2011 Was Totally Amazing!

by on Jan 02, 2012 (2) Comments

I’m amazed how fast 2011 is drawing to a close.  We started out the year in Chicago watching helplessly as my sister-in-law, Sandi, struggled to overcome a brain aneurism.  This was a frightening way to start the New Year and we all hoped it was not a preview of the year to come.    Amazingly, as we draw to the end of 2011 Sandi is doing fantastic.  Not only did she survive, which is a miracle in and of itself, but she is has fully recovered and has even gone back to work.  Now that is truly amazing!

In May, Jessica, our youngest child, graduated from college.  I’m not really amazed by this.  Jessica has always been so smart and determined.  The family joke is that we could air drop Jessica into a foreign country with nothing but a backpack and she would emerge six months later as their newest dictator.  The amazing thing is that she got a job working at Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg Tennessee as their event coordinator.  She went from college student to middle management in one fell swoop.  Amazing!

Personally, the most amazing event in 2011 was the publishing of my first book Cookies for Dinner.  Thanks to Pam and her insistence, I became a published author!  I love to tell stories and my children are the lights of my universe, so writing a book about my children was perfect for me.   The fact that our book was published is amazing in and of itself.  The fact that it has been so wonderfully received by all that have read it is truly amazing.

 September of 2011 found Dave and I along with his parents, Paul and Jackie, in Egypt.  A trip to Egypt was one of the things that Jackie wanted to do before she died.  Paul is 80 and suffering from Alzheimer’s and Jackie is 78.  David and I knew that if we wanted Mom to have her trip of a lifetime, we had to go this year.  Egypt was wonderful.  The sites were beyond beautiful, the people were warm and friendly and genuinely happy to have American tourists visiting.  Our trip was 9 months after the initial revolution in January and literally just days before the violent conflicts that erupted in the later part of this year.  It was truly an amazing trip of a lifetime for all of us. 

Finally, December found the Allen family at home in Murfreesboro for the first time ever for Christmas.  For 22 years our family has made the 9 hour drive to Paul and Jackie’s house in Western Springs, Illinois for Christmas.  Since Christmas for the Allen family has always been centered around Paul and Jackie, we got to have Christmas here this year.  The sad part was that 22 years of old traditions were broken.  The wonderful part was that new traditions were fully embraced and we look forward to many years of Christmas celebrations in the Allen house here in Murfreesboro.

Happy New Year!

Saying goodbye to Bob

by on Dec 27, 2011 (14) Comments

This was our first year with the Elf on the Shelf. I had heard that so many of my children’s friends had their own elves so I arranged for us to adopt our own this year. He arrived on December 19th. We read the book and then my children began the process of naming their elf. While the book gave examples of cute and unusual names, my children decided that their elf needed a simple, manly name because he had to go through life wearing tights. Our elf became known simply as Bob.

As a good Elf on the Shelf, Bob was a mischievous little fellow. He did all the typical elf things such as toilet-papering my plants, wearing Jack’s underwear while sitting on top of the Christmas tree, leaving candy wrappers on the kitchen counter and hiding Jack’s DSI. My children loved waking up each morning to see what kind of mischief Bob had gotten into on his way back from the North Pole each night.

There was also a constant stream of chatter from my children as they talked to Bob. They asked him endless questions about the North Pole and how Santa made the toys. Either they received answers telepathically or they were totally content with the unblinking stare that Bob offered in response because the chatter continued day after day.

The days before Christmas, as Bob sat in his various sentry positions around our house, my children were perfect little angels. I only had to ask once for something to be done. Hands were washed before meals and the towels were neatly returned to their racks. Dirty clothes miraculously found their way into hampers (something that rarely happened before Elf Adoption Day). Bedtime schedules were kept and I even received a few unsolicited hugs. Why hadn’t I incorporated the Elf on the Shelf before? This was a mother’s dream-come-true. Then came Christmas Eve and my little dream started heading toward a nightmare. It was time to say goodbye to Bob.

