DIARY OF WEARY SEATTLE TRAVELER

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

December 27

9:00 am

Wake up to cheerful message alert on phone. Loosely translated: “So sorry to have ruined your trip. Flight canceled. Please do call and muddle your way through twenty hours of horrific hold music so we can offer you unsatisfactory options and heavy sighs.”

9:15 am

Decide to call. In my heart, I know it is a bad go, but angelic/v excited sleeping children beside me cloud my better judgment.

9:35 am

Ha Ha! Have somehow tricked automated phone service into routing me to a real person. Miraculous!! But suddenly realize I have not talked to Nigel yet. Has he had the same message? I text to find out. Silence. Meanwhile, non-robot person on the other end of the line begins to name options that are increasingly ill-advised. “ You could actually take the flight that will bring you to Seattle and then try to find a connection from there.” Hmm. Perhaps if Nigel and the girls do not go, I will take the boys somewhere tropical from Seattle. Surely there is somewhere to go. Am desperate to leave freezing wasteland. Feeling reasonably secure, I hang up with real-life person while having no actual plan. Nigel texts and says he is on his way to the airport with girls in tow. We will figure it out from there.