One Reason I Like Pay Day

I came home from work Thursday to find a bit of blood on the carpet, and a bit more in Ivy's bed. It was clearly coming from the back end, and I immediately assumed internal bleeding was happening. It's my go-to fear with my cats, primarily because it leaves me with so little control. D and I hurried her off to the vet.

$450 later, we learned that 1) she weighs 19 pounds, 10 ounces. !; 2) she, the most docile creature in the universe, would not let them clip her without sedation, 3) she had an abscess high on her back leg that had to be drained and flushed. ( I secretly think she is so lazy that she gave herself a bed sore.) We were sent home with oral antibiotics and analgesics, both in suspensions. She had a plastic cone on her head, and was groggy from the sedative.

We removed her "bed," a large basket lined with a cushy blanket that I think was the root of the problem, aside from the obesity, of course, because it created an inviting means for staying in exactly the same position for roughly 99.999% of every day. Leaving .001% of her time for eating and kicking litter out of the box. D gave her the meds and sprinkled activated charcoal powder on the wound. This is not brickets, people, it's a medical grade charcoal. As in, what your stomach will have pumped into it should you swallow poison. And what gets put into facial masks to suck out impurities. (It has worked fabulously well. The abscess is no longer seeping, and it's probably protecting the wound from litter dust.)

The real fun came later. While Ivy walked into walls with the cone and tried to get comfortable on the copious blankets D spread across the floor, the other cat, Simon, proceded to melt down. Who/what is that in the cone and why is she/it in our house? Why does she/it kind of resemble that large cat who is my sister, but the smell is different, as is the large and intimidating cone? WHAT"S GOING ON?? He did this all night, up in our faces, purring nervously, walking to the edge of the bed and snarling. ALL NIGHT.

I was not the happiest nor clearest thinking teacher on Friday. I missed a fun outing with friends Friday night because I could not prop my eyes open any longer. I was too tired even to eat. D made me a big salad when he got home at 2 a.m., which is when I finally had the energy to chew. But my cats, both of them, are okay, and will continue to be for a while.

*I would have included a photo of Ivy in the cone, but by the time we got home from work Friday, she had pried it off. . .

What Went Right

Thursday, February 22, 2007.

• We woke up and it was raining. Rain is my favorite weather.
• Noah's had exactly the bagels we wanted, asiago and whole wheat sesame.
• The employees completed our order quickly and without errors.
• The bagels were magnificent, in a way that only combined warm carbs and saturated fats can be.
• We didn't have to go to work because we called in sick to take a water safety class for foster care.
• The water safety instructor was the same lady from CPR, and she is fascinatingly eccentric.
• They didn't care that I couldn't find my CPR card.
• During the training, we got a call from our foster agency about a placement (that means they offered us a kid).
• We got to sit through the rest of training all tingly with anticipation: would we say yes or no? If we said yes, our lives would change instantly, and we've been longing for this. If we said yes, what items would we need to get right away?
• After getting more information, we said no. And we felt solid and assured about our answer.
• I was exhausted. But I wasn't at work, so I got to take a nap.
• It kept raining all day. And I love the rain.
• We toured Costco. I love Costco field trips!
• Barnes & Noble had just the book I was looking for.
• I got to spend an entire day with my husband during the work week.

Can I Just Stay In Bed?

Because for the last week or so, I seriously feel like crap. I'm not sick. I can teach a full day, although somewhat more irritably than usual. I feel up to going to the gym, though I only have about a half hour in me. I have an appetite. I don't have a cold or the flu. But I'm continuously nauseated, metal mouthy, headachy, tired, unfocused, PMSy and generally not right. So, can I curl up and hide for awhile?

