me and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

a few weeks ago mary emailed me and told me that she was planning to come stateside for a visit with her familia. she had a few options for flights connecting through philly and one of the options gave her a 5 hour layover at PHL. she asked if i would be able to come fetch her and hang out for a bit? OF COURSE!! i was SO excited. we made plans to go out and have some mexican food and perhaps a margarita (or 2) and a long overdue chat in the face to face.

on that fateful day, which just so happened to be yesterday, i woke up with a splitting headache. got a text massage from mary that her flight was delayed leaving london, which meant that our scheduled 5 hour fun filled philly layover was going to be cut short, if not eclipsed. i was asked to be a half hour early for "work" and i was late leaving the house because my wonderful husband had trouble getting the car off the solid sheet of ice that it was on. on my way to "work" i got stuck in painfully slow traffic due to a stalled vehicle and road work. i arrive late (but still early) to learn some very sad news. i then spent 5 hours obsessive compulsively designing a site map, and equally obsessively checking the flight status to see when the flight that left 3 hours late was due in. us airways never updated their website information or the recorded phone flight information, so i headed to the airport at the originally scheduled time (even though i knew that when i got there, i would probably be 3 hours early). after i threw my bag into my car i realized that the lid for my thermos was open and leaking coffee all over the inside of my bag, all down my fancy winter coat, and now all inside my car. i had nothing to clean up with, no napkins, no paper towels, no nothing. i decided that i would just leave everything coffee soaked until i could stop somewhere and clean it up. i realized once i pulled out of the parking lot, that i had no idea how to get to the airport from the office. i had some vague idea of the general direction, so i just kept driving till i found the freeway (which i eventually found by the most circuitous route possible). i arrived at the airport at about 3:30 (the original flight arrival time was 3:10) and the arrivals screen said that the delayed flight was now due at 5:45.

now what do i do?

i dragged my coffee soaked ass back to the car after calling jak (who laughed at me). he suggested that i go to whole foods and buy a picnic so that mary and i wouldn't have to eat greasy airport food. at that point i was still holding out some deluded hope that we might still get to go out for dinner, so i decided to clock the travel time from the airport to el vez (which was where we were planning on going), i knew where el vez was, but i wasn't entirely sure how to get there in a car, so i figured a trial run was probably a good idea. it took about 20 minutes to get the the restaurant from the aiport. at that point i figured that tacos y margaritas was not in the cards (her connecting flight was at 8:10). i went to whole foods and did some shopping: smoked trout, bagels, fake cream cheese, real cream cheese, green olives, spanish sheep's milk cheese, crackers, raspberries, apples, potato chips, pomegranate juice, water, and chocolate. i also swung by the atm since i realized that i had no cash on me when i had to pay for the airport parking (i was so glad to learn that they accept plastic). i attempted to clean the spilled coffee out of my car, and my bag with the stack of napkins i acquired at the whole food and by tthe time i was done with that it was time to head back to the airport. jak had instructed me that i should follow lombard back to I-76 which would take me to the airport. this worked fine, until i got to where i needed to choose an on ramp. they seemed like the were labeled wrong or i was thinking about them wrong, it seemed like i wanted to go right but that was labeled west, and i thought i wanted to go east, but that was on the left which seemed like the wrong direction, and i was utterly confused so i made the right turn which seemed like it should be the right direction, and once i was on 76, it even looked like the right way & so i just kept driving, until i realized i was halfway home!!!! which is the WRONG direction. i turned around.

i arrived at the airport just in time. i waited in the "international arrivals hall" looking for that familiar face. i noticed while i was waiting that there was another direction for people who had connecting flights to go in that led them off and away into another wing of the airport. i started to get worried, i didn't know if she had checked any luggage or not, i wasn't sure if she would see me, i didn't know where those people were being directed to, no one could answer my questions, i was delirious and hungry and disoriented, i ran all around trying to figure it out before finally settling on just staying in one place and waiting. and then i saw mary on the other side of the glass. yay!! we had maybe 45 minutes before her next flight started boarding. we went and got the groceries from the car & found a place to sit (on the floor) and ate our picnic and chatted.

it was very sad when she had to go. i think the last time we saw each other was 3-4 years ago. after all the anticipation and excitement that we would get to have a mini adventure, it was a big disappointment to have our 5 hours compressed to 45 minutes sitting on the floor. very sad. i'm glad i got to see her at all, but it was a big sucky bummer that we didn't have more time. i actually cried on the way home. it had been such an anxiety filled stressful day that i need some kind of release.

i miss you chica.