I plead unease of the intestinal tract and equilibrium. See, I fought mild-to-worrisome nausea levels all day yesterday. (Bless my friends for putting up with my whiney-butt self all day. Bah.)

The kids arrived home from Arizona yesterday evening. As Wendi had a gig, I became the designated (quicker?) picker upper. I was dropped off at the airport, still concentrating on keeping my insides in, and made my way to the ticket counter to get my “parents pass” (for lack of a better phrase).

See, there are only three types of people allowed through the security checkpoint: Employees of the airport or an airline, ticketed passengers, and parents seeing off their children or picking them up. And that’s only one parent, not both, as we learned when we sent the kids off a month ago. So I got my pass and proceeded to the checkpoint.

The contents of my pockets: Loose change, keys, more keys, wallet, and… oops. My Leatherman Micra.

See, because I wasn’t actually flying anywhere, I didn’t give a second thought to the contents of my pockets. (Not that day, anyway. I’d thought about it the day before. Just not enough to actually take the Micra out of my pocket. Duh.) Had I been traveling I’d have been extra-careful about what I tried to get through the checkpoint. Really.

So the very polite, if not terribly friendly, TSA folks confiscated my Micra and provided a mini-lecture. Thanks, guys.

I did, mind you, get it back after the kids had arrived. But there are two amusing parts to this story:

1) Not one hundred feet from where my Micra sat in the TSA “office” drawer I saw an ad for… Leatherman. I couldn’t help but think, “Does this make sense? Advertising for sharp objects on an airport concourse, right near the security checkpoint?”

2) The ever-so-watchful TSA folks who spotted and snagged my Micra totally failed to notice that my “keychain” consists of an old, small pocketknife…