50 States in 2021: 13

Today was a wonderful day! My mom and I got back to her house from the airport around midnight, and as I wrote in yesterday's post, I decided to spend the night there because I was too tired to drive home. There was a second reason for that decision, which was that we had plans for today! Had I driven home last night, I wouldn't have arrived before about 1:30 am, and then would have had to be up and ready to leave before 5:30 am, so staying at my mom's allowed me to get a couple extra hours of sleep!

the first time seeing this
beautiful face in more than a week!

C and Ginny got to my mom's at 6:45 this morning to pick up my mom and me, and then we drove over to B1's house, which is literally one minute from my mom's, and we picked up B1 and my dad, who is visiting from PA for the weekend.

The five humans and one dog drove up to NY to visit family for the day! You'll notice that I'm only counting NJ in this post, and that's because I was all the way in the back of the car with Ginny, and I had fallen asleep, as had my mom and B1, so C did not stop for a photo of the "Welcome to NY" sign. We'll be back in NY in September, so I will take the pic and count NY on our 2021 state list then!

My parents have been divorced for almost 20 years, but obviously there are always many family events and everyone gets along, so it was nice to spend the morning with both of them!

The purpose of the trip was to visit my YaYa after a very long stretch of not being able to see him due to the pandemic. He is 91 and lives in NJ, but we actually all met up at my aunt and uncle's house in Tuxedo Park, NY for the day. B2 and S2 also came, along with S2's parents who happened to be visiting them this weekend, so it was really like a mini family reunion, although we missed S1 and little my niece and nephew, who stayed home to avoid a very long and tiring day!

so happy to be in the car with these people

my aunt is an amazing cook!

Ginny was extremely interested
in the buffet

my loves

Bailey

Arya

Ginny and I had a nap and
C took a pic bc I was holding her paw
(I was super tired from the long week!)

Family is everything and any day where I get to be with both of my brothers is my favorite kind of day!

I love them more than I can say!

Happy Tails to you!

Summer Disney Adventure: Day 8

Our final day was long but pretty great! We spent the morning in our room packing up, and bell services came just before 11:00 am to pick up our luggage and all of the medical equipment my mom had rented. 

Our Magical Express departure time was 1:00 pm, so we just spent a couple of hours hanging out at the resort. As I previously mentioned, Disney Transportation is utilizing a lot of random charter buses, so we didn't get a cute Magical Express bus for our ride to the airport, but we were both ready for some of the comforts of home, so we didn't really mind.

We got the to the airport, checked our bags, and made our way through security. We had even decided to have my mom not use a wheelchair, since that seemed to set off some red flags last week, but it turns out that the wheelchair was not the issue, but rather just the usual nonsense of TSA. Both my mom and I got a full pat down and they swiped/swabbed just about every surface possible on my mom and her portable oxygen concentrator. So absurd given the obnoxiously lax "screening" going on for others.

Once we got through that aggravating experience, we went to the gate area, and ultimately lined up in the pre-board section around 3:40, having been told boarding would begin at 3:45 for our 4:15 flight.

Long story short? That flight left almost three hours later.

Why? The daily afternoon thunderstorm! The bane of our existence this week!

There is a silver lining, however…our flight was oversold and Southwest was looking for two volunteers to give up their seats, receive compensation, and be put on the 8:30 flight. I quickly realized that was only about 90 minutes after our original flight was supposed to finally leave, and for the money that was being offered, I suggested to my mom that we volunteer!

We were put on the 8:30 flight and we did get a very generous amount in compensation, so we are calling this day a win! Our flight left about 30 minutes late, but we had an empty middle seat between us, which were absolutely would not have had if we'd stayed on the original flight, and we made it home safely! B1 picked us up and although I had plans to drive home tonight, I've decided to stay at my mom's because of our late arrival time and the fact that I am pretty wiped out from the trip!

last passengers off the plane!

