Travels with my mother and bother, I mean brother - day one

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Let me start this by telling you that my brother & I don’t get along well. In fact, if anyone else tells a joke, its funny, but if I tell the same joke first, its stupid. My brother also goes into almost everything expecting the worst. So.... We are flying out of Austin at 10 a.m. We decide we need to be at the airport by 8:30, that means leaving at 8. He has horrorablize it until he wants to leave at 7:30. I know that isn’t happening because mom is still eating at that time. I’m more concerned that she gets a good meal in her than we get off at 7:30 since we won’t have time for a meal during the layover in Chicago & we don’t get in until 5 p.m. at Newark. Well, we do get off at 8. On our way to the airport we noticed that mom had a cough, more about this later. We sit around the airport, like you always do now a days and finally board. Here again the bro is worried about how they are going to get mom on the plane since she really can’t walk more than a few steps, turns out he had never realized they have special wheelchairs for helping passengers on airplanes. The flight to Chicago is uneventful. Once there mom needs to go to the bathroom. Don’t you know there is a LONG line to the ladies room - big surprise. But the nice gal pushing the wheelchair pushes her to the front of the line & I take her into the handicapped stall. This was a nice big, well designed handicapped stall and we have no problem with mom going to the bathroom. She really liked the self changing plastic seat covers too. Chicago O’Hara may have many horror stories, but I have to say that our visit to it was the best airport on the trip. The plane lands, but has to wait for the plane at the gate to leave before we can load. Even with that delay, we are loaded right on time, but turns out that Newark isn’t ready for us so we have to go out to some outback part of the airport & sit for an hour! For once my brother came thru. He had packed some salami, cheese and crackers for the flight so my mother did get something to eat. They had a nice little picnic on the airplane while we waited to take off. The stewardesses came around with glasses of water & they sold their little snacks while we waited. Once we were in the air again we made excellent time to Newark, in fact, despite having waited over an hour in Chicago, we were only 45 minutes late into Newark. My brother went ahead to get the suitcases. As it turned out, we had plenty of time to get our bags & go to the bathroom in Newark before my sister & her friend made it thru the traffic to pick us up. Turns out the Garden State Parkway is the way all the weekenders were going back to NYC that day! While parts of Newark airport have been modernized, the rest are still pretty old. The bathroom there, while not the worst, wasn’t as nice as O’Hara’s. Since we didn’t get picked up until after 6:30 & had to drive from Newark to south Jersey, we didn’t get to eat supper until 9. We ate in Egg Harbor. When in Egg Harbor, eat at Micky’s and Minnie’s. I had a nice spaghetti with marinara, & I can’t remember what the other’s ate, but we all ate everything on our plates. From there we drove over & dropped my brother off at my aunt’s. Since it was now after 10 & a half hour back to my cousin’s place, we decided to not go there, since mom was really tired. It was well after 11 before mom got her meds and was in bed. I crawl in after she does & discover that she coughs, and twitches all night. I can stand light, I can’t stand movement. When my cat’s get into grooming while I’m trying to go to sleep I pin them down, I can’t pin down my mom’s hand! I think I was awaken at least once an hour for the rest of the night. My sister gets mom up around 7 for a shower & I think I get my best sleep the entire night in the hour while that is happening. End of day one.