Something I would never be able to explain to my students:

Tips From Friday Night

Only certain songs can be respectably sung at the karaoke bar. Love songs to people in the room are painful at best. Stay away from professing undying affection loudly and off key midst people you do not know well enough even after many drinks. You are here to bare your debatable talent, not your heart. Sticking with upbeat and familiar is always safe, and we will thank you. Maybe even applaud. If you must dip into the world of sappy, here are a few suggestions that will keep your date from crawling under the table and make the crowd happy enough to sing along:
1. Almost anything by Air Supply.
2. At This Moment by Billy Vera & the Beaters
3. Purple Rain by Prince
4. Can You Feel The Love Tonight by Elton John (or any other Disney cartoon love song)
5. Lost in Your Eyes by Debbie Gibson
6. All I Need by Jack Wagner
7. Magic by Olivia Newton-John
8. Arthur's Theme by Christopher Cross

Close Enough

I may have mentioned that my family of origin? Not so much into traditions. Perhaps the way some families aren't into vegetables. I've seen them line up their offspring at Souplantation and allow all the kids to fill their plates with shredded cheese, olives, and eggs. One day, one of those kids is going to become a raw foods diet enthusiast. Just wait. And I'm not sure whether it will be an act of rebellion, or an attempt to end years of malnutrition.

So maybe it was rebellious of me to want to attend Midnight Mass. Maybe I was just soothing a latent longing for the scent of myrrh so strong it burned my eyes a little. For processions of priests and altar servers in special Christmas vestments. For an Advent wreath and Mary looking out over a hedge of poinsettias. It was almost okay that only one person stood briefly when the choir started singing the Hallelujah Chorus and my don't-stand-out-in-a-crowd part of me had to fight with my this-isn't-right part throughout the entire, very beautiful song. Every sensory detail of the service was wonderful.

Just as Father John began the homily, at about 12:10, I think the police report reads, a friend of ours came up to the pew and called d out of the church. Of all the cars in the parking lot and down all the nearby streets, someone thought it was a lucrative choice to break into my twelve-year-old vehicle and steal my worth-almost-nothing stereo. And my husband's sunglasses. And a birthday card which contained a five dollar gift card to Jamba Juice. They left my cool new basketball which claims that it will stay well inflated for over a year. And they passed over my ream of canary photocopier paper. They also left my CPR mask. My husband came back in and sat through the remainder of the mass with me. Instead of heading to Denny's afterward for pancakes, which I had thought might be fun, we helped our friends (who ironically are in charge of security and therefore felt doubly bad about the break in at their church) clean out enough of the glass to drive home. Without a driver's door window. In the cold. Then we had to make room to park the car in the garage, which took awhile because all the junk that used to be in my office hasn't quite made its way to the Salvation Army yet.

Not exactly how I pictured Christmas Eve, what with being burglarized and getting to bed past 3 am, but not too far off either. I got my infusion of tradition, and a fresh reminder that things are replaceable and aren't really so important.

So I Finally Bit the Bullet

I hit the mall today, early enough to beat most of the crowds, and put a major dent in my Christmas shopping. I would mention what I found, how I came upon inspiration and how I vascilated at certain points. How employees hired for holidays aren't, shall we say, the most helpful? I would say that I did not buy my husband designer jeans for Christmas, because I saw a guy today in $150 jeans and realized I'm not sure men should care that much what their butts look like. I would disclose that The Sharper Image? I pretty much don't get any of the products in that store. Except the massage chairs. Those are cool. I would tell you the contents of the bags I concealed carefully in my decoy bag, but my man reads my blog. And that would just spoil the surprise.

It feels more like Christmas. Maybe it's having a few red paper wrapped packages under the tree and watching my husband shake them, trying to figure out what's what (he has no clue). Maybe it's getting more sleep since it's now vacation. Maybe it's that there is more natural light now that the days are getting longer again. Maybe it's that I was hearing about the blizzard in Colorado that gave my Southern California mom a raging case of cabin fever (she's home now, lucky enough to have caught one of the first flights out). Maybe it's my new addiction to the Grilled Veggie burrito from Baja Fresh. Whatever it is, finally it feels very close to Christmas.

Coming On Christmas

Why is it Christmas already? The calendar must be joking. I'm melancholy this year, like that Joni Mitchel song River, and I can't seem to shake it off and be merry instead.

I cannot make myself feel like Christmas this year. Nevertheless, it's just a few days away, and that continues to surprise me. Yes, we already have the tree up and decorated. The requisite wreath is on the door. The stockings I knitted for Knitting Olympics are hanging above the fireplace. I've even had the Kitchenaid out, mixing up cookies that my students are happy to eat. We went to the Christmas party for d's work Friday night, driving through neighborhoods lit up like adobe versions of gingerbread houses. So I should be feeling the vibe, yet it feels like mid-October.

