The Flight

I cannot even begin to describe the craziness that our life has been the past two weeks. But I’m going to try. Because I’m like that.

About a week and a half ago, we went to our new town to find a house, get some things in order, etc. But we had to get there first. It was supposed to be a simple flight. Just a straight shot, no connections. Honor was going with us, Caedmon was staying at Mom’s. Simple enough.

Our flight was scheduled for 3:50pm. It was going to be awesome. Plenty of time to pack and get things done around the house, right? Riiiiight.

I usually pack for a trip the night before. And I did get all of Honor’s stuff ready except for last minute things. Caedmon was packed and ready to go. But I didn’t even start on mine or Husband’s stuff. And I still couldn’t get to bed before midnight.

So Friday morning, I got up and we started tackling things. Caedmon and I took Oz to the kennel while Husband mowed the lawn. When I got back, we realized that since our family had grown, our luggage had not. And we were in need of more room for stuff. So Husband went off in search of a piece of luggage. Of course, I had to stop and feed Honor a couple of times. Caedmon had to eat lunch. We had to leave for Mom’s house by 1pm.

The entire time I was running around the house trying to get things done and ready, I was hating it. Hating feeling so rushed. Hating knowing that the house wouldn’t be clean when we got home because I didn’t have time to clean it up before we left. Hating that sinking feeling that I knew we were forgetting something, but I could not for the life of me think of anything else we needed to take. It was also our first time to fly with an infant, so I was a bit nervous about that whole situation and how it would turn out. Mostly for other people on the plane.

Poor Caedmon. He so wanted to be a good helper. And he knew he was going to be away from us for a few days. But he was a high maintenance kid that day. My boy who is easy going and observant was tightly wound and didn’t have the attention span of a gnat. I hated it, and it made it so much harder to accomplish anything.

Since I was waiting on new luggage to finish packing, I had to wait until Husband got back from his epic luggage search trip. He did, and I basically started shoving stuff in.

We were waiting on the movers’ contract to be emailed to us so we could get our moving date secured. It was supposed to be to us by 9:30am. And it finally arrived about 12:30pm. Which would’ve been plenty of time to print, sign, scan and send it back. Except that my scanner has decided that it will not save things properly. And if I didn’t get the date secured, it would be two more weeks before the movers could come. After they’re already having to come a week later than we wanted.

In the meantime, we got a notice from the airline that our flight had been delayed. But when I called to check on it, they told us to go ahead and go to the airport and be there for the regularly scheduled flight time because it could change. That, on top of everything else was enough to make a normal man crazy. It’s a good thing I’m not normal. Or a man.

And? As we were getting ready to walk out the door, Honor had a blowout. A have-to-strip-my-duvet-off-my-bed and she-needs-a-head-to-toe-bath blowout. So the duvet got stripped off the comforter, but Honor just got a wet wipe bath, poor thing. I threw her outfit in to soak as we left, and sadly, it’s still stained. Apparently the 5-day soak didn’t do any good.

We finally left the house – 10 minutes late. And we had to stop at Husband’s office to fax the contracts. We were ok because I’d built some cushion into our time.  But the fax machine wasn’t working right. Or something. The fax would not go thru. Christy, bless her, copied the contract and offered to re-send it later. She saved my sanity because I was about. to. lose. it. She went above and beyond and even called the moving company to let them know the fax wasn’t working properly. We got to keep our spot and it was wonderful knowing she was looking out for us.

We got to Mom’s and got Caedmon settled. We didn’t get to spend as much time there with him as we’d planned, so we said our goodbyes and went on to the airport, wondering if our flight was really delayed or not. We got checked in and made it through security with Honor just fine. (Although when I held her out away from me to walk through the metal detector, the TSA guy was all, “You don’t have to do that.” And when I told him that the TSA website said I do, he said he was glad someone had read the website. Obviously he hadn’t.)

And we went to sit and wait. And we waited. And waited. Our original flight time was 3:50. It was delayed until 5:15, moved back to 3:50, then 3:53, then 8pm. And then? It was canceled. So I went to the ticket desk. We were promptly re-booked on the 6:12 flight that was delayed until 8:09. Which then got delayed until 9:15.

We were not the only ones waiting for that flight. Because our airport is undergoing some renovations, almost all flights are going in and out of just a few gates. And that means that everyone has to be crammed into one little spot. Just about every person on every flight in and out over the previous six hours had passed in front of us. (With their germs, as I was reminded by Husband.)

And after sitting in the airport for several hours, I wanted to stand and applaud when the gate agent announced that our plane was on its way and we would be leaving just as soon as they could get everyone off and get it ready to go. We were ready. Everyone was. I was tired and worn out. And extremely thankful that Caedmon was enjoying himself at Mom & Dad’s.

We got seated on the plane and I was excited because we were on the front row. Extra leg room, right? Except that Husband’s seat was the only one on the entire airplane that had a black box sticking out in front of his feet, giving him less leg room than in a normal seat. At that point, all we could do was laugh.

We finally got to our destination airport about midnight. Honor was a trooper. She hardly made a peep on the plane. And she slept peacefully as I carried her in a sling through the airport to our rental car. We ended up finally getting in bed about 2am.

It was a long day. Glad we did it. Glad it’s over.