In Which the F-Bomb was Dropped, but not by ME!!

SUPER LONG POST!! WARNING!! READ WITH A SMALL SNACK! YOU´LL NEED IT TO SUSTAIN READING ENERGY!

So remember how I was crazy scared to come here? Remember how I was having night time sweats and I was all anxious and I wouldn’t concentrate or think about it and I couldn’t get excited about the trip. And how almost everyone told me to just “don’t worry about it! Just go and enjoy yourself!” I will now tell you all the same thing in the biggest boldest letters possible

I TOLD YOU SO!!!

So here is story. In Utah I was trying to keep my “schedule.” I even tried to bathe my kid in a bathroom sink of the D terminal I don’t recommend this to anyone. I promise, it doesn’t work and it will only piss off your kid. The automatic soap dispenser kept shooting foam all over her and she still smells like the stuff. But I held her off sleeping till we got on the plane. She ate and slept all the way to LA. No problems. We got to LAX at 10:30 local time and 11:30 Utah time.

So our next plane was set to leave at 1:30 LAX time (2:30 Utah time) and so we had plenty of time to get to our connection. Well, after winding our way around and finding the long line we needed to stand in, we begin to wait. Of course, a 1 year old walking child doesn’t want to stand and wait patiently in line. She wants to be running all over. So Marcelo and I take turns chasing her around the terminal. 10 min each. She’s crazy running all over, trying to go out the automatic doors, or trying to get her hands caught in them as they opened or trying to climb up into the luggage x-ray machines. I’m telling you, I was really looking forward to getting to our terminal and letting her run in a more “controlled” area where we could watch her without running the risk of her getting run over by a luggage cart.

So I see on the departures board that our flight to Costa Rica was on time, but that a flight to Guatemala was cancelled. I thought “sucks to be going to Guatemala tonight! Why would there be a cancelled flight? There isn’t snow or other bad weather. Did another bird run into some propellers? Oh well gotta go chase my kid now” and I let it go from my mind.

Now, I’m going to go off (ironically, of course. You’ll see why in a minute) about those people that are up at the counter for forever. What’s the problem? Do you have a reservation? Yes? Then get up to the counter, show your passport, hand over luggage and get goin’!! Don’t you see the line of 76 people behind you? Let’s get the show on the road! No talking on your phone! No standing around looking confused!! Get your ticket and get out of line! Or just get out of line all together! Man, at 11:45 at night, after 45 min of running around after my kid, I was done with them.

It’s our turn at the counter. Whoo HOOOO!!! The lady asks for our itinerary. I said I don’t have it. I almost always never bring it. My printer hasn’t been working and I’m too lazy to print it out anywhere else. I tell her we are on the flight to Costa Rica then on to Ecuador. She types on her little computer for what seems like a long time and then says, “You were on the flight going to Guatemala. Your flight was cancelled”. So for you reading out there, that means that our itinerary was to take us to LAX, then Guatemala, then Costa Rica, then Quito and THEN to Guayaquil. Right now I’m thinking of saying a very bad word to Travelocity, but I won’t for the gentleness of my readers. But I’ll just let you imagine what it is… You’re wrong. I was going to call them a rat bastard.

So we learn that our flight has been cancelled. I’m upset at this point, but not yet to the point of panic. The lady at the counter said to go down to the other counter, and there was a “special line” for those of us whose flight was cancelled. We walk down where she’s told us and there is a person from the airline there. She points to ANOTHER line to the right of us that has approx 200 people in it and says, “That’s the line there”. Panic starts to creep in. Then I ask “what happened to the flight” and she said “They only have 4 flights a day. This was the last flight of the night. They sent the wrong size of plane. They were supposed to send one size, but they sent another, and then something happened with that plan. So the flight is just cancelled. The next flight goes out tomorrow at 2 pm, but we are already over-booked by 50 people and we are asking for volunteers to give up their seats. And the flight after that we are booked over by 40 people, so I don’t t think you’ll be on that one either. So you’ll probably get on the one going 24 hours from now.” The Panic has arrived. Full mind blowing panic. We are the VEEEEERY last in a long long line of people, and my baby is squirming.