Yesterday, I finished three knitting projects/Christmas gifts. Which is a lot of knitting in one day if you are me. I prefer to sip my knitting, and yesterday I was gulping. I wasn't doing a marathon of knitting in order to be done ahead of time. These projects had to be done yesterday because my mom is on a plane today taking said gifts to their recipients in Colorado. I knitted a simple, fast beanie for my brother using the Hot Head pattern from Stitch & Bitch and charcoal grey Lamb's Pride bulky yarn. My sister-in-law is getting these fingerless gloves in black baby alpaca. And my mom, who thinks 65 degrees is "freezing," has a new chunky scarf to ward off the chill while she sees the sights in a place that really is cold.

I'm knitted out. Today, I'm making cookies. Christmas cookies. Even though I feel like I should still be finding Halloween treats.

Four and a Half Months Later

Brilliant Hand Surgeon: "Hi, how are you?"
Me: "Fine, thanks."
(BHS glances over my evaluation note from physical therapy.)
BHS: "Do this?" (BHS holds his hand up, fingers all straight.)
(I hold my hand up, fingers all straight, pinky mostly straight.)
BHS: "And this?" (Hand up, fingers curled into a fist.)
(I hold up a fist.)
BHS: "This again." (Holds hand up in straight position.)
(I comply.)
BHS: "Okay. I think we're done here."


Seventeen thousand dollars of Blue Cross double coverage money well spent.

Before and After:

More on Thanksgiving

Things I am feeling grateful for:
1. Family. They may not be exactly who I would have selected if I were in on the family-selecting process, but for better or worse, they are the ones who contribute to who I am. And as families go, they are better than a lot I've heard about.
2. My husband rocks. He made it through a long car trip with my mom and me talking about school pretty much nonstop. He, too, found the illuminated electric wall "art" depicting Waikiki beach with sounds of waves and sea gulls hanging over his parents fireplace amusing. He fed the stray cat who ran in(about 8 times) during the Thanksgiving party, then managed to talk his parents into letting it sleep in the garage. He also convinced them to put a cat door into the garage so the stray would continue to have a warmer place to sleep and access to food and water.
3. Christmas. Christmas decorations, Christmas music, Christmas greenery, Christmas food. Did I mention Christmas music? Just downloaded Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong, which you will like if you like anything else she does, meaning there are no surprises, just mellow melodic holiday music.
4. Fake Christmas trees. I'm sorry, I know. But I have a fear of fire, and I love having the tree up already.
5. Starbucks. Specifically, holiday drinks at Starbucks. Peppermint Mocha. Caramel Apple Cider.
6. Knitting. Passing knitting on. I taught D's 21-year-old cousin how to knit last night. We ran out to Jo Ann's minutes before it closed and found some respectable, Italian, variegated pink and salmon wool and 10.5 bamboo straights. Hurrah for quiet little addictions. . .
7. Colder weather finally. At last, when the weather channel site shows me the ten day local forecast, I see a string of days with highs in the 60's, and a chance of rain.
8. Lazy Saturdays. I just finished breakfast and haven't left the house yet.
9. Magic cookie bars .

Thanksgiving

You know the kinds of Thanksgivings you see in Sunset magazine? Tables beautifully set, all the traditional foods plus a few personalized twists, extended family and friends attired in casually autumnal clothes, a kids' table? I have always placed that image in my head as the visual definition of Thanksgiving dinner.

For several years, D and I hosted a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for our friends: long tables with white linens, wedding china, goblets, centerpieces of gourds, nuts, and candles, place cards, and all the traditional foods. We handled twenty guests seamlessly, effortlessly, without incident. But this year, the group of people we have included for this tradition had grown so large that we had a fall picnic in a local park instead. I missed the tables and passing the food, and seeing our friends a little more dressed up than usual.

I have a small family of origin, and most of its members shun tradition. Evidence: once we spent Christmas day on the side of a volcano in Hawaii eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Nothing wrong with Hawaii, or PB & J, but it's Christmas, people. When Thanksgiving is spent with my side of the family, it's nice and familial, there are yams and pumpkin pie, stuffing laced with sage, drowned in cranberry sauce. But it's small, and it's blue and green, because those are my mom's colors. No browns, oranges, candles.

