Today, I can only manage small pieces of thoughts on paper. Fire in the hole.  The orange glow of my hair dryer frying in England and the orange glow of the afterburners on jets at the air show six hours later: identical.  By smell, the jets were powerful and the hair dryer… well, just that yucky "shouldn’t-have-done-that" smell.

Before having kids, I didn’t know that you could go to bed six times in one night.

Dreaming the impossible.  Liam, “Mom, could we just move our whole house next door to Grandma’s so I can cuddle with her whenever I want?”

Air shows and walking:  a juxtaposition.  This weekend’s sport was very sedentary compared to last weekend’s.  Air show observation: Many male spectators in the same age bracket… about the same age as Tom Cruise was when he filmed “Top Gun.”

Getting paid as a mom.  I paid to ride the bird to England and to hear a flight attendant say, “Your boys are so polite and well-mannered.  You wouldn’t believe what we have to put up with sometimes.”  My voice: “Thank you!”  My silent voice: “Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you, thank you.”  Followed by my thought: “You mean like when 2-year-old Will had pneumonia and screamed all the way home from England – in the row right behind 1^st class?”  We have all had our moments, but as related to flying – sometimes thankfully – we will never see those people again.

The English population doubles when the sun comes out and it’s 80 degrees.  Petrol stations run out of water, “Well, the sun is shining you see!”  Hoards of delicately colored English dash outside without sunscreen, only to see who looks more like a lobster Monday morning at work.  Screaming red is a painful color.

Liam, observing Grandma’s iron goose door holder that had fallen over.  “It’s dead right, Mom?  It’s RIP.  It’s with God.  Right, Mom?”

“I can’t do this!!!” Will, facing the line of at least a couple hundred people ahead of us at immigration.  Thank you, Steph, for the year of ancient civilizations.  A game of “What Greed god starts with the letter “X”?” got us through, dare I say, happily?  Then those Greek gods smiled down upon us as a woman opened the cordoned path and said, “You have small children.  Go to the front of the line.”