Tammi's World

Nothin's Ever Easy

Blog Fodder. I'm tellin' you - my life is blog fodder.

I only hope I can do this little adventure justice. I only got about 3 hours sleep so my mind isn't as clear as it usually is (and that in itself should scare the hell outta you).

Ok - Cuz arrived last night. At Ohare Airport. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate that airport? No? Well, I do. For some reason every time I have to go there......oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me start with lunch. I was starving. So I went to Fritz's and grabbed a sandwich and a bit of conversation. And a Diet Coke. I was jonesin' for a Diet Coke. Anyway - nice break in the day and nourisment.

Got home to the pleasant surprise of my unemployment check being in my mailbox. WooHoo. I would actually have toll and gas money. Without any worries. That made me very happy.

Except - I needed to cash it. My bank is down where I used to work, about an hour south east of here. Hmmm. I needed to pick Cuz up at the airport at 7:30 and I didn't want to be late. Neither of us have cell phones and I knew she'd be tired.....so what to do what to do.

I decided to take off from here around 4:30, go to the bank and gas up. I'd then just take the southern route to the airport. Oh - and I should probably mention I have never ever driven to this airport. Ever. In my whole life. Ohare. In Chicago. Yeah, I was a little bit worried.

So - get my errands done and get on the road. Making great time. No traffic. Shoot. I'm gonna be early. WooHoo. Nooooo problem. I'll park and be waiting at her baggage area.

Parking. A little stressful for me. Oh, not the parking itself. I just immediately began worryin' that I'd never find the flippin' car, she'd be tired, I'd be draggin' her ass all over the parking garage......Why yes, I do tend to over think things. Why do you ask?

Got very lucky, found a great (easy) spot and headed to the terminal. Went to check the status of the flight. It says 7:35. OK, good. Time to spare. Then I see where it's landing. Ok. See where the luggage is coming in. Good. Then under remarks it says 9:32. WTF?!? No. That can't be right. When I left home I checked and everything was right on time. So, of course it must be the display that's wrong - so I went to another monitor. Same thing. Shit. (Oh, and I should probably mention I checked 6 different monitors - hoping to get a different answer. Hey - a girls gotta have hope!)

Made no sense to go all the way back home. So I bought a book and hunkered down.

I checked the display again, because I could have read it wrong and it turned out things had changed. Yeah!! Oh shit. Now it says 10:30. Yikes. Not good. Still - no sense goin' all the way back home.

Finally it settled at 11:27. Which was much better than the dozens of cancelled messages hitting everyone else.

I was starting to think maybe I was living the sequel of Terminal - only this would have been Baggage Land.....Tom Hanks had it a lot better'n me. There are no resturants or anything in Baggage Land. You gotta head to the International Terminal and well, that was just more work than I could manage.

Finally - it's 11:27. It shows the plane has landed. As I head to the door where folks are streaming out a woman comes up and in very broken English says "Cart? How do I get cart?" Well, hell, I don't know. So I smile and have her come with me. I figure we'll just read the instructions - how hard is it anyway? Well, for a normal person it's a walk in the park. Me? After a long day and longer evening? Yeah - it was well, huh.

I tell her the cart costs $2. So she opens her wallet and pulls out a $20. "No. $2" as I hold up two fingers. She is pulling out money and it's falling all over the floor. There must have been $200 in $20's.

I finally got her to stop, handed her what had fallen on the floor and dug $2 outta my purse. We get the money into the machine (I hate that you gotta play with those suckers to get them to accept the bills). And now the challenge of actually getting the cart free from the locky place. Thank Goodness they don't have those suckers timed. Anyway - we get it free and off she goes on her merry way calling back "Thank you for helping me" throughout the baggage claim area. Over and over again. Loudly. She was very sweet. I hope no one takes advantage of her.

Anyway......

I turn around and realized I probably missed Cuz. Shit. Oh wait - she'll be smoking.....

We managed to find each other AND find her luggage. Then comes the challenge of, you guessed it, finding the car.

But even worse is figuring out how to get across the street to the exact place I need to be. I could see my flippin' car from the baggage area but couldn't figure out how to get to it.

Finally we're on the elevator. I'm thinkin' we should be going down - everyone else is insisting we go up. Finally some lady asks me where I'm going.

Tammi: Rockford.
Lady: No, where are you going right now?
Tammi: To my car, then I'm going to Rockford.
Lady: Do you know where you parked?
Tammi: Yes, I wrote it down. Cubs, aisle 4. Then we gotta get to Rockford.
Lady: You need to go here.......

She was nice - must have thought I was kinda Rainmanish, with my focus on Rockford, but nice none the less. (This is probably where I should mention I was nervous as hell about finding my way OUT of the airport and on the right road to, you got it, Rockford. I tend to get turned around when I'm tired.)

It still took 15 minutes to find the damned car.

All in all we got home 8 hours after she was supposed to land. And before you ask - I didn't make one wrong turn. I actually followed all the signs!!!

She's sleepin' now. I'm trying desperately to wake up. Then we gots us some work to do.

Oh - and you do remember what today is right????

DEADLINE DAY!

Come on phone - RING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by Tammi at May 26, 2006 08:11 AM | TrackBack