[This is another story that shows how Mother Nature steps in to slow us down. This happened about three years ago.]
Susie was doubled over crossing her legs in that “I gotta go pee!” dance and inhaling shrieks of laughter. Not sure whether to be mad at her for laughing at me or join her in her obvious enjoyment of the moment, I paused long enough for her to be able to mutter, “I’m not laughing at you,” then as she squirmed for the bathroom, she added, “Mommie, really I’m not. Wait. Wait,” and she closed the bathroom door. Minutes later, she came out of the bathroom, took one look at me and started convulsing with laughter once again. “I’m not, really mommy, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the situation!” That’s when I couldn’t hold it in any longer and we both writhed with laughter.
The hilarious situation had begun five days before. Susie and I had planned this trip for weeks. We were both looking forward eagerly to meeting Tina’s plan at LAX, not even minding the eight hours we would spend in the car, driving to Los Angeles. We had both missed having Tina in the same time zone, Susie because she missed talking to her big sister on the phone and Instant Messaging with her, and me because I hated not being able to get to her right away if she needed me. I kept thinking that if she got sick or hurt I couldn’t go to her because I have no passport. This had been the most difficult part of having her traveling in Europe for the previous three months. She was finally coming back to American soil and I couldn’t be happier.
The day before we left, I was rushing around getting things together and trying to remember things Tina had asked me to take to her. I was also trying to get used to a new medication schedule for my diabetes, key to this was eating on time. If I didn’t eat on time, I couldn’t take the medication and it would throw off the next dose and the next, so I had to stay on schedule with my meal times and medication times. For dinner on the day before we left, I was preparing a fresh spinach salad for myself. I was planning to add pan baked strips of chicken seasoned with lemon juice. I had left the chicken in the pan and gone to my room to check a couple of things. Realizing that I had to come check on the stove, I hurried back to the kitchen and forgot to put on my flip flops. As I stepped in front of the stove and reached for the pan, I felt a sharp puncture in my left foot. “Darn! I did it again,” I thought to myself, knowing it was either a splinter of some sort or a piece of glass. I shut off the stove and hobbled on one foot to the bathroom to look at my foot. I couldn’t see anything in it. I saw just a trace of blood but no splinter or obvious foreign object. However, when I ran my finger along the surface, I could feel something there. I tried to grasp it and pull it out but it was so small, my eyesight so poor, and the angle of the puncture so difficult, that I couldn’t remove it. I called Susie to come help me but she could not see or feel anything. I waited for the sound of the neighbor getting home and called her as soon as she did. She managed to get something out and clean the wound and bandage it for me. I walked home with no pain or tenderness. In the morning, I felt as though there was something in my foot again, but could not see anything. I figured it was just tender from having had the neighbor poke around in it. There was fresh blood and it appeared a bit swollen so I left it alone and continued with our plans to travel to Los Angeles to meet Tina’s plane.
The next thing that added to the situation was that we expected to leave by 2 in the afternoon, after Susie’s appointment with her teacher. However, her teacher had forgotten to put Susie on the schedule for that day and so Susie ended up waiting an hour to see her. That put us leaving Santa Rosa at 4 PM, which is pretty much the height of south bound rush hour. By the time we got near Petaluma, the sky opened up to dump not cats and dogs on us but cows and horses. When we approached Vallejo, we were greeted by gusting winds. By the time we merged onto 680 my car was being thrown about from one lane to another. Finally, we reached Livermore and the weather cleared. It had taken us two and a half hours to complete the 75 minute drive. Happy to see the sun, I drove on as Susie slept. With each mile I drove closer to Los Angeles, the memory of the stormy start to our trip became foggy.
I drove fast and made up time. At 11 PM, just seven hours after we got started, I drove into the parking lot of the Marriott Courtyard in Burbank. I went to the counter to check in and was greeted by three somber but nice young ladies that informed me that they were over booked and had no rooms left. They had called around but because there were several major conventions in town, the nearest room they had found was at a fly-by-night hole-in-the-wall motel in a not so wonderful part of Pasadena. They would pay for that night at the other motel and then guaranteed they would have our room for us for the second and third nights of our stay. They were also giving us the next night free at the Marriott. Although not happy with the situation, I was tired and knew it would be pretty much useless to argue or hold out for anything else. It was late. We had not eaten. I drove to the motel they sent me to, hanging on to the voucher they had given me for a free night. When we were about half way to the motel, my cell phone rang. It was the Marriott staff telling me that the motel they sent me to was not going to accept the voucher they had given me so I would have to pay and they would reimburse me. We drove in to the parking lot of the motel and found no less than four cars filled with teen-looking people smoking fragrant cigarettes in the parking lot and listening to loud music, laughing and carrying on in their cars. But, because there was no choice, we checked in. The room we were assigned was next to the office so at least it was in a “safer” area of the motel. When I got into the room and unpacked my laptop, I was not able to plug it into the phone jack for dial up internet access. The wall socket was broken. The front desk told me there was another phone in the bathroom. So I was supposed to hook up my laptop in the bathroom, which happened to be a handicapped access bathroom and was very stark and bare, no counters, nothing for me to set my laptop on. I told the front desk I needed a different room so there we are, at almost 1 AM, moving all of our things from one room to another, this one next to the parking lot with the noisy delinquents! (I know. I should have done without internet but I can’t. And after a long day of driving, I needed to wind down via the internet.)
