We officially started our Mommy / Daughter vacation today. I’m so excited. Addison and I have not traveled together (alone … does that make sense) since she was 5. She’s 13 now and I’m just happy that she wants to spend some time just with me.
We started our morning out very early, 3:37am to be exact (as when setting my alarm, it only goes back in time (not forward) so when I was trying for 3:45am – I ended up with 3:37am – like you needed to know this huh?). At least I went to bed around 9ish last night (with a little help from half a trazadone) in preparation for the early morning. My dearest daughter on the other hand decided it would be best to not sleep at all last night. She was annoyingly chipper on the way to the airport, then a little sleep deprived grumpiness kicked in.
Don’t you just love flying? And airports? And airport personnel? Gone are the days when people dressed for flying, all personnel were friendly and happy to see you and courtesy was the norm, not the exception.
We already had our boarding passes but we needed to check in one bag due to the whole toiletry issue with the airlines – thank you terrorists! (and of course fork over $25 to American Airlines for that “service”). We were the only ones near the line, we walked up to the counter and I placed my large red suitcase on the scale and was greeted with “are you checking any bags?” In my head I’m thinking, “oh no, not us. I just thought we’d stop by and say hi and weigh our big bag here for the hell of it.” But of course, I don’t say that. I smiled, said hello and stated that yes, we were indeed needing to check one bag. Our helpful counter person then proceeds to reprimand me for getting to the airport late and basically yelling at me to give her my credit card so that she can TRY to get my bag checked in before the cutoff. Cutoff? I’m there 1 hour and 10 minutes PRIOR to my plane departing. The rule is that all checked baggage must be checked in 1 hour before departure or so I’m told several times by counter lady. I was thinking that the cutoff was 30 minutes before take-off, but even at the hour mark … I can figure out in my little blond head that we have a whole 10 minutes to dilly dally if we so desire. While all of this is going through my mind the counter chic is still ranting that she only has 1 minute to swipe my card. She does and then she stands there staring at the machine. Finally she says, “well, you just made it, you had one minute (I’m still not sure how she is figuring the time, she must have a special clock … although you’d never know it since airports are now like casinos – there aren’t any clocks anywhere).” She then tells me for about the 4th time about how important it is to be at the airport at least 1 hour prior to flights (please revisit the sentence above regarding the clock issue). Oh well, I just smiled and told her thank you for getting our bag in and that I hope she has a wonderful day. I think she was slightly taken aback my politeness. Imagine.
It was during this little ordeal that I realized I had forgotten my watch! Ooh, the irony. I feel completely naked at this point … I guess I’ll just HAVE to buy one when we are shopping .
Once inside the sacred place of the airport (after we cleared security, whew), I did find a somewhat friendly lady working the station outside of our gate. She was able to reassign us different seats on the plane (as when I booked the flight, it only showed 2 MIDDLE seats on different rows-yuck). So YAY.
In our newly found state of travel euphoria, we decided to go get a quick drink at McDonald’s – so off we go. There was a line from hell, and yes, you guessed it – one person working one register. After 10 minutes we get up to the front to ordered our drinks (and of course, they are not running the special, any size drink for $1). We ordered a large diet Dr Pepper and a large iced tea, unsweetened, with equal ( I really wish McDonald’s would start having sweet n low, but that’s another rant). The woman taking our order turns the other woman that is preparing our drinks and said, “she wants 1 equal.” (they have these cool little pump machines behind the counter so they put the sweetener in for you) The woman preparing the drinks responds by asking, “in what?” Humm, do people usually ask for equal in their diet Dr Peppers?
Well, we board the plane (they actually board from the back to the front so we get to board in one of the first groups). We find that we are sitting on the 2 seat side of the aisle right behind the little hub where the flight attendants sit and serve drinks from – SCORE. Tons of leg room – I could actually sit and cross my legs. WOO HOO the day is looking up. The flight attendants were super nice too. I look up the aisle to see where the “alternate us-es” would have been sitting … one of us would have been between two rather large, balding men; the other in between two ladies each of who had a small child in their lap (a baby and a 2 year old). Oh, thank God we got new seats. Dodged that bullet.
We land in Raleigh. Nice airport (yet quite chilly and of course my jacket is in my checked bag). Addison complains the entire time we sit there that she is cold (she’s in shorts). Feeling pretty confident of my recent success of getting new seats on the first leg of the trip, I head up to the guy working our new gate and asked if we could have similar seats again. SCORE. He moves us up to row 3 right behind the bulk overhead thing. I’m sitting on the plane right now typing this (to be uploaded later tonight) with my legs crossed! With that being said, this is the smallest plane that I have ever been on. It has one single seat, an aisle and then two seats. Crazy!
Time to put up all electronics … to be continued.
