ok, so the airport wasn't all that bad, until we had to come home and got delayed due to lightning and some stupid paris hilton wannabe cut in line and then tried to steal a cab from the rest of us patiently waiting in line at midway at 1 am. florida was hot and sticky and we ate too much and hugged too much and debated too much between different generations with different frames of mind and comfort levels and ideas of what is "right". and we went on the Diva Duck and while looking at d-list celebrity homes i received the phone call notifying me of my Aunt Ve's passing. it was a bizarre experience, learning such news while a tour guide on a bus in the intercoastal waterway danced to ricky martin and told us about how the guy who invented slim fast lived next door to cilene dion's mother. so i'm back to the airport (sans gels and liquids) tomorrow to go to austin to sort through thomas kinkade paintings and other precious belongings in my late Aunt Ve's condo. i think i'm through being upset and am mostly just sad and a little bit lost about the whole thing, not having seen my Aunt Ve in any state of distress over her condition as her health failed and her mind wandered. i remember her smiling and watching us play balderdash at our family reunion last october, before she found out she was going to die of cancer a month before her 81st birthday. we're not having a funeral, but a memorial next month, on the anniversary of her birth in 1925. we will celebrate her life, mourn our loss, then we'll spend the weekend together, as a family, one woman less and two babies more than last year.