I'm not going to lie – there were challenging moments and we faced limitations and situations that I've never considered for people in wheelchairs and scooters. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I'm impressed with how accommodating WDW is and I am so proud of my mom for facing any challenges head on: getting answers as to what was and wasn't allowed; navigating machines and equipment; planning, planning, and more planning so she was always prepared with what she needed; and dealing with the heat and humidity which makes breathing so difficult for her. Honestly, she was a rock star and I'm beyond lucky to have spent all of this time with her!

love her!

Happy Tails to you!

Summer Disney Adventure: Day 7

It was an interesting day to say the least!

I have been making the
same joke to C for 25+ years...

every time I see a squirrel
at WDW, I say,
"Is that you, King Arthur?"
which is a reference to
The Sword in the Stone...

so of course I texted these
pics to C today with the
caption "Royalty" and yes,
I do fancy myself pretty hilarious
with this one joke that I know
C never tires of hearing ;)

We had a late breakfast at the resort and then left for Epcot. We did not get far.

The strap on my mom's backpack got wrapped around the wheel of her wheelchair. I mean really wrapped, as in the wheel could no longer rotate. It was completely locked in place.

I had my mom get out of the wheelchair so I could try to unwind the strap. I flipped the wheelchair on its side and then upside down and I tried and tried and tried, but no avail. Of course it was very hot out, and I was exerting a ton of effort, and I was getting very frustrated. Not a great situation.

Luckily, there was a cast member working not too far away and I'm sure we looked pretty pitiful, with me flipping the chair over and over and yanking on the bag and the wheel, and my mom sitting on the sidewalk with her portable oxygen concentrator.

He kindly came over and asked if we needed help. He tried to loosen the strap and couldn't do it either, which made me feel slightly better because I would have been pretty embarrassed otherwise. After several minutes of him working and me contributing nothing more than a steadying hand on the wheelchair, I asked him if he had scissors or a knife. Luckily, he had a box cutter! After getting it out of his work vehicle, he sawed the strap to get the bag free; this left the piece of strap wrapped around the wheel, which was much easier to unwind and remove with two free ends!

Fortunately, it was the "waist" strap that had to be cut, so the backpack itself is still perfectly fine. All of this took almost 30 minutes, and all my mom and I could do was laugh once we thanked him profusely and were back on track. Never a dull moment!

Our afternoon at Epcot was great! We went to the Beauty and the Beast Sing Along, which I hadn't been to before, and to be honest, I thought it was a bit strange for them to have reworked the story to showcase LeFou as the matchmaker. An inexplicable and unnecessary change! We also went to the festival center, which was beautiful, and listened to a lovely performance by a very talented pianist. We were sitting right at the front, so he could see how we were responding to the music (obviously many tears from me because, well, it's me and I always cry at music, and because one of the songs was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"). After he finished playing, we were gathering our stuff up to carry on with our day and he came over to chat with us and to thank us for listening! What? We thanked him for sharing his gift with us! Such a nice way to spend some time today!

not really sure what was happening here

We noticed that right on cue, a storm was rolling in. When we were at Epcot the other day, we were forced to go all the way to  the front of the park to take a bus because the SkyLiner doesn't operate during inclement weather. We wanted to avoid that scenario today, so we made our way over the the exit and the SkyLiner Station. We got on a gondola just fine, and traveled from Epcot, through the station at Riviera, and stopped at Caribbean Beach where we had to transfer to a different line to get to Pop Century, We hopped off the first gondola and went right over the the wheelchair accessible loading area for the second gondola. At that very moment, they announced that the SkyLiner was ceasing operations due to the storm. We were moved over to a different queue, wear we waited for almost an hour before a bus arrived to take us over to Pop Century. Thankfully, the cast members at the station were very kind and chatted with those of us in line, which helped the time pass. I was still relieved when we were finally on a bus and ultimately back at our resort!

After all of that, we decided to have a quiet evening, so we ordered dinner and watched hockey in our room. At least we got a couple of good stories out of the day!

Happy Tails to you!