Jack took it harder than Gracie but they were both upset. Jack was excited that Santa would be coming but he was absolutely heartbroken at the thought of having to say goodbye to Bob. The one-way conversations from my children to Bob became filled with pleas for him to stay.

“Bob is the brother I never had,” cried my son as he stood before me with an endless stream of tears running down his face.

“Jack, he needs to go back to his home. He misses Santa and his elf brothers and sisters,” I sympathetically responded but there was no reasoning with him.

During Bob’s stay with us my children had left cookies and milk for him every night before they went to bed. On this last night they packed a huge snack of cookies, pretzels, bananas, a loaf of bread, carrots, candy, a can of soup and a Thermos of milk. They wrote a long goodbye note, complete with tear stains. By the time they had set everything out on the table in front of Bob, I was sobbing myself.

On Christmas morning, among the many presents left by Santa, were two presents from Bob, along with a special note promising my children that he’d be back next December – complete with tear stains… mine.

First annual sugar cookie day

by on Dec 22, 2011 (2) Comments

What a wonderful day!  Today I got to spend time with Matthew’s girlfriend’s, sister’s husband’s children (wow that’s a mouthful), Madison and Jordan.  Madison is 10 and Jordan is 12.  They are out of school for the Holiday break.  Matthew called me Sunday evening to ask if the girls could come to the house and make cookies on Monday.  One thing David and I never had to worry about was what to do with the kids during breaks from school.  We both worked out of the house so it was just another day for us.  I got the impression that the girls were going to have to get up early in the morning and go to work with their Dad.  Tim is a contractor so goodness only knows what “going to work with Dad” can entail.  Even though the girls may have been trying desperately to get out of the boring day ahead riding around with their Dad from jobsite to jobsite, they pushed my button asking to come and make cookies.  I love to make cookies.  I love to be in the kitchen.  This was going to be a wonderful day!

Before the girls arrived I went through my never ending “To Do” list.  Sure I did have work to do but frankly I work every day of the week and most evenings that I’m not at the bowling alley.  Since none of the work items had hard deadlines looming, I easily shifted them out of their priority spots to pencil in cookie baking with the girls.  The next set of priorities on the list were the final gift purchases for our office party the next day and the last couple little gifts to put under the tree.   Since there were definite hard deadlines attached to these items they would have to somehow get accomplished before the cookie baking could begin.   I quickly went through my list and realized it was totally doable with the girls.  One thing I had to do was get new toys for all my Grandpuppies.  In the last year I have gone from one Grandpuppy, Fuji (Christi’s dog in Arizona) to five.  Matt got Windsor earlier this year, Jess got Palmaramaroo, then Gauge, and we have to include her new boyfriend’s dog, Keegan, in the mix.  We walked out of Walmart with 8 bags of dog toys.  Okay, so maybe we went a bit overboard.

We got back to the house and I pulled out my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook.  Jordan asked me if we were going to “make” the cookie dough.  She seemed to be surprised when I said yes.  We measured out all the ingredients and watched as the stand mixer turned it into the perfect dough.   Being the ever patient person I am, I put the dough in the freezer for ten minutes instead of the fridge for an hour.  Once it was chilled, I brought out my treasure trove of cookie cutters. I actually have cookie cutters that I used with my Grandmother when I was a little girl.  I would say my youngest cookie cutter is about 25 years old.  The girls rolled out the dough and began cutting out their shapes.  I made white and blue icing to go with the green and red icing we bought at Jr’s along with some multicolored sprinkles.

When the cookies were baked (ok, slightly over baked) and cooled, the girls set to icing them.  It was wonderful to watch how creative these two are.  They made sleighs and trees and stars but the most impressive were the six inch tall gingerbread men.  They had shirts and pants and one even had a gun because he was a military gingerbread man.

I had such a wonderful time that it made me sad that I didn’t start the tradition of taking a day off work to make sugar cookies with my kids every year.  Then I realized there was no sense worrying about things past, I have lots of young ones that I can commandeer once a year for Sugar Cookie Day.  Watch out Pam, your kids are next!