Squirming is an understatement. She treated the 2 hour sleep in LAX as a nap rather than what it really was: the beginning of her night of full sleep. So she’s got crazy energy. Mind blowing energy. When you pick her up, she is twisting, and turning and arching to get out of your arms. And then you put her down and she runs right over and pushes someone’s luggage over. Or pushed over a birthday-gift package they have wrapped ready to go. Or tries to climb up into that x-ray machine again with the scary security guys looking at you. And tries to eat dirt and mud pieces off the floor. I grab her arm and she tries to peel my fingers off her while simultaneously dropping her bum down in attempts to weasel away from me. It’s my worse fear realized And we have hours of this to go. It’s now 12:20 and I call my mother so I can melt down.

And BOY DO I MELT DOWN!!! Walking back and forth in the airport, crying, trying not to shout as I vent. I am full on making a spectacle of myself. The term “drama queen” comes to mind more than once, but I’m running on no sleep from that night, and only 3 hours from the night before. So the fatigue is really adding to my meltdown.

I say “how can they just abandon 200 people here? Don’t they have another plane? Don’t they have anything?” My mom assured me that they would probably put us in a hotel, but that was no consolation for me, because it was going to mess up my baby even more. It was at this time of my melt down that someone in a suit took notice of Marcelo and I and was taking him away! Holy crap! They think that we are using our kid to bypass security and we’ve been tagged as suspicious! I kid. They of course were taking pity on us. The airline had called in like 4 or 5 upper level workers to try to make miracles happen. We were pushed to the front of a line I would soon realize was the “families with small children” line of which I was the only one sobbing like a hysterical freak.

So we get to the counter where a guy starts typing. And I swear he’s typing for like 20 min. And then he comes back and says that they are going to get us a hotel, but that the first time we can get on a plane is the next night at 2 am. O sea in 24 hours. I hear the news and then I start crying again. This pattern continues on and on. We keep getting new helpers and they keep doing the same thing. Typing for 20-30 min and then telling us that we can only get on a plane the next night. And then I start crying again. And then someone says that maybe we can get on one that morning at 6 am. Not ideal, but still an option. But then no, we can’t get that one either. And I start crying. Lather, repeat.

And then we hear about one going out at 2:20 this very morning! It seems almost too good to be true. But then they say no, we’ll have to wait 24 hours. And what about our bags? And then back to typing for 29 min. Additional people are called in. Supervisors, luggage people. At one time, I look over from where I am with the baby, and at the counter in front of Marcelo are 6 airline people. No kidding!! We were TOTALLY those people that I was yelling at before. You know, the “get your tickets and move on, people!” I was just going on about. And we had been at the counter for well over an hour and half. Oh, the irony!

The time ticks away. My baby is still running around crazy. It’s 12:30 then 1 then 1:30. Which is 2:30 am Utah time. My baby is still going strong. As I look around, I come to notice that during all my crying drama and baby chasing I haven’t noticed that the line of 200 people has dropped to like 7! Nothing like before And then we get the news: We are on the flight to Costa Rica! The direct flight! It means we will make our connection and get to Ecuador at the original time. Why didn’t Travelocity just give us that flight in the first place? Who knows? Let’s all say it together. . . .RAT BASTARD

We get this news at about 1:45 am. They said that we are confirmed and they’ve moved over the luggage and now all we have to do it take care of the “kid tax.” (They told us back in Salt Lake that this might happen and we would have to pay anywhere from $20 to $400 for our lap child to fly internationally. Better than the cost of a ticket, right?) Anyway they shoot us over to the end of the counter and we are told it will cost $170 for our kid. We are shocked but are told by them that this price is CHEEP for what it usually costs. And that it’s a roundtrip price, so we won’t have to pay again. Whatever, anything to get us on that plane.

It’s now 1:50 am, and I hear us get paged! The flight is set to leave at 2:20 am and we are being paged. I ask the “baby ticket” guy if they know we are here. He says not to worry about it. It’s going to be fine. Notice he doesn’t answer my question? He just tells me it’ll be fine.

More typing. They should go to typing classes or something. At 2:00 am we are paged again. I look around we are ALONE in the terminal. We have 5 airline workers and 3 baggage x-ray machine guys around us looking at my baby saying how cute she is. I don’t give a crap. We’ve been paged twice DO THEY KNOW WE ARE HERE?!?!?! At around 2:05 the “baby ticked” guys drops the F-Bomb. Loudly. Apparently when he went to print the ticket the machine jammed and now he has to start over almost from the beginning. Yeah, I think the F-word was definitely warranted in this situation.

