She's Ba-ack...

Scary, I know.

Well, after a 14 hour day yesterday, I finally made it home.  Left my sister's house around 7:30am Eastern and arrived here around 7:30pm Mountain.  Started the day in the midst of a nasty snowstorm that made for an interesting drive from Battle Creek to Kalamazoo, an interesting delay in what looked like the airport of the damned in K-zoo, and an interesting flight to Chicago where my scheduled three hour delay got shortened by an hour.

Creepy, empty airport

Where my plane was scheduled to park.

The Kalamazoo airport only has 4 gates, and eventually people did arrive, but it was creepy for a while there.  Another thing about the K-zoo airport is that when you arrive a nice woman's voice (Reminded me of AIRPLANE!) tells you there's smoking in designated areas. What she doesn't tell you is that the only designated smoking area is the great outdoors.  Add to that the fact that the only place to get coffee is the other side of security and you've got me walking through security a few times.  Not bad if you're in a tiny airport.  Not great if you're at O'Hare. 

Which leads me to leg two of the journey.  When we finally left the 'airport of the damned' - scary takeoff from a snowy runway in a tiny airplane, btw - we headed across the southern tip of Lake Michigan.  (In case of a water landing your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device - which does nothing to prevent the hypothermia a February crash into the Great Lakes can give you.) I made it to O'Hare safely with a two hour delay.  I ate a mediocre lunch and had 90 minutes to spare.  Bored bored bored.  But hey!  If I play it right, I can sneak out for a smoke! 

10 minutes smoking followed by 30-40 minutes getting back in through security.  Totally worth it, btw.

I spent the remainder of the time talking to a nice woman who was traveling with her family to visit her daughter in Colorado.  And listening to the overhead voice tell me how overbooked the plane was.  When they called my name, I just about freaked - fearing they were going to tell me I got bumped.  I begged the lady at the desk to let me go home before she even opened her mouth.  Turns out they just wanted to ask me to change seats to allow a pair to sit together.  :whew: 

After some seat jumping and a little wrangling, I got my aisle seat (easier to bolt from the plane, my dears) and settled in with my Kindle to read.  Enter screaming child.  And me mumbling under my breath 'give it a pacifer... give it a pacifer... please god, give it something to suck on so its ears will pop'.  :shrug:  They never listen to me. 

By the time I got to Denver, all I wanted was to be left alone and to get home.  But I still had a 2.5 hour drive.  Lucky for me, the weather here was awesome.  The sun was shining, the roads were clear and the car started right up like a champion.  And I had enough gas to get home without having to stop.  I did stop at a little gas station in Lochbuie - for Dew, a potty break and a few calls to let everyone know I was on the ground safely.  The rest of the trip was uneventful.  Yay!

And now I'm home.  I'm still toast.  I ache all over from carrying baggage, trudging through airports and sitting most of the day.  But this too shall pass. 

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the week in Battle Creek and maybe a little about leaving my baby behind.  (But not too much about the latter because as long as I keep my mind off it, I don't get weepy.)

How have all of you been while I was away?