Susie and I were unable to sleep in the cement-like mattresses so we got up at 6:45 the next morning and checked out. After having breakfast, we had no place to go. It was too early for shopping and too early to check back in at the Marriott where they had assured us we would have our reserved room that night. So Susie and I wasted the better part of the morning, driving around and stopping at the 99 Cent Only Store which opened at 9. We hit Starbucks for a while then it was lunch time. Finally it was after one and I went to the hotel to see if we could at least leave out luggage so they would be sure to move it into our room when one was available. By now, Susie had a horrible migraine. We sat in the lobby of the Marriott and went online using their guest computers. I decided to look online for the terminal Tina’s plane was arriving at and found out that her flight was actually coming in an hour and a half early. So we rushed to Target to get Susie “headache medicine” and back to the Marriott where they had rushed the cleaning of one room that had been vacated so we could have an early check in. They had upgraded us to a suite with a nice balcony overlooking the swimming pool.
Getting on to the I-5 southbound to LAX, we hit bumper to bumper traffic. This is one of the many reasons I left Los Angeles, the horrendous traffic. Instead of taking us 25 minutes to get to LAX, it took us well over an hour. We got to the airport and parked about an hour after Tina’s plane landed and were relieved to know that no one from her flight had cleared Customs yet. I was actually able to see her come around that corner after she cleared Customs. I was so happy to see her that I all but forgot about the pain in my foot which still had me limping. An hour later, we were sitting at In-N-Out. Tina and Will, her boyfriend who was also on this school sponsored home-stay program, had seen it from the plane and wanted to go eat there as they had missed good old greasy cheeseburgers while in Europe. I didn’t even mind that we were in a place where I could not really enjoy eating much of the food that is forbidden from my diet. I settled on a small, single hamburger, no cheese, no fries, and a Diet Coke.
At about 5, we got in our cars, there were four groups of us together there, including Will’s parents and brothers, and me and my girls. We split up so each car would have at least two people in it so we could use the car pool lanes. The plan was to go to Will’s house and separate all of their stuff because they had packed everything the best way possible, regardless of who it belonged to. Will’s family lives in Arcadia, which is normally a 40 minute drive from LAX, and that’s with evening commute traffic. But we managed to hit the 110 freeway on a day and time when there were no less than five traffic accidents, including two separate ones in the car pool lane! Two hours and fifteen minutes later, we drove up to Will’s house and were surprised to see we were the first ones there. The other three cars were way behind us some place. We went in and waited. Will’s dad had all the luggage in his car. Two hours later we tried to leave. I got in my car and Tina got in her car which had been stored at Will’s family’s house for the three months. They were supposed to drive it so the battery would not die. They didn’t. So at ten o’clock, exhausted from the ordeals we had each lived through over the past 24 hours, we had to deal with Tina’s car not starting. We got it going and got two miles away before it died on her at an intersection. We got Will and his brother to come get it and send them home to their house with the “sick car,” telling them we would go back with a tow truck the next day. We headed back for our hotel in Burbank with Tina crying in the back seat of the car because she was upset about her car, and because she was on London time and had been up for more than 26 hours straight, not being able to sleep on the long flight. We were all too happy to drive to the hotel, find the only parking space in the lot and go up to our room where we ordered room service, talked, and relaxed for a little bit before trying to sleep.
The next day was spent waiting for the tow truck to pick up Tina’s car. It took til almost 2 PM. Then we did some shopping for Tina who came back home needing all sorts of things. By the time we finished, it was late and we headed for the hotel, ordered room service again and talked. And slept. And my foot was, by now, throbbing. Overnight, one of my contact lenses fell out. By morning, of course, it had dried out. When I went to get my spare pair, I didn’t have one. I had changed suitcases and forgotten to transfer all of the regular items I travel with. This was bad. I cannot see without my contact lenses. I ended up having to take out the other lens because one lens is worse than none. I wore my very weak reader glasses til I could get stronger ones but I could not drive with the weak ones. In fact, the ones I had were barely strong enough to allow me to walk around the hotel room without having to hang on to the walls.
Saturday was, again, spent running around, with Tina driving us and doing everything that the girls needed to do.I stayed at the hotel as much as possible because of the no glasses situation. Tina needed to get back into her apartment and she needed to get some of her things in. By then I was also having some very bad hypoglycemic reactions because of the new medication. That was not fun. The girls had to take care of me. I had Tina go to Target and get me the strongest pair of reader glasses she could find so that I could function. Target did not have any reader glasses at all. So she had to go to four or five places til she found me some +3.50 glasses. Those worked well enough for me to function and at least I would be able to drive home in the morning.
On Sunday we checked out of the hotel but instead of heading home, I had Tina take me to Urgent Care. I knew I would not make it all the way home with my foot throbbing and because I have no doctor in Santa Rosa, nor do I know anyone in town that can drive me to the doctor, I would not see anyone at home and I knew the foot was probably infected. It was black and swollen around the puncture wound. So four hours and $700 later, the girls and I left Urgent Care after having surgery on my foot. And of course, I couldn’t travel so I had to have Tina drive me back to the same hotel in Burbank where we had just checked out that morning, and check back in for the night. (Later this would get infected and I would end up on an anti-biotic which I ended up being allergic to, requiring me to get a different anti-biotic.)
I agreed with Susie. It was a ridiculous situation. Tina agreed and perhaps she began to appreciate what it had meant for us to have her back home.
The things we go through in the name of love for our children!
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Hahahaha! I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing at the situation, I swear! What an ordeal…
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What a time!
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After you finished laughing, did you pinch her?
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