The Long Way Home

Last summer I traveled to Atlanta for a weekend to surprise my best friend Katie and the newest member of her family, Eli.

(Clearly he was thrilled to meet me!)

At just six weeks old, Eli didn’t do much more than eat and sleep.  And when it was time for him to eat, everything in Katie’s world came to a stop until he was nice and full.  Understanding this, it didn’t bother me at 4:00pm on Sunday that we had to delay our departure for the airport until Eli was finished with his late lunch.  Even at 4:15pm (our ‘at the latest’ departure time) when my little man E was just starting his ‘second helping’, I still didn’t mind. (I mean it was love at first sight with this little guy, of course I didn’t mind sacrificing airport time for him.)  

Anyone that has traveled with me knows how close I like to cut it when it comes to getting to the airport in time, so even as we were pulling out of the driveway at 4:30pm, I still had faith I would be just fine.  It wasn’t until we pulled in to the airport and saw the backed up line of cars that the reality of missing my flight kicked in.

“Umm should I be worried about that?” I asked as Katie hit the brakes.

“No, it’s fine.  I can drop you off at the lower level.  There’s never anyone there,” Katie assured me.  Thankfully Katie knew her stuff.  After a hurried good bye, I rushed to the first available check in kiosk. 

5:40 was my departure time, 5:00 was the latest I could check my bag, 5:08 was the time on the screen.  Crap!

I could either wait 2 hours and take the next flight or carry on my bag and run to my gate.  I went for option #2.  The only obstacle I foresaw were the liquids in my bag.  As a seasoned traveler, I know that the ‘nothing more than 3oz liquid’ rule doesn’t always apply.  It depends on who’s enforcing it.  So I surveyed the eight different x-ray monitors and chose the one who looked like they hated life the most.  And whaddaya know, I made it through; 2 shampoo bottles, contact solution and all!!

On the other side of security, I looked down to see my gate.  E18.  Are you kidding me?!?

For those of you not familiar with Atlanta airport, it sucks.  The terminals are laid out in a straight line.  Please see diagram below.  Reading my boarding pass I was in Terminal T.  Gate E18 is the red dot.  Awesome.

(I couldn’t possibly be further away from my gate if I tried)

Luckily the tram was there as I came down the escalator.  I jumped on and waited for the doors to close.  A solid two minutes went by and the doors were still open.  Finally a voice came over the PA system and let us know there was a delay, but the tram should start shortly.  I didn’t have time to find out how long shortly meant.  So I exited the tram and started speed walking to Terminal A.  As I approached the terminal I saw another tram with its doors open.  Or was this the same tram? Was it working now?  It was worth jumping on to find out, I mean I had almost a mile still to go to gate E18.  A minute went by, nothing.  You’ve got to be kidding.

So once again I exited the tram and started speed walking on to Terminal B.  I should also note that the flip-flops I was wearing had decided that day was a good time to start slicing in to the side of my foot.  So as I was half sprinting from terminal to terminal my shoe was slowly drawing blood.  Which really made the situation better.

I arrived at Terminal B with a bloody foot and dripping in sweat (Atlanta is quite humid in June).  Lo and behold there’s the damn tram again.  In honor of my throbbing foot, I decided to give it one more shot.  Afterall the voice on the PA did say we’d be moving shortly.  So I stepped on to a tram for the third time.  Thankfully after only about 45 seconds the doors finally closed.

I stared at my watch as we slowly made our way to Terminal E.  There’s no way I can make it, I thought to myself.  Even if I sprint, it’s 5:30 already and I’m still on the tram!

There’s absolutely nothing worse than missing a flight by under a minute.  I’d rather miss it by an hour.  At least then I don’t feel like I could’ve just tried a little harder!  To avoid either instance, as soon as the doors opened at Terminal E I broke in to a sprint.  Halfway down the terminal I passed a family of four that was also sprinting.  They must be on my flight. 

