And Rob still hasn’t opened any presents. He gave me one of mine Thursday before I left. I opened all of mine from my mom, etc., on Christmas Eve. I was supposed to get home last night in time to open presents with Rob here.
Nightmare air travel stories are so trite, aren’t they?
To attempt to sum up: My flight from Burbank was mega-delayed, so the airline shuttled passengers to LAX for a flight that would get in only an hour later than the scheduled arrival time. This is not the first time this has happened to me, and wouldn’t even be worth mentioning (except in a phone conversation to my mother on the way to LAX, so she’d know what airplane I was on, should anything dire happen).
However, the twist here is that the lady at the counter who rebooked me asked if I wanted to share a taxi with the dotty lady standing beside me. I said sure. They gave me the taxi voucher. I went to retrieve my 50-pound suitcase and Dotty (let’s call her) went to the ladies room. She was supposed to meet me at the ticket counter, but did not arrive in what I deemed to be a reasonable amount of time.
So you know what I did? I ditched her! Not before I walked back in the direction of the gate and glanced in the ladies room, of course, but time was of the essence here. I had no idea how long it was going to take to check my bag and get through security at LAX.
I felt bad about it until I saw Dotty on the plane, and then averted my eyes. What’s the harm? She made it. No idea how much it cost her in stress and tears, but whatever, she made the flight.
Alas, karma is a bitch.
Upon arrival in my home port, I again retrieved 50-pound suitcase, went to the courtesy shuttle curb and called the place where I had parked my car. And called and called and called. It rang and rang and rang. I called Rob, who found an 800 number, called it, yelled at the jerkhole who decided to stop answering the front desk phone at 8 p.m. on Christmas, and summoned the shuttle.
For some reason, even though I kept my zen all day, passing through security lines, getting rerouted, being told to wait at the wrong luggage carousel (They always do this! Why do they post one carousel number only to change it at the last minute? Why not wait til the luggage is coming out, folks?) … through all that, I’m Susie Seasoned Traveler. But standing for 40 minutes on the curb, with my hands freezing, so eager to get home to Rob and the dog, was more than I could take.
Fortunately, I had a two-hour drive to regain my calm. About 10 miles from our house, the rain turned white and coated the freeway. Snow on Christmas night! Could anything be more beautiful? It came at my windshield like stars in the windshield of the Millenium Falcon in warp speed.
I had to slow down substantially, but even this I enjoyed. I wondered why Rob hadn’t mentioned that it was snowing when I talked to him 87 times from the curb at the aiport. Maybe it hadn’t started yet.
Or maybe it never did, because about a mile from our house, it was raining again. There was still a fair amount of snow and ice on my car though, so I planned to show that to Rob when he came outside to carry in my 50-pound suitcase.
Which I’m sure he would have done if he were awake.
At least Isis was happy to see me.
Think I’ll go bake some cookies, light some candles and turn on some Christmas music so it’s festive around here when Rob gets home from work.
Kari Neumeyer 