Sandwich, anyone?

by on Dec 19, 2011 (20) Comments

I am a card-carrying member of what is referred to as the “sandwich generation.” For those of you who are blissfully unaware of what that means, it refers to people who have children living at home (so far this is all normal, right?) and also their aging parents (normal goes right out the window at this point). And of course, when I do something I have to do it in the most stressful, stand-out-from-the crowd way… a way that gets me frequent sympathetic pats on the back and daily comments of “I’ll pray for you, Pam.” Why? Because my little sandwich generation circus consists of a seven-year-old child, a nine-year-old child and a ninety-year-old mother. Are we having fun yet?

It was a difficult decision when my husband and I chose to start the adoption process almost 10 years ago because I was in my late forties. We decided though that God had placed that on our hearts and went full steam ahead into the world of diapers, sleep deprivation, teething, and unimaginable joy. We became parents at the age most of our friends were gearing up for lives as grandparents.

I was deliriously happy, despite the fact that many people thought I was my children’s grandmother… well, actually, since I live in the south I was referred to by the loving term granny. Even after living in Tennessee for 20 years I can’t get used to the fact that women actually liked being referred to by that name. Images of a pot-wielding, cranky old woman from the Beverly Hillbillies comes to mind. But I digress…

Just as I was happily enjoying life as a mom after almost having that incredible experience pass me by, my husband and I make the decision that my mother is no longer capable of living on her own in her little apartment close by. We prayed, we agonized, we cried and then we moved my mother into our home.

Having mom with us creates some very interesting challenges. For example, mom wants to be useful but her memory works against her. She tries to help by doing the children’s laundry. It becomes a mad scramble in the morning as my kids open their drawers to find most of the clothing in there belongs to their sibling. And for the record, there’s nothing more irritating to a seven-year-old boy than to find his sister’s pink underwear and socks in his drawer where his Spiderman boxers should be.

Mom also tries to help by tidying up in my kitchen. The problem is that she’s only 4’8” tall so she rearranges my cabinets so everything will fit below the counter. Before I start cooking dinner each night I have to go on a scavenger hunt for the items I need.

These days, in the mornings I can be heard reminding some members of my family to be sure and brush their teeth while reminding another family member to be sure and put in her teeth.

Life is good.

I really hate shopping

by on Dec 16, 2011 (2) Comments

If you have gotten to know me, you know that I am a self-proclaimed OCD wanna be.  My brain would be delighted if all things in life could be organized into tidy little packages all wrapped with a beautiful bow but unfortunately I just don’t have the emotional or physical stamina to actually pull it off.  So the end result of my mental, emotional and physical struggles is what I lovingly refer to as “organized chaos.”     Holiday shopping is a prime example of the inner struggle between the OCD Kae and the lazy, I want to sit on the couch and watch The Next Iron Chef, Kae.  Sunday night I went over my list, checked it twice, then went back and checked it again.  My “list” is organized by family or related groupings and has a dollar limit and number of present necessary section.  This way, as I go along I can mark through what I have gotten and know exactly how many presents I need to complete my shopping mission.  Of course, once I get back from shopping I update the list adding the items that caught my eye that were not on the original list and adding a checkmark for items purchased and a column to add a check mark when the item is wrapped and under the tree.

Jackie and I tried to make our first big run at Christmas shopping on Saturday.  The traffic was horrific.  We waited 20 minutes to go down the “back street” to get to Hobby Lobby.  After that, I was done.  I absolutely hate to shop in the first place and I really have no desire to wrestle with every Tom, Dick and Betty in Murfreesboro for the honor of purchasing a shirt that will probably be returned to the store for cash anyway.  Bah Humbug!  There was no way I could emotionally handle sitting in traffic for that long, especially seeing that the words I wanted to say were a) not appropriate for the holiday season and b) completely inappropriate to be uttered in front of one’s 78 year old mother-in-law.  Two stops, one to Hobby Lobby and the other at Old Time Pottery and we were running for the house with our shopping tails between our legs.

