Day 5 - Goodbye Florida (sniff)

Our final day in Florida began fairly early with laundry and breakfast. I made everyone eggs and bacon and managed to completely burn the bacon in the microwave. It was a plate of blackened, smelly strips of carcinogen and I grabbed the plate (burning my thumb badly in the process) and tossed it out the back door onto the patio lest the smell overcome us inside. My mom's landlord happened to stop by unexpectedly to get something from the house and I suddenly remembered the plate of burnt bacon out on the patio. I ran to the back door and scooped up the mess, tossing it into the trash can, hoping that she hadn't seen me. My mom's neighbor stopped over for a visit with her dog and to ask my mother for the thousandth time to consider staying forever....she is seriously taken with my mom and thinks she would make a great addition to the neighborhood on a permanent basis. My mom was having some computer issues, specifically, internet access issues and the neighbor was the cause of it all. She did have wi-fi at her trailer but was not using it appropriately so mom asked if I would go check it out for her. The neighbor was willing to allow mom access to the wi-fi and so I went over to her place and in about 2 minutes figured out the problem (yay me!) and got her wi-fi up and running. Back at mom's place, she was thrilled to note that she now had internet access! (I learned that a few days after we left, the neighbor re-secured her wi-fi for some reason and mom was left in the dark again). So, finishing up the laundry, Lulabell and I packed for home. It was a real challenge as we had acquired some things to take home but we got it done and soon were headed to the airport. Lulabell had been complaining of an upset stomach, but this in and of itself is not abnormal for her. She often complains of a stomach ache, probably due to some GERD she has had her whole life. I downplayed it and told her to keep her mind off of it. Soon we were waving goodbye to grammy who had dropped us off and we went into the airport to make our way to our gate. Lulabell's bag was pulled out and we had to go to a table to have it searched. "Is this your bag?" the TSA guard asked my daughter, who looked to me for support. "I packed the bag" I told the guard and wondered what in the heck could be in there that would draw their attention. After rooting around in her bag the guard finally pulls out a bottle of suntan lotion that I had forgotten I packed in there. "Did you forget that you can't pack liquids over 3 ounces?". Sheepishly, I admitted that I had and cursed myself as my $10 bottle of suntan lotion was now garbage. Oh well, we repacked Lulabell and headed to our gate. Lulabell was still not feeling well and I had her sit at the gate while I went to procure some food for us to eat on the plane. I found a Burger King and got sandwiches and drinks and headed back to the gate. I realized then that we were sitting at the wrong gate and hurriedly moved her and our stuff to the correct gate. A man noticed what I was doing and figured out he was at the wrong gate too! We sat and ate our food and waited to board the plane. Finally, we got up to get in line when Lulabell suddenly announced she was going to be sick. I hurriedly pointed her to the ladies room and she made a beeline for it where she was unceremoniously violently ill. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what to do, do I abandon our place in line to help my daughter? I stayed where I was and she returned looking pale and sweaty. She felt it was the hamburger she ate and said she felt a little better now. We boarded and found our seats with her at the window, me in the middle and a nice lady on the aisle. The plane soon took off and we settled in. They served a light snack and Lulabell ate a little of it but very soon began to look a little green around the gills and headed to the restroom where her little snack made a return appearance. Meanwhile, I had asked our seatmate if she wouldn't mind switching so that my sick daughter had quicker access to the restroom. She readily agreed. However, this turned out not to be a good idea because I think she was just as sick as Lulabell and we were pretty much up out of our seats constantly so she could use the restroom. Lulabell returned and we settled in again but before long she announced once again she was ill. I glanced aft to see if the restroom was available but there was a line and so I grabbed the air sickness bag and shoved it at her, where she proceeded to fill it to the brim. I had to call the flight attendant to help me with napkins and they provided us with several more bags. Finally the restroom cleared and I deposited the bag and its contents in the garbage. Finally, we landed in Cleveland and Lulabell made straight for the restroom once more. I knew she was not going to be able to make it to the next gate so I flagged down a cart and driver and we jumped on and zoomed at about 70 mph to the escalator. We got to the top of the escalator where another cart was waiting and we zoomed to our final destination. Thank God for those carts because it was like a mile to the next gate and she would NEVER have made it. We arrived at our gate about an hour before our scheduled departure and relaxed. Our flight was on time, according to the little sign over my head (scheduled to leave at 5:00PM). At one point Lulabell looks at the sign and asks "mom, why does our flight say 8:00 PM now?" I laughed at her and chided her for trying to trick me....and glanced up at the sign where it did indeed say 8:00 PM. I did the classic double take and even took off my glasses to clean them so I could be sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing. Sure enough, the gate attendant finally gets on the overhead to announce that our flight was now postponed until 8:00 PM (3 HOURS LATER!) because there was no flight crew available and that they were now flying them in from Harrisburg....WTF???? Well, that's just great. Of course, out of all the passengers receiving this news, some took it well, and others took it not so well. Some man, who looked like he would be more comfortable sleeping under an overpass than taking an airplane walked up to the gate and began to berate the poor lady, claiming that he had a "very important meeting" that he "could not miss!" (yeah right). Well, there was really nothing to be gained from yelling, as I could see it. We did have the diversion of watching a family with 3 badly behaved boys under the age of 6 slowly begin to unravel and the astonishing moment of when the oldest boy stood his ground in front of his grandmother, hands on his hips and SCREAMED horrible things at her. Mother was talking to the gate attendant at the time but when she heard him screaming at the grandmother she whipped around, grabbed his arm and MARCHED him into the ladies room and I seriously hope she put the fear of God into him for his little scene. Soon the attendant announced that Continental felt so bad about the delay that they were offering food vouchers so we could eat dinner, on them! Yippee! Lulabell was feeling better by now and decided she wanted to try to eat. I tried to call Stu and let him know what was happening but for some reason, my phone decided to go all wonky. There was a picture I had never seen before on my wallpaper and I couldn't access my contacts - seriously strange. It was like I had a stranger's phone or something. Lulabell's phone was dead as she had forgotten to plug it in the night before. I finally reached him and asked if he thought he could make it to Cleveland as we had a delay. I truly did not think this was going to happen as it had been so long since I myself had driven to Cleveland airport that I couldn't even begin to tell him how to get here. I then went to the attendant and asked if perhaps they would provide a rental car voucher and I could just drive home (about a 90 minute drive) instead of waiting 3 hours to fly to Pittsburgh and then having an hour drive from there. Unfortunately, while this sounded like a stellar idea to me, alas, the airline did not think much of it and I was denied. Oh well, we waited it out and finally got on the new plane at about 9:30 or so. The flight only takes about 30 minutes and the flight attendant did not even get out of her seat. Finally, we landed and Stu and Peaches showed up right on time to pick us up. Hugs all around, with Peaches begging to see what I had brought him. I made him wait though and we headed home, arriving at close to 11:00 PM - it was a good thing I decided to take that day off too, huh? Lulabell was still feeling a bit queasy and so I decided she could stay home from school the next day to recuperate. So, our trip, after such a long time in planning and waiting for it to happen, was over. It was such an awesome trip and the only thing I regretted was that Stu and Peaches couldn't share it with us. However, after regaling Stu about the wonders of Disney, he is now determined that we will be making a trip soon to go as a family, perhaps next summer. That sounds great to me!