As I approached the gate I saw the gate agent lifting the microphone.  Oh no, he’s going to announce the flight’s closed, and OF COURSE it’s the second I get to the gate.

“If you’re running for the Boston flight, you don’t have to.  We’ll wait for you,” he announced to the family of four.

“Why didn’t you announce that as you saw me sprinting down here?!” I asked, highly irritated.

“Because I didn’t think of it until I saw you get here.  I’m a guy, what can I say?  I don’t think.”

“Whatever.  As long as I’m here.”

I got to my seat, way in the back, feeling sorry for the guy who got the seat next to me and all my sweaty greatness.  I settled in and took out the reading I had to finish before work the next day, grateful that I had made it.  I had no idea that would only be the first half of my crazy story for the day!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Getting Out With A Bang!!

Pretty consistently during my career at Cantina I worked double shifts on Sundays.  Sunday was actually my favorite day to work.  It was by far the most profitable…at least the way I did it.  The morning shift was hit or miss, and it was mine to manage.  The second shift manager usually came in at 4:30, but when I was doing doubles my second ‘cocktailing’ shift started at 3:00.  So for an hour and a half I was both the Manager on Duty and the only Cocktail server on duty.  This combination was very stressful and exhausting on those Sundays that were “hit”.

This particular Sunday was one of the stressful ones; after a busy morning in the dining room it was non-stop all night in the bar.  Once all patrons left, all tables were cleared and cleaned, and all monies were counted, I went down to the office to cash out with Darren.

I was so tired and brain-dead that I could barely carry on a conversation with him.  All I could think about was getting home and sleeping.  He said all my numbers matched and I was good to go.  So I said good night and went to leave out the back stairwell.  That is the way I exited Cantina about 90% of the time after my shift.  The door was a little warped and could stick sometimes, but by this point I was pretty familiar with most of the ‘quirks’ of Cantina.

So after I slunk up the stairs, I went to open the door but it was stuck.  I double checked to make sure it was unlocked and tried again.  Still nothing.  What the hell?!?!  I wasn’t going to let this door keep me from my bed so I threw my hip in to it.  Nothing.  Now I was getting mad.  So I started throwing my whole body in to the door trying to get it to budge.

BAM!  BAM! “What the hell is wrong with this stupid door?!?!”  BAM! BAM!

After a little while my hip was starting to get sore so I took a little break.  Darren all the while was just sitting in the office listening to the ridiculousness at the top of the stairs.  When the banging stopped he checked to see if I made it out.

“Caitlin?”

“Yeah?”

...silence...
...silence...

“...pull”

With just the slightest amount of effort, this time I was successful at PULLING the door open.  What a novel idea!

I couldn’t believe my stupidity.  I went back down to the office and laughed uncontrollably with Darren for a solid 5 minutes before catching my breath.  On my way home I was still so embarrassed and giggling so hard that multiple people thought I was crying and asked me if I was okay.  To which I should have responded (if I could’ve stopped laughing long enough to answer) “not in the head I’m not!” 

Jingling All the Way...

This year's festivities followed a similar story to the previous year's.  And I think we look just as good!!  The pictures speak for themselves...

 

  

 

 

 

The night before was pretty fabulous as well...

 

 

And people wonder why I love the holidays so much!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

There are two things you may have learned about me by this point, 1-I LOVE Christmas and 2-I LOVE hanging out with my family.  This story is a perfect illustration of why these two things are true.

After four years of spending Christmas away from my family working in Colorado, December of 2007 I was finally home again.  However, things didn’t go quite as I had planned.  My mom informed me that we would be spending Christmas Day in Florida with my grandparents.  I was fine with that plan, and quite excited for the whole family to be together again, but I couldn’t help feeling sad that we wouldn’t have a white Christmas (I mean we went golfing on Xmas day…that’s just not right!).  So my mom promised that once we got back to New Hampshire we could have another Christmas; one complete with snow, a fire in the fireplace, and a few falls on the ice from Beano.