D has a big family of origin whose members have even more friends. We spent Thanksgiving with them in Fresno this year, and took my mom along. Seventy or so people milling around the first floor of the house, singing Karaoke proudly and not particularly well, eating traditional filipino food (rice, garlicky noodles, egg rolls, stuffed fish, flan) from paper plates with plastic forks that kept dropping to the floor midst the metal folding chairs, and cackling with laughter late into the night. Fun, lively, chaotic, without a yam or pumpkin pie in sight. And, no football, yo. I don't even know who played, who won, etc. And I do care.

I told D this morning that someday, and I'm not sure where because our place is kind of small, I want to host Thanksgiving for our families. So we can have the picture that is stuck in my mind, begging to be satisfied.

In Lieu of Nine Months

Our certification process for being foster parents is almost done: CPR, check. TB testing, check. Hours of training on the Child Welfare System, check, plus binder. Livescan fingerprints, check. The home inspection is coming up this week, so outlets are covered, safety locks and so forth are done, and the baby room is ready enough (more will happen once we know specific age and gender).

We go to the bookstore and I gather books and magazines about babies and parenting. I have two competing thoughts: One is, there is so much to know, and the more I try to find out, the better it will be for me, my husband, and the kid. It's right up there with bringing about world peace. And the other thought is, don't people realize that parenting has been going on for a really, really long time and that our ancestors didn't have Babywise and What to Expect: The Toddler Years, yet here we are, a species that has multiplied substantially and with at least some sparks of goodness along the way? Should I work myself into a frenzy about gathering all the right baby "essentials" when women in third world countries give birth at home, sling their newborn onto their sides, and head back to life as usual because that's the expectation? I waffle. Excitement turns to anxiousness and returns to calm anticipation in the course of a minute.

I am excited to the point of nervous doubt—to want something this much is almost a taunt to the Universe to deny its fruition. But we can't stop the wanting. And hopefully the Universe will see what a great deal this is, two decent, intentional, energetic (d), organized (me), loving, and WILLING people just asking to take in a kid who needs a place. I don't see the catch, so I'm choosing to be optimistic.

Today, we fieldtripped for baby items that we won't get until the time comes, but which require some research and evaluating. After perusing the internet and reading Consumer Reports, we toured the stroller and car seat sections of a few babycentric stores and figured out which stroller (Zooper Boogie) and which car seat (probably Britax Marathon) will work best for our lifestyle and provide the best quality and value over time. And that won't cause irritation and annoyance when I use them. Thus, they have to be black, not yellow with ducks, beige with bears, or green plaid, just BLACK. (My mother is perplexed by my lack of enthusiasm for baby-themed clothing and gear. I, on the other hand, am perplexed by stores in which every piece of little boy clothing is appliqued with animals or the words "All Star" and every sports ball known to ESPN—no child is that fascinated by either barnyards or athletics. This is the just the beginning of our parenting differences. I envision a collection of non-pastel onesies with pithy sayings that would make my 14-year-old students envious. She's hoping I'll come around to the Rainforest crib set. Won't this be fun?)

As I sat on the floor of a stroller aisle, watching my prodigiously handy husband figure out the quick release inflatable wheels faster than the salesperson, I realized again, as I do over and over in different situations, that my husband is amazing. That he's going to be an unbelievably good father. That any kid would love having him as a dad. That I am undeserving and unworthy of him, and that just getting to be on this journey of life with him is the biggest gift the Universe could have ever arranged for me. I hate that I forget this sometimes, that I have taken for granted how incredibly gifted and fortunate I am to have this exact man in my life, precisely how he is. But I love how the Universe gives me reasons all the time, like today, to realize again just how good everything is because my husband is here.

School

1. If I needed to wallpaper a convention center meeting room, I could easily cover every surface with the amount of papers I have not graded but need to.

2. New seating charts would make my life better exponentially, but I would actually have to find the time necessary to creatively arrange 150 kids in five different classes, which takes longer than you might think.

3. I LOVE GRAMMAR! It isn't as important to me as critical analysis, explication of literature, superb writing, and thought-provoking discussions, but it's just so neat and tidy. What's not to like?

4. Forgive me. I already feel like writing certain kids off. I have never felt like doing triage this early in the year, but I can make a short list of students whose grades anchor the bottom half of the curve, and whose motivation levels hover around their ankles like socks without elastic. It makes me less altruistic and energetic than I wish I was, but the truth is, I could sit these kids in the back of the seating charts and pretend they don't exist for the rest of the year. Ouch. But it's how I feel, at least tonight.

