Summer Vacation- Pt 1: Getting to Texas

I need to start spillin' about my summer vacation before I forget what happened!

First of all, you need to know that I flew to Texas to prepare for and be in my cousin Jessica's wedding. My husband K drove down the day before the wedding, enjoyed the wedding, then we had a road trip home. I will get into the details of the road trip as I type about those days.

So my flight itinerary was to leave Iowa at 9:30 am, quick stop in Chicago, quickly stop in Houston and be in Dallas by 5 pm. Sort of a long day of travel, but I was excited to be there in time for dinner, slip on my PJs and laze it up with my cousin. Though we had last minute things to do, I mostly wanted to make sure she got a lot of laziness in... we're pretty good at that when we're together.

In reality, I got from Iowa to Chicago just fine. My flight to Chicago left twenty minutes late... Meaning I just missed my flight to Houston. MAYBE if Houston's airport was the size of downtown Iowa City, I would have been good. But no. I had to do one of those fast walks where your hips sway all fast and your elbows and shoulders move all funny all the way to an escalator that took me to some tunnel that told me to wait for five minutes for a train that took ten minutes to take me to terminals B, C, the Marriot, D and finally terminal E when I started to wonder if we were going to make pit stops and grab lunch. That took me out of the airport so I had to go through security where the guard thought it'd be great to try to flirt with me for five minutes while I basically shouted back at his flirtatious advances, "NO, I'M NOT 22! YES I LOOK YOUNG!! NO, MY TICKET DOESN'T SAY JOHANNESBURG!" until he'd let me leave and by the time I found my gate, the attendants sadly shook their heads and said plane was long gone.

I called Jessica before I even got to my gate, because I knew the plane would be gone and that she'd be on her way to pick me up. I was incredibly grumpy because I had not slept well, but she always makes me smile. So she fixed my mood right up. I easily got a ticket and discovered that I wouldn't be leaving for Dallas until 6:30 and by Jessica's side until 8. I emotionally ate an overpriced sandwich, sat at my gate, grumbled about how my iPod wasn't recieving a wifi signal and shut my eyes by 4 o'clock.

I was just half asleep, sort of dreaming, but aware of my surroundings. I heard a boarding call for a flight to Orange County and kept my eyes closed while I heard people board. After about five calls for boarding, a man lightly touched my arm to ask if I was going to Orange County. I sighed, smiled and said no, but genuinely thanked him for asking. In my half sleep, I was grumpily thinking, "Are these people just going to let me sleep and possibly miss my flight?? Or do I just look that together, like I totally know what I'm doing??"

He felt bad for waking me up, but I genuinely thanked him again, because, seriously, what if it was my flight? And he said that he had slept through his boarding call before and didn't want that to happen. Not me. I just had an unexpected three hours to kill.

I closed my eyes and suddenly a family appeared next to me. It felt like there were hundreds of them. Things multiply and are way exaggerated when you are sleepy and grumpy. These dozens of siblings were speaking a combination of Spanish and English. At first, I thought it was pretty cool. In one sentence they would say, "Do you want a..." and then... "burrito."

Ha, kidding.

No, in one conversation they would say something like, "Tiene perro! Y el perro es so cute and fluffy!" But it got old fast, because I couldn't tell if I was awake or dreaming and they were cramping my sprawling space. So I moved to a quieter space. I had four empty seats around me. I quickly got annoyed, however, because I could feels eyes on me. They were the eyes of a dude sitting with his legs pointing towards me, chomping on food, and talking endlessly on his phone. And by phone, I mean blue tooth. You know, the phone that's hidden in his ear, so it looked like he was talking to himself. Only, in his annoying slang and with his legs pointed towards me, it looked like he was shouting at me for the rest of our stay at the gate.

I was not having fun. I wanted to be with Jessica.

The flight prepared me for my stay in Texas. I sat next to a couple with a very strong accent. My family has a cute little twang. I felt like these folks were planted to sit by me just because I was easily annoyed on this day. The man had to complain about everything and his wife had to whine back.
"Whah, dontchoo caawl yer day-ad?" he'd bark
"Cuz Ah dun feel lahk ee-it." She'd whine in a cartoony voice.
"But I just wanted quiet neighbors so I could sleep," I'd bark in my head.

FINALLY, after half of a can of soda --remember the days when you got two full cans of soda AND a snack??-- we landed in Dallas. I wanted to fall to the ground and kiss it. I was going to see my Jessica in just minutes! Get to her house in an hour, put on our jammies, talk for a while and.... SLEEP!!

Fortunately, despite my problems with the plane, my luggage was fine. I was bursting with excitement, all grumpiness forgotten (until now), as soon as I saw Jessica. We fell into our usually goofy ways as we grabbed my luggage (I nearly left with someone else's... then didn't believe that mine belonged to me even though my name was on the flight sticker, so I opened it, baring my unmentionables to the world) and got to her car.

We happily headed to her house... realizing too late that we were heading an hour out of her way, so we actually got there TWO hours after I landed. But at least we got there. This just gave us an extra hour to jam to New Kids on the Block.

Then I was greeted at the door by her charming now-husband with a hunting gun in his hands.