents' to re-fill my phone's battery.

Daisy is very much of the mindset that she may need to wear multiple outfits every day, because she wants something for all occasions -- in addition to needing every book, vitamin, gummy vitamin, granola bar, cosmetic, her hair dryer, etc. known to man. For a five-day trip.

My bag? Aside from the small essentials like my pills and a few vapes and my phone charger? Three pairs of shorts, four shirts, four pairs of underwear, a spare pair of glasses, and a spare pair of flip-flops. In a small Ziploc I also have Q-tips, my toothbrush/toothpaste, and some sinus/allergy pills. In the front compartment of my bag I have a single stick of deodorant, a single shampoo bar, and a single bar of soap. I also have a small Ziploc filled with our laundry detergent sheets and dryer sheets, so we don't have to worry about Daisy having any sort of allergic reaction to the stuff my parents use. I also included four tie-dyed shirts I made for my parents for their birthday, which was the week prior to our arrival. The real present is us, of course, but the last time I made them tie-dyes they loved them, so I figured that was a fun idea.

Part of packing light for me is because, yes, I will be perfectly fine wearing the same outfits a couple of times -- I'm at home with my parents; I have nobody to impress. Part of it is that I long to travel light, to not have to take a suitcase on a cross-country trip. And, finally, part of it is that there is a 30-pound box of comic books for my Dad, in my backpack, that is taking up a lot of space and weight. Once it is out of there, and once the parents' shirts are out of there...I will have a much lighter bag and much more space for anything I bring back. 

Anyway.

For all of those things in the above requirement list to be fulfilled -- regardless of the stuff about packing -- the round trip tickets for both of us, everything included, was close to $1200. 

It is what it is. Air travel is expensive.

Daisy was not happy with me about this, but I reminded her that there are precious few times left that we'll get to visit my parents when they're both alive, and they are genuinely grateful and excited when we go to see them. Plus, I was booking this trip, and was handling everything for it to my own, very admittedly neurotic, specifications. All Daisy had to do was book the rental car, which she did -- and very inexpensively at that.

Daisy's parents -- more Dad than Mama -- agreed to watch over the children [read: our cats] while we were gone, and I made sure to order them some extra treats and an extra case of food just in the event that we could be better prepared for any unforeseen circumstances. Daisy set up all of the security cameras around the house -- basically, nanny cams for the cats -- so that we could view them while we're gone. I put a hold on the mail, went down my to-do list checklist to make sure I took care of all I could, removed my debit card from my wallet and left my keys here (in the event Dad needed to take the car out of the garage for any reason) and grabbed all of my extra cash so I didn't have to use my travel-approved credit cards for absolutely everything while we were there. We told the parents we would Uber to the airport for the flight, but Dad insisted on driving us over there himself. 

My overall goal for the trip was not to be there for amusements or for destination events -- it is to finally be able to decompress and fucking relax for a few days. I have been wound so tightly and for so long that it's seriously starting to affect my mental health, my stress reactions, and my responses to people and things in my circle around me. On top of it all I have just been so very tired, so exhausted by life and everything bad that's happened this year that I just needed a genuine break; I needed it all to stop. While Canada was very fun and we did a lot of fun things while up there, I did not really see it as a vacation but more of a "family visit obligation." I was so burnt out by the end of it that I wasn't myself, I was but a withered husk of myself in clothes and flip-flops. 

The good thing about visiting my parents is that it can all just stop if we want it to -- we have no social obligations in North Carolina. We have no friends there. We went all the places we were interested in when we were there last year. We have no places we had to go to this year, aside from the grocery store and Walmart to get some essentials. Daisy wanted to go to the beach every day, which was not a hard concept because we're on an island. We also wanted to visit a few vegan restaurants to try what they have, but even that wasn't super-imperative to either of us, really. 

So, the parents picked us up from the house and got us to the airport on the morning of the trip, we got through security quickly and efficiently, and we finally lifted off the ground -- wheels up, jets blasting, toward North Carolina...