On the morning of December 28th, my mom and stepdad (Beano) were in the kitchen having breakfast when Beano asked, “Do we have to dress up for Christmas dinner tonight?”  My mom (for some unknown reason) was appalled by this, “Are you serious?  In the ten years we’ve had Christmas dinner together, have we ever ONCE had to dress up?!?”

“Ahh whatevah,” Beano grumbled.  Still upset by his absurdity, my mom went upstairs and burst in to my bedroom where my sister and I were sleeping.

“Guess what Beano just asked me!” she exclaimed, and proceeded to explain the whole incident.  To which I replied, “You mean dress up in costumes?”  Well that comment got us going back and forth about how funny it would be if we all dressed up in costumes and next thing you know we’ve come up with the most brilliant plan.  The three of us decided we would go to the Good Will and look for the most ridiculous ‘dress up’ outfits we could find and they would be the required attire for Christmas dinner that year.  We got my brother in on the plan as well. 

When it was time to eat, the four of us said, “OK Beano, we’re going to go get dressed up now.”  As we paraded up the stairs he stayed put in his chair saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”  He had no idea how pretty we were getting upstairs...

 Once we were as pretty as we could possibly get, we paraded back down to show off our threads.

"What the hell are you guys wearing?!?!" was his response.

"You said you wanted to dress up for dinner.  So we got out our prettiest outfits.  Don't worry, we have one for you too."

We all expected resistance from Beano, but he was surprisingly excited to wear his fancy new Christmas digs.

We actually had quite the photo shoot that night....

 

 

 

And I'm fairly certain we completely embarrassed the dog...

 

We actually wore the outfits all through dinner and then some...

 

 

Who knows what this year will bring.....

A Shot in the Dark

January of 2004 I had a minor surgery during my winter break from school.  Shortly after the surgery both my parents had to go out of town for a week for a sales meeting.  Since I hadn’t fully recovered, I asked my good friend Patrice to come stay with me just in case anything happened.

Unfortunately for Patrice, I was still pretty useless during her watch.  Still heavily medicated, I really didn’t do much other than nap and watch TV; which only last for about two hours before I’d nap again.  We attempted a trip to the mall once, but after only fifteen minutes in the first store I had to leave because I was too exhausted.

One night (when I finally made it past 8:00pm) we decided to watch Bad Boys II.  About halfway through the movie we heard a gunshot outside.  (If you recall from earlier posts, my parent’s house is surrounded by acres and acres of woods; which are often times full of hunters).  The sound of a gunshot is pretty unmistakable, and not usually a good sign. 

“What was that?” Patrice asked.
“I’m sure it was just a hunter.  We get a lot of those around here,” I calmly answered as if the hunters had ever been close enough to the house for us to hear their shots.  We both seemed content with my answer and went back to watching the movie.

(what I assume the hunters in our yard look like)

About thirty seconds later there was a second shot.  By this time logic had set in.

“Wait a second.  It’s nine o’clock at night.  It’s been dark for hours.  That CAN’T be a hunter!” I exclaimed.  Clearly the next logical explanation was a crazy serial killer (are there any that aren’t crazy?) 

There are all sorts of windows in my parents living room, one of them being about the size of the wall.  I kept getting flashes in my head of stray bullets from the serial killer’s gun flying through and shattering the massive window, landing somewhere in me or Patrice…or worse yet…Pippen.  We had to act fast!

(Large window, vulnerable to stray bullets)

I grabbed Pippen while shouting, “We have to get to an inner wall where the bullets can’t reach us!  I’ll grab the dog, you grab the phone!  The safest place for us is the hallway, out of sightline from the windows!”

Instead of calling 9-1-1, I first called my mom (if I had known Darren at the time, I probably would’ve called him too).  She said I needed to first calm down, if there was no imminent danger then we should call the non-emergency police number.  I didn’t know that number by heart.  We needed a phone book.  Patrice bravely volunteered to risk her life by walking in front of multiple windows to get the phone book out of the office.

