Tails of the frazzled

I just have to tell you this story - the series of events that just screamed at me "Don't Go!!" that I didn't listen to...all turned out well. Something was working against us, but we won!!

We have a covered cargo trailer, about 6'x10' or so...people like to borrow it, we kindly lend it - you know how the story goes. Well, it had sat it Mississippi for a year and a half before we went and retrieved it in June, drove it to AZ, loaded it up and drove it to ID in July. The tires had seen better days. A friend of my brother needed to borrow it to move to Boise, and we, of course, said yes! Well, it blew a tire in Glenn's Ferry and ripped the wheel well off. They were able to get new tires (both!) for the trailer, eventually, and make it to Boise. They were short one driver on the trip, so had to leave a vehicle in Twin, which I agreed to drive to Boise the next week because I needed transportation to the airport anyway. Keegan and I were flying out to get Parry in Phoenix! It was an exciting time.

Skip forward a week. I was loading the car, getting everything ready, putting the luggage in the trunk and as I was shutting the trunk, I noticed the keys sitting on the ledge, just inside the trunk - too late. The trunk shut. Luckily, my father is good with tools and it quite flexible. It took us a while to figure out how to get the carseat out of the car and get into the trunk, but then the luggage was in the way of getting to the keys, so after a few attempts, we were able to pop the trunk open with a flashlight and a long screwdriver - yay for dads!! Keegan was still sleeping, as most good boys should have been at that time in the morning. I grabbed my phone, directions to the nice people's house and lugged my sleeping baby to the car.

About 3 miles down the road, I realized I had no idea where I had put my phone. I pulled over into a very stinky cow farm to see if it had fallen in the back when I put Keegan in. I got out and lo and behold, there was my phone - on top of the car!! I can't believe it was still there. The directions to the house were gone, but the phone was still there. Whew!! What a blessing!!

The rest of the morning went well - I made it to Boise, dropped off the car and hung out with Alicia for a bit. We decided to get to the Airport a bit early - who knows what security is going to be like from day to day! I checked my bags curbside and got my boarding pass, but they couldn't print Keegan's, so we went inside to the airline counter - they couldn't print Keegan's either. His name was in there, but no itinerary, ticket, nothing. It took them 45 minutes and several phonecalls before they just deleted him all together and reinput all the information. We finally had his boarding pass. Off to security. Which would have gone off without a hitch had I remembered to take out the leatherman that I had thrown in my purse a few days earlier. They were kind enough to search all our carry-ons and let me go back into the main part of the airport and mail the leatherman back to myself, which cost over $7 to do, but only needed a couple dollars in stamps!! Back to security. This time, they had to thoroughly inspect the juicebag I had in Keegan's backpack. Sheesh!!

We made it to the boarding gate with 2 minutes to spare!! I do have to say that Keegan was FANTASTIC through the whole ordeal. he is such a good kid. I just love him to pieces.

Fast sorward again a couple days to the Budget truck rental place - we got the truck, loaded the car dolly and tried to drive the Honda up onto the dolly. No dice. The front bumper was too low. So we had to go with the car trailer. No biggy. While the guy was getting it, we noticed that the truck only had 2 bucket seats and there were 3 of us traveling. We mentioned this and they proceeded to call every Budget place in the valley (it was Labor Day, no less) and were unsuccesful in finding a three seater. We will just say that we made it work. Back to the dolly. He got it hooked up and was testing the lights - lights didn't work...had to call around some more - found a trailer in Mesa - a good 30 minutes away from where we were. So, we unhooked the trailer, drove to Mesa, got another trailer, drove the Honda up and were good to go...the trip to Idaho went without any further problems!!

It was just amazing how may things seemed to be working against us!! What a trip!!