In Cincinnati ... or prayers against pooping

I made it to Cincinnati where I’m waiting to change planes. My flight from Wilkes-Barre was uneventful, if slightly uncomfortable. The teeny plane was packed like a sardine can and I was sandwiched in the last row right near the bathroom. (Every time someone went back there I offered up the slight prayer, “No poop, no poop” lest I be overpowered by the smell emanating from there. Prayer works.) I couldn’t recline my seat at all, but luckily my recent weight loss held me in good stead and I was comfortable. A very nice man sat next to me – he works for a mechanical engineering firm that is a subcontractor for Proctor & Gamble so he regularly flies from Cincinnati to some little town above Tunkhannock that has a huge P&G plan to check on the machinery. He also has a 15 year old son, so we discussed teenagers for most of the last 40 minutes of the trip. There was an ADORABLE little girl about 3 years old, blond, all in pink, who had her own little, bitty rolling carry on bag with a sparkly My Little Pony on it. I helped her carry it on the plane since I was behind her and helped her find row 7 (she knew her numbers, she told me, she just wasn’t big enough to see the row markers, but I shouldn’t worry because one day she’d be big). This little cutie had to go potty (see prayer, above) in the middle of the flight and her mom took her back there but they had a bit of dilemma when the girl was a little frightened of the bathroom and wanted her mom to come in. I think most people know how unbelievably small an airplane bathroom is and the little girl was probably the only one who could actually fit in it comfortably, so getting her Mom in was pretty much a lost cause. Luckily, the little girl decided midway through piddling that it was pretty cool, and she kept saying, “Mommy! It’s like having potty adventure!!” which provoked the three rows closest to the bathroom into a fit of giggles. Thank heavens someone was having a positive potty adventure.

The man across from me (I was in the aisle) was not having an adventure. The poor man clearly shopped at the “Big & Tall” store (can any Simpson’s fan think of that phrase without picturing the episode where Homer becomes a country music manager and shops at “The Corpulent Cowboy” for his suit made out a “space age material invented for Elvis. Sweat actually cleans this suit.” This poor man and his wife/girlfriend were pretty wedged in and I felt so terrible for him every time he shifted his weight uncomfortably.

Good landing and it was warm enough on the tarmac that I didn’t need to put on my raincoat. The Cincinnati airport has an odd design (which E. Blaum doesn’t care for) where it is made up of weird circular concourses. I actually had to take a bus to get to a separate building to reach my gate. Freaky.

But it’s average airport material (although they play strange Musak here – some kind of weird Euro Jazz Fusion that I find very disturbing) and I had a good lunch at Quizno’s – Country French Chicken soup in a bread bowl. I would accept anything presented in a bread bowl! They’re boarding the flight, so I better head out.