The day that (almost) never ended

My GOD I am tired. What a crazy and emotional week I had topped off with the worst travel day in human history (ok, a wee bit dramatic, but in my (personal) human history). I sometimes think God likes to throw in a little extra something to see how much you can take when you smugly decide *this* is the worst it can get. Oh, no. Be humble and thankful for the relatively pitiful level of misery you have on your plate at any given time because It Can Always Get Worse.

So, the trip to Florida was as good as it could have been. The flight down had us counting our blessings for this wonderful, dear little creature who is our fabulous child. She read books on the plane. She spent 45 minutes transferring stickers from the top of one of her hands to the other, and onto our hands (I highly recommend this or band aids around their fingers for some quality busy time). She colored on paper I taped to the tray table. She took walks up and down the aisle smiling that beatific glowing joyous grin and waving and cheerfully exclaiming "HI!" to everyone she made eye contact with. We humbly accepted the sea of compliments, smiling and nodding when people said, "wow, what a happy little baby!", "she is SO well behaved!", "what a precious angel"! They might as well been saying, "Thanks for DOING YOUR JOB and keeping that kid quiet, so I could peacefully enjoy my [insert] nap/crossword puzzle/Dan Brown novel/Wall Street Journal/saccharine poorly written love story about sexy beefy pirates and beautiful virgin captives". Bill and Suzi met us at the airport to take Bug down to The Farm where we would be staying that night while Sean and I went over to Dawn and Jim's to visit with the family. Even though Gillian refused to take a bottle or sleep on the plane (and she got up at 5:30 in the morning, and by the time we made the hand-off it was noon), and Bill and Suzi decided to stop by her Great-grandmother's house, where she also did not sleep, and was still a delight. Dancing and clapping and talking and laughing and singing. Apparently, up till she got to sleep at 2:30 (8 hours after she woke up), she was the model child.

Visiting with the family was really nice. The service was beautiful, heartfelt and sweet, and we cried and we laughed. It was very healing and therapeutic...we watched old home videos and their wedding tapes (which officially memorializes the hair and fashion blackouts of the mid 1980s, including my own. Sean at one point exclaimed, "Jesus, how many mullets were at this wedding?!?" (just a note: I got rid of my mullet in 1986). We told stories of Jim in his heyday. Some were silly and surficial, and some were intense and goosebump instilling. Everything was good. Bill and Suzi came to Jax to support me, Dawn, and Amber. That was unexpected, but still very welcome. The also enjoyed a full day with Gillian, who is clearly the joy of their lives. And thankfully, she was well behaved during that visit. I sometimes think that they think we are delusional when we say she is being a little terror, since she is always a perfect little angel around them. She is obviously savvy enough to know that this relationship (with grandparents) is worth keeping as pristine as mountain snow. And she just adores them to death. When I handed her off at the airport to two people she hasn't seen in 7 weeks, she couldn't be bothered to even kiss me good-bye. She was too busy singing to Nonni. So much for separation anxiety.

Sleep was rough for Gillian on this trip. It just wasn't possible to protect it like we normally do with where we stayed and our schedule. She went to bed late and woke up early, and he bed was in our room. The first night she went down at 9:30 eastern (a not unreasonable 8:30 central) but woke up at 4 am. She proceeded to stay up for three hours before going back to sleep. So, we got about 5 hours of sleep. When you cry a lot, you need to sleep to get rid of the sandpaper eyes you will inevitably get, but that didn't happen that night (the night before the service). The bright side: I was awake for the sunrise and went out and wrote my little piece for Jim on the dock. That is a really great place for soul-searching, thinking, reminiscing, or whatever other deep thing you feel inclined to do. The next night, she was up until 11 pm and woke up at 6:45 and refused to go back to sleep. AND THAT WAS THE TRAVEL DAY FROM THE DEEPEST BOWEL OF HELL.

Anyway, after a simply beautiful trip, we were scheduled to return home yesterday. We were running a little late, but thanks to Sean's Lead Foot, we made it to the airport with 55 minutes to spare before the flight left. We returned the car and ran to the bag check to find we have missed the bag check cutoff of 45 minutes by THIRTY SECONDS. But, John from United was a generally nice person and gave us a break. Whew. We checked the care seat and two other bags, and more leisurely strolled to the easy security line, bought some $8 bottles of water, and continued on to the gate area. We got there at 11:40, 30 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave. They should have been boarding. They weren't.