Monday afternoon we headed out to Kohls with a newly acquired coupon with the bonus 30% off hidden under the magic peel off sticker!  This is such a wonderful store for us.  We can buy with reckless abandon and all the people we buy our treasures for that don’t like them can just run right out to their local Kohls and return them, no questions asked!  Mom and I grabbed our carts and parted ways.  Every 30 minutes or so we would cross in a department, compare our finds and then take off again in hunt of the perfect gift.  After about 3 hours my shopping was done and my anti-shopping gene was revving into high gear.  My back had begun to ache, my cart was full, my list was double checked and I was ready to blow this pop stand.   I finally found Mom again in the petites section.  She began going through her cart showing me what she had gotten for various people on her list.  This is when I realized that Mom and I have polar opposite shopping styles.  When I select an item I will hold it in my hand for a few minutes while I continue to peruse the racks for a better find.  Once I decide I have the best find in hand, then and only then does the item make it into the cart.   If I decide not to purchase an item I have been carrying with me, I return it to the rack where I originally got it from.  Mom on the other hand fills her cart with everything she likes, no matter what the size or idea of who the item will be for.  Once she has scoured the shelves clean she reevaluates every item in the cart discarding the rejects where ever she happens to be standing.  Once I realized Mom was actually going to ditch more than half the items in her cart, I dragged her over to the fitting room so at least I could hang the cast offs on the reject rack and save myself from running around the store like a nut trying to put everything back in its rightful place.  Thankfully, Mom just needed one more half hour round before we were finally headed to the checkout line with two carts loaded to the brim and our hearts bursting with satisfaction of a shopping trip well done. 

We stood in the long line of other grumpy shoppers waiting to check out with the equally grumpy sales clerk.  As much as I absolutely hate the shopping experience, no one would really know it.  I don’t go anywhere that I don’t have a good time, so my shopping experience is full of jokes and laughter.  Finally it was our turn to face Mrs. Grumpy sales clerk.  Mom and I carefully laid our purchases up on the counter in family order so that we could get gift receipts to make returning our gifts so much easier.  I painstakingly counted out the number of items that would need a shirt box so I could be at the ready and not waste any more of the clerk’s time than necessary.   Just as we finished putting everything up on the counter I looked down at the coupon in my hand.  It wasn’t good until Tuesday!

Food Network Fallout

by on Dec 12, 2011 (10) Comments

I’m a huge fan of the Food Network channel. Late at night I can be found sitting up in bed with eyes glued to the television. My fascination with Food Network doesn’t translate into my being an exceptional cook, however. Sad, but true. I keep trying though and my family is always supportive of my attempts at growing my culinary skills.

Over the last year I’ve been surprised to repeatedly find my 9-year-old daughter wanting to watch Food Network as well. She’ll come into the kitchen when I’m making dinner and I’ll offer to change the TV channel for her but she’ll shake her head, settle down on the stool at the counter and begin commenting on what a particular TV chef is adding to a recipe.

This wonderful mommy/daughter bonding experience may sound all warm and fuzzy but I’ve discovered it has a downside. A big one. Gracie wants to experiment in the kitchen as well.

Here are a few of Gracie’s recent creations:

Tortilla chips topped with grape jelly and a dollop of whipped cream

Carrots covered in mustard and rolled in panko bread crumbs

Cinnamon toast bread with mayo and chocolate sprinkles

I could go on but there’s no need to torture you further. You get the idea.

As a mother, I’ve proudly displayed my children’s artwork on the refrigerator, applauded their impromptu dance routines and cherished all homemade gifts. So of course, I have bravely tasted all culinary creations. I’m either a great mother or an idiot. Not sure which one. I am sure, however, that since Gracie’s last appetizer offering almost had me running to vomit in the toilet, I will be purchasing her a cookbook for children.