I can’t recall why, but we decided Patrice would make the call.  Probably because she wasn’t the one crouched down in the inner hallway clutching the dog screaming about a serial killer outside.  She told the woman on the phone our location and that we heard gun shots and think there may be a situation. 

It turned out a car had hit a deer right in front of our house.  The deer was pretty badly injured so when the cops arrived they shot it to put it out of its misery.  (Apparently the cop wasn’t that great of a shot though if it took two bullets to kill the already hanging by a thread Bambi!)

We requested that if this happen again they call and at least let us know the reasoning behind the shots.  The lady on the phone apologized, saying she didn’t realize it would alarm any residents.  How foolish of us to react to the sound of a deadly weapon!

Between all the giggling that proceeded and the excitement of ‘cheating death’, I was too tired to watch the rest of the movie and went to bed.  I’m sure Patrice stayed up contemplating why it was she agreed to spend a whole week with me!

A Smashing Good Trick

On weekdays during my senior year of high school, bedtime was usually around 10:00pm.  One particular evening as the clock approached the 22nd hour, I found myself alone in my bedroom nowhere near ready to fall asleep.  Some people in this situation would read a book or watch TV to wind down.  Not me.  I used this extra energy to create an amazingly awesome trick.

For those of you that have never been to my childhood bedroom, it was very small.  I had a twin bed that was flush against the wall, bookshelves and a desk lining the other walls, and that’s about all that fit.

(This is not my actual bedroom. I couldn’t find a good picture to use but felt an image was necessary. I actually have no idea whose bedroom this is.)

The trick went as follows…

The bed was made.  I turned down the corner of the sheets that was closest to the wall.  I stepped back to the other side of the room (which was only about 6 feet).  Then I took a few quick steps.  Once I got right next to the bed I launched myself in to the air.  As I hovered above the bed I grabbed the turned down sheet corner and with cat-like speed I did a 180 turn; landing on my back, tucked in between the sheets.  Awesome.

I was so proud of myself for not only thinking up such a great trick but for also making it a reality.  And I was shockingly successful at sticking the landing.

After about 30 minutes of doing my trick over and over, my mom stopped by to say goodnight.

“Oh good!!  I was hoping you were coming up.  I have an awesome new trick to show you.  I’ve been practicing for like ever.  I’m really good at it now.”

Her mouth said, “A trick??” but her face said, “Oh great! What now?!?!”

Now that I had an audience my awesomeness was under a lot more pressure.  So when I ran, I ran a little harder.  When I launched myself in to the air, I launched a little harder.  And when I went to grab the sheets…BAM!!!

It took me a second to realize why I was lying on top of the sheets and not proudly tucked between them; that instead of doing a 180 I had just body slammed myself in to the wall.

With the exact same look on her face my mom simply said, “Neat trick Katie” and walked away. 

She eventually did come back to see if the noise she was hearing was sobbing or uncontrollable giggling.  It was the latter of the two.  I suspect she spent that night lying in bed thinking about how proud she was of her brilliant baby girl…either that or wondering where she went wrong!

One Fatal Flush

While living in Aspen I worked at the Mexican restaurant La Cantina.  That job will most likely go down as one of my best jobs ever.  Not only were the money and the atmosphere phenomenal, but the friendships I made with my coworkers are the kind that will last a lifetime.  Over my almost four years on the payroll I saw a lot of people come and go; but throughout there was a core group of us that remained as close as family.  To this day I still consider them as such, even though we are currently spread out across the country.  Darren was (and is) the fearless leader of this family, the Mama Pata if you will.  He was the kind of boss/friend that I told EVERYTHING to and often turned to for advice.

So now that I’ve given a brief background, on with the story…

My usual shift started at 3:30pm.  Often times I would be doing something around town during the day then just head in to work a little early and get ready there.  The restrooms at Cantina are located downstairs, but there is one single handicapped bathroom upstairs located near the entrance to the kitchen.  At some point it was determined that this was the “employee bathroom”.   It was here that I always changed and got ready for my shift, this day was no different.

