Gravy, pickles and flying

I posted these comments elsewhere on the internets, but I think that they are important sentiments that need to be examined. 

So my friend is pregnant, and she can't find dill pickles in Scotland.  She says you can find just about any vegetable pickled in the grocery store, but you cannot find dill pickles.  This brought me to trying to figure out if I can take some of those large individually wrapped deli pickles with me.  Can I take them in a carry-on? After reading some of the airlines' sites, I went back to the idea of using my backpack as my personal item, and then taking just the small carry-on suitcase, which I could check on the return trip if need be; this was before considering the pickles though.

Anyway, back to the pickles and searching the internet for flying with pickles protocol...  I found a list of foods that have to be in checked baggage instead of carry-on:
Creamy dips and spreads
(cheeses, peanut butter, etc.)
Gift baskets with food items
(salsa, jams and salad dressings)
Gravy
Jams
Jellies
Maple syrup
Oils and vinegars
Salad dressing
Salsa
Sauces
Soups
Wine, liquor and beer


Gravy?  Seriously?  Who packs gravy?  Why on earth would you take gravy on a plane?  Seriously, are you sitting around divvying up the family food assignments for a holiday and someone assigns the sister who is flying in with the gravy?  And she says, "I'll save time and I'll make the gravy ahead of time and bring it with me on my 4 hour time suck of flying." (Getting to the airport, checked-in, security, wait for your flight, fly for the 30 minutes or whatever to a semi-close town, off the plan and through a small crowd of people, to a car and to grandma's house... if you are flying from one small airport to another, we aren't considering large airports where the hike alone adds another 20-40 minutes.)  My point:  Who packs GRAVY?

And I still think I'm going to have to check a suitcase to take the pickles. 

Germs and blessings

We have germs.  Lots of them.  Too many of them.  The kind of germs that are keeping people up at night coughing, moaning, suffering.  Little people are wailing through the house at midnight as they bring their suffering from their beds to mine.  Feverish people act as flailing heaters in the night.  First to cuddle close to their daddy and then to cuddle close to their mama.  We are cuddled in such to marinate in the germs.  And yet, while a part of me sighs with resignation that we'll all succumb to this virus and its mutations, I can't help but count the blessing in knowing that our kids know they are welcome to cuddle, to turn to us for comfort. 

Morning comes and I have fallen to the virus.  I wonder if the kids felt this poorly, and I assume they did.  Although they were up for that 3 mile hike last week, which came during the onset of this round of sick.  Maybe they didn't feel like death served up on a moldy trencher.  The Man stays home and teaches the kids.  He reads Prince Caspian.  I fall asleep to his voice carrying softly down the hall to me in my sick bed.  He cooks, he cleans, he takes care of us all.  He is a blessing.

Three days into my own suffering.  The kids are in various stages of sick still, making it past 5 days for them.  The angel and the princess are both feeling better, only really suffering at night, and yesterday's low-grade fever recurrence (after being fever free for 24 hours).  Voices are still weak.  The Boy ignores me as I whisper-yell in a wheezing-frog voice.  He's either mutated his germs for fun, or he's got something different from what the rest of us have gone through.  He's cuddly even though he communicates via eardrum breaking whining.  He asks for quiet music instead of TV.