Cookie-baking Weekend

by on Dec 08, 2011 (5) Comments

The first weekend in December finds me trading in my computer and calculator for my stand mixer and double ovens.  20 years ago I got the bright idea that it would be fun to bake homemade cookies for all of my clients.  Since I only had about five clients and a ton of extra time on my hands, this seemed like a reasonable pursuit on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Through the years my business grew and my children developed friends and teachers and team mates that they insisted should be included in the cookie giving tradition.  I went from making a few hundred cookies to making close to 12,000 during the peak grade school, middle school, high school years.  Thankfully, now that the kids are all out of college and I am no longer subsidizing the cookie needs of most of the children in Murfreesboro, I have scaled back to about 5,000 cookies and candies all made in a single weekend.

Things have certainly gotten easier and faster since I first started my cookie baking adventure.  Instead of spending hours figuring out how much flour, sugar etc. to buy I built a spreadsheet to figure out my baking supply needs based on the number of tins I am planning to give away.  I just plug in my number and my spreadsheet calculates how much of each item to purchase and prints out my shopping list broken down between what I purchase at Sam’s and what I get at the grocery store.  Instead of spending hours going up and down the aisle at Sam’s, I just go on line and order my supplies in about 10 minutes.  The little packaging fairies at Sam’s put my order together and all I do is go in, find my cart and check out.  The only part that is still random in the equation is the chocolate.  I just never seem to get the right amount to dip all the candies I make.  Luckily I live a block away from Jr’s (our neighborhood grocery store) so David is more than happy to go clean out their Hershey’s stash for me.

A few years ago, we moved our kitchen from one side of our house to the other.  We took down the wall between our family room and Christi’s bedroom. The old family room became the new kitchen and the bedroom became our new family room.  Not that I told David during the construction, but the entire kitchen was designed around Cookie Baking Weekend.   At one end of the kitchen is a buffet that was designed with two plugs in the side columns so that I can plug in two stand mixers and use this as my mixing station.  Once the dough is mixed I turn around and stand at the end of the 9 foot island.  Here I can dip 15 cookie sheets with 15 to 20 cookies each and line them up three wide taking up half the depth of the island.  My favorite part of the new kitchen is the two trivection wall ovens.  Not only can I cook 6 sheets of cookies at the same time but with the trivection technology a 12-minute cookie only takes about 6 minutes.   

Stage two of cookie baking weekend is candy making.  I make peppermint patties, peanut butter cups, coconut cups, chocolate covered cherries, chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate covered raisins.  Unfortunately, I haven’t found a faster way to dip chocolate. The filling is easy enough to make but putting the filling in the chocolate is where my system breaks down.  Last year I made the peanut butter and coconut into small bite sized balls.  Rolling a thousand or more little balls hurt my shoulder so bad that I wasn’t able to bowl for a month.  This did not make me very happy.  This year, I tried putting the peanut butter and coconut in little candy cups.  First I melted chocolate and used a paint brush to “paint” it on the bottom and sides of all the little cups.  Now, I’ve seen other people’s homemade candy cups and they are just adorable.  Mine on the other hand look like an accountant took the day off work and decided it would be fun to try something new.  They are delicious but somewhat misshapen. 

The guest bedroom becomes the cookie storage area.  Two long tables are set up to hold the numerous bins of cookies and a bread rack is set up to hold the drying chocolates.  Monday morning it’s all hands on deck.  We set up all the bins of cookies around the island.  Mom and Dad are in charge of getting the cellophane wrap in the bottom of each tin.  Matt, David, Justin and I are in charge of loading exactly three cookies of each kind and two candies of each kind into each tin.  Since Barbara doesn’t like getting the chocolate on her hands, she is in charge of putting the lids on each tin securely. 

75 tins and 30 decorative quart sized bags later, cookie baking weekend is officially over for another year.  I put my recipe book away and place my 25 cookie sheets back in the cabinet.  The last of the flour is wiped from the buffet and there is nothing left to remind us of the chaos of cookie baking weekend except a guest bedroom full of drying misshapen chocolate candies, a couple wayward chocolate chips hanging out by the baseboards and a nagging pain in my right shoulder every time I try to lift my arm.