Before changing my shirt, I took the sunglasses that are always resting on top of my head and hooked them in to my pocket so they wouldn’t fall.  My memory doesn’t allow me to recall exactly what led up to this, but somewhere during my “getting ready” those sunglasses somehow flew out of my pocket and landed with a splash right in to the toilet.

I had not used the toilet while in there so the glasses were just sitting in plain old toilet water.  Any normal human being would have just reached in, grabbed them out, rinsed them off and gone on with their lives as if nothing happened.  If I were normal, and if that’s how this story went, then it probably wouldn’t be on this blog now would it?

I went for option B.  I bolted out of the bathroom in search of Darren.  The restaurant was fairly empty at that time of day so I expected to find him just standing there wiping menus, ready to save the day.  Instead I found him talking to some customers about who knows what.  The customers’ backs were to me so I tried my best to get in Darren’s line of sight and get his attention.  I kept giving him my “It’s important, I need you” look.  I’m pretty sure he interpreted it as my “I have something really funny to tell you and I can’t wait” look and ignored me. 

After what seemed like forever, Darren ended his conversation and walked over towards me. 

“D!  I need your help!  I know this is going to sound REALLY weird, but I need you to come to the bathroom with me and see what I did,” I explained.  Surprisingly, he didn’t question me and the two of us went to investigate.

I pulled the door handle only to discover it was locked.  NOOO!!  I immediately realized that the woman who had been sitting at table 4 just 30 seconds ago had somehow snuck by me and was in the bathroom.

“Smiles, what is going on?” Darren asked.  I led him around the corner and explained what had happened. 

“Why didn’t you just take them out?”
“Because I came looking for you instead!”  DUH!

As soon as Table 4 lady exited, we both rushed in to assess the damage.  We were greeted with an empty toilet bowl.  It seemed as though the glasses were flushed with ease.  Since there didn’t appear to be any clogging, we assumed all was right with the world again; I giggled, Darren shook his head saying, “oooh Smiley, Smiley, Smiley.  You crazy.”  And we moved on with our lives.

The next day I had off so I went down valley to do some shopping.  Early afternoon I received a phone call from the manager on duty at Cantina.  He was calling to inform me that because of my sunglass flushing incident the toilet in the employee bathroom was overflowing and flooding the area.  Apparently one of the other employees on duty hadn’t heard about the incident and used the facilities to go #2.  The combination of her actions with my sunglasses caused a blockage in the pipes and thus the overflowing.  The manager said it was severe enough a problem that a plumber was called; he just thought I should be aware since I was partly to blame.  It didn’t sound too serious and a plumber was on his way, so again, I figured all was right with the world and I went on with my day. 

A few hours later I got a call from Darren, “You need to get in here.”  He didn’t sound his normal chipper self, and he didn’t call me by my nickname…this can’t be good.

Upon arriving back at Cantina I was greeted by a straight-faced Darren, “Come with me.  I want you to see what you’ve caused.”  Apparently the clog from earlier in the day required the plumber to snake the drain.  When the snake met the sunglasses in the drain it caused the device to jerk back.  The backlash of the jerk did this…

Oops!!

Thankfully this incident wasn’t what ended my Cantina career.  I don’t know what it was that made Darren show mercy on me for this very expensive mistake.  Perhaps it was because a family’s love is unconditional, you stick together through thick and thin.  Or perhaps it was because he figured keeping me around was the best way to get repaid.  Whatever it was, I’m grateful for it.  It would have been quite the shame if I had lost that job to one fatal flush!

A Girl's Best Friend

One year ago today was one of the worst days of my life.  I had to say goodbye to the love of my life, Pippen.  So today's post is a picture tribute to her.  Thanks for 16 great years!!

Me and my baby

 

Wearing her winter coat in the snow

   

Her 3rd birthday and her 15th birthday

  

My little football player

My little patient

   

Seriously, how cute is she!??!?!