At 2:10 we are paged again. And I realize that when we eventually get our tickets, we are going to have to RUUUUUUN to make it. Luckily I have my running shoes on. AND I’ve been working out. I’m not worried about stamina. But I am worried about luggage.

A quick word abut what we are carrying. I have my stroller, a large OVERFLOWING “baby bag” and my baby sling. The baby sling was on at this time with the baby in it preparation for running. And why wasn’t the baby in the stroller? Well, because Marcelo had THREE things he carried with him: a shoulder bag, a small carry-on bag and then a box of pots and pans that Tito Garcia asked us to bring to him.

(Judd! I saw Tito! He’s still so funny. But not so skinny anymore. I don’t mean that he’s a tub of lard. Not even close! But he’s not a stick figure anymore. Let’s just say he can no longer hide behind just a single jungle plant leaf. . .it would now take two. His wife is super cute-like braces at 23 cute-and they have a daughter named Yvette who looks JUST LIKE HIM! He always makes me laugh and we are going out as a double couple sometime in the next week. I do hope some Chifa and a Manzana soda will be on the menu! I’ll let you know how it goes.)

So in preparation for running I figure it’s better to load up the stroller and then run with the baby in arms. At finally like 2:14 we get tickets. One of the workers says she will accompany us and we start going. Again, there is NO ONE THERE in the security lines. So that’s a blessing. But they still take a butt-long time screening us. We strip down and get everything through the gate and then we are off running aging with untied shoes and belts hanging down off our pants. When we get to the gate, I was like “we are Alicia Marcelo and Evelyn Loor” and they are like “where were you? We were paging you!” EEEEFFFF YOU TACA AIRLINES!!!!

Getting on the plane I can see that they are moving people around so we can all sit together. Marcelo later told me that the guy in the seat we eventually got was told “you need to move” and when he protested they were like “I don’t care. You need to get up now and move” HA! So they did something right!

We sat down, they closed the doors and we left!! Lots of people on the plane were looking at us like it was our fault. And I wanted to stand up and make an announcement that it was the fault of the airline and that we’ve been ready to go for hours!! But it didn’t matter. We were gone. Funny thing, our baby didn’t want to sleep still! She was crawling and going crazy for the first hour of the plane ride. It was like 3 am which was 4 am Utah time and she had only slept 2 hours. She’s the freaking energizer bunny. And then finally she calmed down and went to sleep (when the lady behind us finally turned off her overhead light. Apparently that copy of Cosmo magazine was just too good to put down at 3 am!!)

Surprisingly, the rest of the trip went off without a hitch!! All of our luggage arrived, no one tried to steal my baby, and my in-laws were waiting for us. They are crazy for this little girl, just like I knew they would be. Everyone is. She’s going to have a rude awakening when we get back to real life. And for all the complaining about the breastfeeding, I’m so freaking happy I did it. It’s my saving grace. She was able to get right back on her normal schedule without any hiccups. Seriously! She’s sleeping through the night and my sister in-law Anita said, “Did she just go to bed like that? (snaps fingers) How did you do that?” it made me happy.

I’ll be taking credit for getting us on the early plane. Even though I know it was due to all the work of the supervisors and airline workers, I like to think that I was just a hysterical hot mess and they just wanted to get rid of me. If I hadn’t started crying, I don’t think that we would’ve gotten that 2:20 am flight. I expect to be praised and worshiped by Marcelo and Evi forever for this.

Ok, one more thing before I go. The food is all I expected it to be! The fruits are a dream come true. My mother in law won’t let me cook or clean at all. She’s CRAAAAZY possessive about her kitchen. But she’s been really good about letting me into her kitchen to grab food for my baby. . . unless she doesn’t like what I’m giving her then she’ll take whatever it is that I’m giving Evi out of my hand and make her something else entirely different. Ahhh, Latin mother-in-laws!

Well, I wish I could put some pictures for you. Sorry, no time. If you are still at the end of this post, you are a trooper!

But now I’m going to have some naranjilla juice. Jealous?