I didn't freak right away. I went up to get a gate check receipt for our umbrella stroller (a $15 wonder if there ever was one-we have gotten ever penny's worth over the past 8 months), and heard the pilot getting off the plane say something about "a wheel's up time of 3:17". Huh? Oh yes, a few minutes later they came on the loud speaker and said the flight was delayed THREE HOURS because of weather into Chicago (travelling in and out of here is a serious pain), we would board at 2:45...but we would get home, and Gillian would get back to her usual sleep schedule, at least. The reason? more SNOW. We have had an unbelieveable amount of snow this year. I am sick of it, especially after a visit to Florida. So, I left Sean to have some alone time with the airport wifi, and I took Gillian to Chili's where I paid $5 for a kid's plate of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, deciding to hoard the last jar of baby food/last of the oatmeal Just In Case (and thank God I did that because there was an "In Case" this time). I ate a relatively decent salad, and was sufficiently happy with our food and Gillian's behavior. We took our time. We returned to the waiting area where there had been no update in an hour and a half. We let Gillian walk around. She was practicing some mad balance skillz walking all over the place. She flirted with everyone, and at one point walked off with a young Sailor's hat on and his container of Tic Tacs, shaking them like a maramba in her Mardi Gras beads. Everyone sighed and was charmed by her sweetness, her charisma, and her joy when she passed by or stopped for a visit. I walked around with her for a while, and then I have a turn on the computer while Sean entertained her and followed her around the gate area, where she held court with her new admirers.

Around 3, 15 minutes past when they said we were going to board, we were told that O'Hare was closed for snow removal, and that nothing was going in or out. There would be another update in "an hour or so". I kept checking out http://www.faa.gov/ to see what the deal was (real time) because it made me feel more in control of the situation. At least my frustration could be founded on up-to-the-minute truth. Thankfully, Gillian fell asleep in her $15 stroller as Sean wheeled her around Concourse B hoping she might go to sleep eventually. He brought her back and we leaned her up against the wall, wheels locked, to try to avoid a pinched nerve in her neck from being slouched over. At 4:30, another update: YOUR FLIGHT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. Oh, and that flight that was supposed to leave at 5:15 that you were thinking you could get on? DELAYED TILL 7:30. We freaked. What should we do? Spend another three hours waiting to leave and not being guaranteed we could? Try to retrieve the carseat and get to a hotel and start over the next day? Initially, I decided to get on the 7 am flight the next day and had one guy go find our carseat. Then after talking to Sean and his mother (on the phone) we decided to get on the 7:30 flight. We gate-checked the carseat. We went back to good Ol' Chili's for an overpriced dinner where I had a massive beer that I had clearly earned. I was emotionally wiped out. Eyeballs like pockets from the subsaharan desert, and desperately in need of a nap. But we decided to rally. We went and had terrible service and decent food at Chili's and it cost us a fortune (Gillian had that last jar of baby food I had kept mixed with dry oatmeal and sucked it down). Gillian was good but hit the wall about 10 minutes into our 30 minute wait for the check. Sean took her and walked and I waited. And waited.

We headed back to the waiting area, exchanging smart-assed commentary with other passengers from the earlier flight about our experiences, and Gillian resumed her charm fest, walking around like she had been walking for years (except the flailing arms and semi-stiff legs) for the last hour and a half of our wait. Around 7:30 we boarded. We had decent seats at least, and had a whole row to ourselves. Then we were told there was a tornado warning in Jacksonville, and "[we] hope we can get out of here before the rain starts". We sat on the runway for a half hour. My bag of tricks was spent in the previous 9 hours in Jacksonville Airport, and Gillian couldn't walk the aisle. She screamed. She arched her back, and cried real tears, and howled and choked in protest. She was beyond exhausted, and wasn't interested in any fixes we tried. She wanted to WALK, dammit. We tried to shush her, and rocked her, and tried to give her a bottle (which she swatted away like a gnat). We took off around 8 pm, at last, rain, tornadoes, and snowstorms all. It was a perfectly miserable trip home. Gillian was so overtired that she could NOT sleep. We had about an hour of quiet/charmingness (her flirting with neighbors through the seats) and an hour and a half of blood-curdling screechy crying which shouted "TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN-I AM ABSOLUTELY UTTERLY EXHAUSTED AND CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF ONE MORE SECOND-THIS IS MY FRUSTRATED CRY FOR SLEEP". It was very very long trip. Most of the trip we couldn't move around the cabin because of turbulence. That was unacceptable to Gillian. At one point, to keep her from trying to scoot under Sean's legs for escape, which she had been trying for 20 minutes, hence the screaming and thrashing about, and sat her in my lap facing outward (a tip from Megan) and let her thrash and cry. I cried too. I was way too wrecked for this challenge, and felt terrible for what we had chosen to do to this poor little baby. But, thankfully, we landed. Gillian fell asleep 5 minutes before we landed. And her reputation as The Most Well-Behaved Toddler That Ever Flew the Friendly Skies went down in a blazing inferno.

That wasn't the end, though. Baggage claim took somewhere around 50 minutes. It took the train 20 minutes to come and another 25 to get us to remote parking. We got home at 12:30 am, about FIFTEEN HOURS after we arrived that the airport. We put Gillian to bed and crashed out. Needless to say, we have both napped all day. In our own beds.