5. Even though I'm behind and there are kids who are sucking my soul dry, I think I'm doing a better job of teaching this year. There are too many things to teach in Language Arts, but I'm finding systems and routines that are working better this year than ever before for fitting more into my teaching schedule.

6. In the past week, I have had three former students come back to say hello. One is in continuation high school, one has a felony on record that will be cleared in a year if he can stay clean, and the other is a college freshman. When kids come back to visit, they don't walk in and say, "You have changed my life." "It is because of you that each day has meaning." "I can trace the positive direction of my future back to its starting point right here in this room." But they come back. And they look around the room wistfully, tell me about their friends and jobs, and tell me they are doing well. Or poorly. Either way, I feel honored that I still have the privilege of accessing their worlds, even years later. They linger. I rest my arms on the stacks of papers I need to grade, and I purposely forget the time that seeps away while they sit and talk. The ones who don't suck my soul dry stick in my heart and my head forever. I remember their names. They carry my hopes and dreams with them. They are my children until I have my children. And after I have my children, I want desperately to keep investing my hopes and dreams in these kids who pass through my room and who sometimes come back to reconnect to some place and someone who meant something.

The Grass is Greener

I hang out with a 3 1/2 year old boy who is indignant that I don't have my own soccer ball, knows that "zero means nothing on the number line," and beats my husband at Mario Cart. Tonight we were out to dinner at BJ's. His new thing is jamming his little thumb up to signify that something is good. He was flirting with the waitress and hamming it up for all the guys at the table, men he knows from Monday Night Football and UFC fight parties because they are friends with his dad and my husband. He was dutifully eating the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese he had ordered when I offered him a bite of my Field of Greens salad. Which just goes to show you how little I know about young children, because it's a fairly grown-up salad, leaf lettuces, mandarin oranges, roasted red peppers, red onions, walnuts, and feta cheese. He said yes, though, so I loaded up a clean fork with some lettuce and he took a big bite. A look of utter revulsion came across his face, like he had discovered that the substance in his mouth was dog food laced with rodent poison marinated heavily in lime juice. He looked around the table with his usually smiley eyes betraying how much he was suffering through each cycle of chew and swallow. His dad asked, "How is the salad?" Without hesitation, his fist shot up into the air above his high chair, thumb protruding upward. He even asked for a second bite later in the meal, and he had the same reaction the second time around.
I, on the other hand, came home and made a box of mac and cheese. . .

Oh yeah. I have a blog.

Or rather, I used to have a blog. Back when I blogged. Now, I just have this bookmark entitled Level Eye taunting me from the bookmark bar, and I feel scorched by humiliation at the seventeen years that have elapsed since I last blogged. I've been waiting for something blog-worthy about which to write, and I realized tonight that my blog is not one of those, shall we say, important kinds of blogs. It is random, and disjointed. It doesn't hang together as a narrative unit, so much. So what does it really matter that all I have to blog about right now is randomness? Here's to my blog and my life, neither of which seem to be following any kind of predictable narrative thread at the moment.

Things I'm Hating About the Dodgers

1. They aren't in the lead anymore.
2. That's because they have lost to the Padres twice in a row.
3. AT HOME.
4. With sold out crowds of supportive fans.
5. Russell Martin hit a home run today,
6. When I wasn't there,
7. As opposed to last night when I was there but
8. When he didn't even play for the entire game.
9. Garlic fries. They feel so good at the time, but the guilt that ensues. . .
10. Games I would love to attend this week directly coincide with my foster parent training sessions, and even though I love the Dodgers a little and Russell Martin a lot, I would love to have a foster kid even more.
11. It's not the Dodgers fault, but I hate that I don't already have a little kid to dress in full-on Dodger gear, because nothing in the world is quite so adorable.
12. Finally, I'm hating that I'm not holding tickets for another game. I must go again before the season is over.

And For My Starship Loving Husband:

This t-shirt.

How Does She Know?

It's like I just looked in a mirror.

Lobotomized

It's that time of the year when I point myself out the door, operate on autopilot for the next 15 hours, and then return spent and hazy only to crash for a precious few hours and hit repeat the next day.