The last shirt

by on Dec 01, 2011 (6) Comments

Today was a big day for my son Jack. He had a key role in the chapel program being presented by his class. In addition to parents and grandparents attending, many of the other elementary classes watched this important event.

Last night I was informed by my son, the actor, that he wanted to wear black pants and a black pullover shirt. This was not a requirement from his teacher but just what Jack felt the character would wear. He also wanted to wear sandals to be more authentic but Mommy put her foot down since the temperature outside was 29 degrees.

“But they didn’t wear running shoes in biblical times,” my son declared.

“They also didn’t wear Superman underwear either.” I added.

Jack didn’t want to give up his superhero boxers so he quietly put on his running shoes.

He came out of his bedroom all dressed in black and sat down for breakfast. Spongebob Squarepants was on television. My mistake. Jack can’t watch TV and eat at the same time. The fork or spoon ends up in suspension, halfway between dish and the child’s mouth. Spongebob and cereal aren’t a good combination.  Hovering in mid-air on auto-pilot, the cereal-filled spoon started to lose altitude and eventually the contents made a crash landing on Jack’s black shirt. Milk on a black shirt isn’t pretty.

Jack marched back to his room and returned a few moments later with a fresh black shirt. TV was turned off and the rest of the cereal was finished without a problem. The orange juice, however, was not going to go down without a fight. Just as Jack lifted the glass to his lips, Gracie bumped into him and half of the juice in the glass splashed across Jack’s shirt.

Jack marched back to his room a second time, all the while muttering about whether there would be another black shirt in the closet. Luckily for him, there was one remaining black shirt just waiting to be picked. I hadn’t realized until this morning how depressing my seven-year-old’s wardrobe was.

With breakfast finished and no other food or beverages permitted anywhere near my son, we finished getting ready for school and dashed into the car. Jack was happy that he could wear his black outfit.

I sat in the audience as my son and his classmates walked to the center of the school gym and began their show. Jack stood proudly, delivered his lines with confidence and smiled as I snapped pictures. As I lowered the camera I noticed something shiny on Jack’s shirt. I strained to get a better look. Then I saw it. Jack had spilled toothpaste on his shirt this morning.

Starting tomorrow, Jack stays in his pajamas until a few seconds before we walk out the door!

Invited to the party

by on Nov 29, 2011 (Comments Off on Invited to the party) Comments

Upon our return to Aswan from Abu Simbel we stayed at a hotel which was on an Island in the middle of the Nile.  That evening we rode the water taxi across the Nile and met Mustafa (our tour guide) for our evening light and sound show at the Philae Temple Complex.  We climbed aboard the van and braved the Aswan traffic.  We were lead to a small fenced in area where we would wait to board yet again another water taxi to the island where the complex was.  As we were waiting in a small grassy courtyard there we began to hear the evening call to prayer.  Muslims pray 5 times a day starting at about 4:00am each morning.  Every Mosque has a loud speaker that broadcasts the prayer.  After a few days in the country, these broadcasts became just another part of the constant noise that is Egypt.  It was fascinating to watch as men in suits began showing up in the little courtyard.  They rolled out several mats.  One man laid his mat out in front of the others and was obviously the leader in this prayer session.  I was intrigued not only in the ritual of the prayer but in the fact that all these men were wearing western style business suits and carried themselves as if they were of some importance.  As we sat in our courtyard feeling self- conscious because we may have been intruding on these men’s prayer time, a truck screeched in.  When I turned around, I saw a small white truck loaded down with young men toting what looked to be AK47’s to this girl’s untrained eye.  Needless to say, since the revolution in January and the dissolution of the police, I was more than just a little bit wary of what was going on.  Mustafa, who had been praying with the other men noticed the armed men and came to tell us what was afoot.  Come to find out, the Minister of Tourism of Egypt was hosting the annual Tourism summit in Aswan this same day.  Their evening entertainment was a special, never seen before, light and sound show at the Temple of Isis followed by a traditional Nubian dinner.  In attendance were the Ministers or Directors of Tourism for all the countries around the world.  The main agenda at this meeting was how to encourage the return of tourism in areas where there had been civil unrest.  In a show of openness to tourists, we were invited to share the sound and light show with the ministers.  Mustafa was thrilled with this turn of events.   He called his friends and colleagues to share his exciting news.  It was a beautiful presentation of the story of the Goddess Isis.  The stone carvings were brought to life through the story told over the load speakers while different patterns of lights drew your attention to the corresponding figures in the stone face.

