Sleeping Beauty (and The Other Woman)

On Saturday morning we put on our ruby red slippers, clicked out heels together and repeated, There's no place like home! three times.  It worked! Only sixteen hours and four airports later we were pulling up to our very own driveway. 

A word of advice:  When you pay only $400 to fly from Hawaii to New York/D.C. and back, don't celebrate and brag to your friends and family.  The airlines will find ways to stick it to you.  They have an evil mad scientist laboratory where they concoct the most brilliant ways to inconvenience the Cheap Ticket travelers.  

Oh lookie here, this lady only paid $4oo and she made her own seating assignments so her little family could be together forever.  How precious.  Let's split the family up so they can't sit by each other.  Muhahaha.  

Better yet, let's split them up and then stick them each in a middle seat.   

MuuuuhahhhahhahhaHA!  

Let's put one of them in between two oversized travelers and one in between two crying babies. Oh, and let's put one of them next to the hacking lady with the Swine Flu and another next to that cuddler who turns into Darth Vadar when he takes Ambian.   

And let's give them 4 layovers with tight connections.  MUHAHA.

And on their return trip let's delay the plane 2 hours and put them on the back row next to the bathroom where the seats don't recline and where they'll have to exit the plane last with only eight minutes to make their next flight.  MUUUUHHHHAAAAHAA!    

As Gad as my witness, someday I'm going to be rich and relaxed. 

But I showed them.  I slept through the whole thing.  

As soon as we sat down at Dulles airport I fell asleep for the first time in two weeks.   

I slept on the plane from D.C. to L.A.  

I slept through the 8 minutes we sprinted to catch our flight to Kona.  

I slept from L.A. to Kona and from Kona to Oahu. 

I slept in the car all the way home.  

I slept and slept and slept until 7 a.m. when I arose and made French toast, wished my hub a happy Father's Day and went back to bed.  

I slept through church and awoke only to break the Sabbath by celebrating Father's Day with Pizza Bob. 

I went to bed at 4 p.m. and slept for twelve straight hours. 

Then SUDDENLY my mind's eye popped wide open.  

Now here I am, lying in the dark at 4 a.m., listening to the wind whip through the trees outside my window and watching my curtains dance. 

And of course I'm thinking about the trip.

And all the things I will miss. 

And all the things I won't miss, like hearing my kids say I'm HUNGRY! and Are we THERE yet? and But Mom, you just went to the bathroom.

And the other woman.  I won't miss the other woman.

My hub fell in lub with another woman while we were in D.C.  She's the GPS lady on his phone. I have a sneaking suspicion that my hub would marry that GPS lady if he could.

"Now there's a woman who knows where she's going," he says. "She doesn't just blink and shrug and say I dunno in her cutest voice when you ask her directions."

"Yes, but she doesn't use prepositions correctly," I told him. "You don't turn left TO Adelphi road. You drive TO Adelphi road and then turn left ON Adelphi road. Everyone knows that."

"And she can't spell Dulles airport," I continued. "If she's so smart, why does she spell it with a B?  It's not Bulles airport."

I blame myself for his intrigue with the GPS lady. I am the one who suggested slash insisted we rent a car and a hotel for the last few days of our trip. My hub has an aversion to renting cars and hotels. In his world there is no need for such superfluous things. Just as there is no need for jackets or umbrellas or irons or water bottles.

Me, I like to be prepared for every possibility. What if I get chilly? What if it rains? What if my clothes get wrinkled? What if my mouth gets dry?

What if we have to lug all of our bags of costumes and props through the crowded streets of a busy city, uphill both ways, and then down escalators and onto congested subways and city buses?

What if I start crying and need a hot bath?  The possibilities are endless when you're traveling.

My hub folded to my extreme peer pressure and threats of divorce and that's how he became infatuated with the GPS lady.  I take full responsibility.  

If I have to share my hub's affections I guess the GPS lady isn't the worst choice. After all, she did warn me about the congestion up ahead on I-495. I immediately pulled out my Allegra and my Nasonex. 

If it hadn't been for her I would have been stuffed up for miles.

Well, it's almost 5 a.m.  I better go back to bed so I will be well rested for my upcoming PVBD (post vacation boredom and depression).