Travel out

I am about to conclude that travelling and PMS are a bad combination. In fact, I believe I have proved to myself (and hopefully not anyone else) that PMS and coexisting with anyone else is a bad combination. I am sitting waiting in BWI airport. I think I can conclude that I hate it. It is a totally unfair judgment, I admit, but my day already at 4:45am is completely crappy. Shall I start at the beginning so you can feel either: a) annoyed with me for sharing stupid problems in excruciating detail or b) uplifted since your life is so much more together and lacking in day-to-day problems.

This day was destined to be bad, really. I putzed around last night, aimlessly killing time as I failed to focus on the important task of getting sleep after Samantha left around 7pm. Finally around 1 am, I drifted off, preparing to wake up in less than 2 hours. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my alarm waking me up, it was the shuttle calling to tell me that they were going to be 35 minutes early. Pulling out my great eloquence (ha!) I told the driver that he would have to give me at least 10 extra minutes to be ready, definitely underestimating, give that I wasn’t even dressed, let alone double-check packed and ready to walk out the door. I pulled it out, and took great satisfaction in not answering the two calls the driver made as I walked out the door, listening to my cell phone ring out Carrie Underwood’s Before he cheats. Anger girl-done-wrong music notwithstanding, I bumbled out the door into the cold with my bags. The driver got out to open the back for me and I tried to put the handle of my broken check bag down enough to fit easily. The telescoping handle, ridden with problems for the last trip as well, broke in two completely. The Eddie Bauer logo and nicely proportioned interior lining notwithstanding, the bag is piece of crap. I have had another, cheaper bag longer and the handle still works fine. The seams are coming apart from overlarge packing and criminally negligent baggage handlers, but the bag still rates better in my book. I guess I will throw away the nice looking one after this trip and just duck tape the old one.

I reached BWI at 3:55am, almost 2 ½ hours early, which didn’t set me up for enjoyment. Nor did the fact that the entire Continental Airlines counter was completely unmanned until 4:15am. Nor the closed security checkpoint. It looked completely desolate until they rolled up the gate, and there were 25 or so TSA folks, laughing, joking, generally not paying attention to the people going through except when they failed to understand requests over the hubbub. It took close to 5 minutes for the guy in front of me to understand that his laptop had to be completely out of its case because the woman kept telling him and then calling to her friend across the room about something or other. Have fun at your job, that is wonderful. But pay attention and don’t be so damn cheerful at 4am. Or if you must, do it at less than a yell from everybody, please?

So now I sit, waiting, until very recently completely by myself. Thankfully an “Irish” food place is open by the gate selling egg sandwiches. At least my stomach is not completely eating a hole in itself. Which is good because I am going to be getting on a small, extremely loud puddle-jumper to Newark in 35 minutes (hopefully, anyway). I hate flying cheap flights. They are generally completely bizarre conformations, sending you on little planes to nowhere, when you know the same company runs a completely respectable more convenient flight. From somewhere way more normal. Like DCA. Which is not out in the middle of nowhere.

Mostly I am tired and peevish. Which is not the way I really want to be going into a joyful family weekend.