Let's talk about traveling with Hot Duchess

When I used to fly I would do EVERYTHING in my power to get my seat belt fastened without a extender.  I can remember at least twice that I had Peaches put his big arm muscles to good use squeezing me into it.  Do you remember the scene in Gone With The Wind where Scarlett was getting her corset tied?  The process of getting my seat belt connected had some similar qualities.  Only once did I have to use an extender, it was on a flight from Prague to Amsterdam with a European airline on a teeny tiny plane.  I was already humiliated enough asking for it, but having to do it in my horrible version of Czech was really precious, the flight attendants may still be laughing about it!

So this past week I flew out to NY for some work stuff and per my usual routine I slide the buckle alllllllllllll the way out to the end of the belt and I sucked Hot Duchess in as far as humanly possible.  Then I went for it, I used a brisk jerking motion and aimed up the two ends of the buckle and got it on the first time!!  After I was done congratulating myself on hitting the mark, I realized that something was wrong.  There was a lot of room in between me and the belt, it felt a little loose.  There was some slack!!  I grabbed the end of the belt and pulled and got about 5 in of extra belt, HOT DIGGITY DOG! 

A couple other places I noticed a difference on my trip, sitting in the middle seat of the train going from Long Island to Penn Station, I didn't feel the need to curl up and hold my breath with fear I was spilling onto the person next to me.  Going through the turnstiles to get on the subway, I was able to do so at a bit of a run (we took a little too long over dinner and had to run to make our show) and not creeping through the turnstile sideways on tiptoe, so Hot Duchess could glide over the top rather than try to fit between the two sides.

 The last place I thanked all the powers that be I had made this choice to change me life was on the flight home.  My flight out was at 6:45am, I boarded the plane and was snoozing waiting for take off.  At 7:23am the captain came on the intercom to tell us that the Altimeter was broken and we were going to need to deboard (a real word??) and go down two gates to a plane scheduled to take off at 7:50am.  We all moved over the next plane and all fit, but this took some time.  We didn't actually take off until 8:17am.  We landed an hour and a half in Chicago at gate C2, my connecting flight to Billings was at gate K19 and leaving in 16min.  So I ran!!  I was yelling "EXCUSE ME!!!' to all the people with 4 hour layovers just strolling around in the terminal as I was running, Forrest Gump style!  I made it with 2 min to spare and they let me on, THANK YOU UNITED AIRLINES!  Or I would have been waiting until 8:30pm for the next flight to Billings.

Here is a little map of my run.  I landed at the yellow arrow and took off at the red circle.

I never would have been able to do that before the Lap Band and Mr. Muscle!

Now that I am home I actually have a chance to do stuff, like read and write blogs!  My comments will be a little late but I am getting caught up on them!