School has begun again. And because the time gods are capricious, it just so happened that 8 hours of CPR training had to be scheduled for this week, too. I do not know my students' names yet. Sometime during each class, I will have glanced at my seating chart and out to their faces enough to think I finally have it down, but by the time they walk in the next day, most of the girls look alike in a vaguely familiar way and the boys look like whoever just left. I knew I was going to have to work hard to sell school to my one class that was grouped for instruction, which really means low, but until yesterday, I didn't feel the pressure of that certainty. Now I do. All of the kids are sweet and hardworking except maybe 6. But those 6 will give me a workout.

I've been doing this long enough to know that the first week more than ever I need to chant my mantra of structure, structure, structure. I've also been at this long enough to know I cannot let up or I will pay the price. Even when I am tired from staying out late giving compressions and rescue breaths to dummies, when I have needed giant doses of vitamin C to stave off a persistant sore throat, and when the fifth morning of a 4:45 alarm seems unthinkable.

Perhaps I've mentioned I have a touch of OCD. In my kitchen, I have laminated cards that list daily jobs to do around the house on a four week cycle in order to keep the house perpetually clean and not ever have to devote large quantities of time to the task.* Each day is devoted to a separate room, and we do one major job and several smaller jobs each day. For example, I do not clean out my fridge and freezer and oven and all the cupboards and all the small appliances every week in the kitchen, but at least once a month everything gets cleaned. As either d or I complete the tasks for each day, we place a wet erase marker check mark in the appropriate column. Each card is a different color, so we switch to a new color each week. This week was pink. It has no check marks. Don't come over right now, I have some stuff to do around the house!



*Every item in our safe deposit box is also in it's own individual, numbered envelope. It corresponds to a master list of contents that is in a file here at home.

Magical Thinking

I do not travel much. Home is a good place with gorgeous surroundings, a lot of fun activities to do, and a bed-pillow-cat combination that is unbeatable. Plus the bathrooms are always clean.

Growing up, I travelled extensively. I loved the tension in the pit of my stomach that only happened when taking off in an airplane. I revelled in the sensory rush of emerging into a different climate and culture than the one I left hours ago. I appreciated the order and organization behind the way that airports work. People love to complain about airports, but have you ever sat in traffic on the 405 and watched the choreography of one massive jet after another, lining up for miles across the Inland Empire, approaching the landing strips at LAX? Such precision! And then most of those people find their luggage on the carousels in baggage claim. From a teacher's point of view, it is nearly epiphanous to imagine thousands and thousands of people with assigned seats, most of whom have their supplies, following directions most of the time. . .

A couple of weeks ago, I got on a plane for the first time in ten years. Busyness, expense, spoiled pets, enjoyment of my real life had made travel less than essential, and before I knew it, a decade had gone by and I hadn't even left the state. But d and I decided to very uncharacteristically spend our retroactive raises on a trip to Hawaii. It was gorgeous. The water was warm. The coconut syrup was as delicious as I remembered. We went to the North Shore, hiked to Manoa Falls, drove around the island and hung out at every beach that caught our attention, and heard enough Hawaiian music that if someone plays a ukulele anytime in my near future, I will stab myself in the eyes with a plastic fork.

Then, the day we flew back to LAX, people in Great Britain discovered that terrorists have graduated from playing on monkey bars to watching reruns of MacGyver, and now know how to make bombs out of Axe body spray and lip gloss, apparently. So people in the airport shuttle were talking about bombs, and there were signs all over the airport about bombs, and I couldn't help thinking a little about bombs and planes exploding in midair. The guy in front of us in line to board the plane looked, how shall I say? Suspicious? A little shifty? A little preoccupied by thoughts of twenty-seven virgins in the afterlife, perhaps? His wedding ring didn't throw me off at all. What an easy prop! I took note of all the kids on board the plane as I walked to my seat. Surely a plane with this many little kids wouldn't blow up, right? The universe had to be more kind than that. . . I slept a little. The kids cried a lot. Then I got sucked into an inflight movie in which Antonio Banderas tries to teach kids from the 'hood to dance (who wins the competition? I don't think I can watch the entire movie again just to find that out). The movie was turned off early because we landed. As in, the plane did NOT blow up. Which is good.

So. Travel is good. It's nice to see other places. Skinny guys in line at the airport are not necessarily terrorists. And if enough kids are on board, you'll have a safe trip, I think. . . .