What a month I’ve had today, er, yesterday.
I helped Abby start her nebulizer treatment, which by all reports has been a miracle worker and she’s off to school today, and headed out to the car at 8 yesterday morning. We got to the airport, paid a king’s ransom to check our 4 bags and got to our gate in record time. At that point, Jan called to tell us our flight was canceled and we’d been re-booked on a 12:30 flight on a different airline. In a different terminal. Of course.
Mom and I scrambled to find a gate agent (not Gate 8, as the helpful man who didn’t speak-a de Inglis kept trying to direct us) and the sweetest, gayest gate agent in all of New York booked us immediately on the 9:20 flight on our same airline which was boarding RIGHT NOW. Pat and Pam grabbed all the bags, coats and stuff and came down to the gate, where we walked onto our empty plane took our seats, pushed back from the gate and were pleasantly told by the captain we were number forty for takeoff.
At that point, I promptly passed out. See, I’d been up until 3:30 the night before because I think Dunkin Donuts spiked my coffee, or at least gave me regular instead of decaf. I was very efficient from 11:30 until 3:00, though.
By some miracle of air travel, we still landed in Chicago “on-time” for the flight and were therefore on the ground a few hours ahead of our original schedule. However only one of those 4 bags actually landed at O’Hare. And none of them was mine.
In MY missing bag? My camera. My clothes. My toiletries. My work to do yesterday during my “free time”. And the questionnaires we needed to take to Fedex Office to copy. Because this client? Hadn’t given us final approval.
We forged ahead to Fedex with my back-up jumpstick in hand, printed new originals and got to printing. THEN, after printing just over a ream of paper, we got the call that she had some last-second changes! So we held off for a while, figured out what was okay to print and then I went to my rental car (a Suburban. My Prius could fit inside this car. It’s friggin’ HUUUUUUGE!) and let out a primal scream. Brian quickly called me to ask what was wrong. I thought it was great that we are so in-tune with each other that he could feel my soul’s pain from thousands of miles away.
Turns out I butt-dialed hime right before screaming and when I didn’t answer him, he hung up and called back.
Our luggage did eventually arrive, but I went and bought a whole outfit for mom and a new top and scarf for me, just in case. When the bellman knocked at 1:30 am to drop off the bags, I was really happy to have my stuff back. I hope he knows that, even though I may or may not have flipped him the bird.