Mom and Dad waiting for the show

A hundred or so people milled about the Temple complex with us.  There were photographers there snapping pictures and what we were told was a TV camera taking video of the event.  At one point the TV camera panned over the small group of tourists.  They stopped momentarily on Mom and Dad sitting at the base of one of the columns of the Temple.  The smell of a traditional Nubian feast filled the air.  When the show was over, we were not asked to dine with the dignitaries but were swooped away in our water taxis.  It was an honor and a privilege to be included in sharing this special evening.   It was even more exciting to think that some of the Allen family made the Egyptian news and we didn’t have to start a telethon to get anyone out of an Egyptian jail.

Temple of Philea

 

 

Leaving Las Vegas

by on Nov 22, 2011 (Comments Off on Leaving Las Vegas) Comments

I recently had to make a trip to Las Vegas to teach at a conference. While at the conference I was also going to be doing a book signing for my cat behavior books. The conference went well and my book sales were great. At the end of the conference I packed my suitcase and carefully placed the large wad of cash I had received in a zippered compartment in my purse. I was not used to traveling with so much cash and was a bit nervous about it but had no choice.

I shared a cab from my hotel to airport with a young man who was flying back to Los Angeles. It was not until I was in the cab that I realized he brought no luggage with him, smelled of a night of endless beer and looked as if he hadn’t slept.

Once we got to the airport we arrived at his airline first so he handed me some cash, said goodbye and left. Within minutes we arrived at my airline and I handed the cab driver the young man’s money along with my half.

While going to security, I did all the required tasks such as removing my shoes, taking my laptop out of its case, pulling my cosmetic-stuffed, quart-sized plastic bag from my luggage so it could be plainly seen, removing my jacket and then obediently walking through the body scanner. I always pass through security without incident. I have OCD. I follow the rules. Not this time.

As I stepped out of the body scanner fully expecting to pick up my belongings and head to my gate, I was stopped by the TSA agent and told that she had to swipe my hands because they came up “positive” on the scanner. Positive? Positive for what?

She wiped my hands and placed the cloth in another machine where I fully expected the results to come back with nothing more than traces of soap.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,” said the stern looking TSA agent.

“Why?” I asked.

“Your hands are reading positive.”

“Positive for what?” I asked, as I tried to trace back to what I had touched.

“Suspicious substances.” She matter-of-factly replied while taking my arm and leading me to a little room with blackened windows.

I looked back at my stuff on the conveyor belt and worried about my purse that contained all that cash. I saw other TSA agents going through everything. Was it suspicious to have a wad of cash in my purse too? Surely not when returning from Las Vegas. Maybe they’d think I had just been particularly lucky. My mind was racing.

In the room with the blackened windows I was body searched by a TSA agent while another grilled me about where I had been and where I was going. My hands were swiped again. Once again they came back positive for a “suspicious substance.”

After a body search, it was determined that I was not a threat to anyone and I was told that I was free to go. I picked up my belongings, searched my purse to make sure my rubberband-bound money was in there and then scurried to my gate as fast as I could.

As soon as I saw a restroom I darted in and scrubbed my hands to remove whatever traces of “suspicious substances” were left on them. While drying my hands I decided I’d never return to Las Vegas again.

As I settled in my miniature-sized airplane seat and tried to get comfortable, it dawned on me what had actually happened. The cash the young man handed me in the cab must’ve been used as a vehicle for transporting cocaine from a table top to his nostril.

I know I overreacted about not ever returning to Las Vegas but I have vowed never to share a cab again.