Hell on Earth

What? Hell on Earth? Shouldn't you be posting about Christmas? Is this your post on Christmas? Calm down, ducklings; all your questions shall be answered and your fears assuaged. Yes, I will post about Christmas. Yes, it was fabulous. I'm going to do that post later when I download pictures from my camera (since Deg found the cord that hooks it to the computer - yay Deg!) and when I'm not feeling so snarky. Why snarky? Well, let's get back to the title of this post. I am about to document what Hell will be like, because I just experienced it.

Hellish event 1: Having the flu at your in-laws.
Like having the flu is ever fun. But having it somewhere other than home? Yikes. And at the in-laws, no less? I mean, we go out there once or twice a year, and here I am, laid up in bed (when I'm not hugging the porcelain throne). Between wanting to vomit and not being able to, crazy diarrhea, headache, achy body, severe heartburn, and then the guilt factor for being ill during the few days we get to spend with family... it was a doozy! The best part was that the day before, I'd been holding hands and snuggling with Grandma (who is 95 and has Alzheimer's), and, being me, I'm now freaking out that she's gonna get the flu and die because she was so near to me. For someone with anxiety, I sure lived up to my ability to freak out. I said at least 3,000 times, "What if I kill Grandma?!" Totally logical, I know, but it's me, so I thought it and would probably believe it. Regardless, it ended up being about 24 hours of Wannadie, and then I was back to the land of the living, but still, the flu is hell.

Hellish event 2: Having your connecting flight cancelled.
Deg scheduled our flights, and he scheduled them so that we had a half an hour layover in Detroit both ways. If events had been different, the "Home Alone"-esque running through the airport (which we did on the way there) would make my "Hell on Earth" list. At this point, it doesn't even register. So yesterday, we flew from Boston to Detroit, got into the terminal, checked our gate... and there was a flashing, red "cancelled" where our departure should have been. Oh yeah, that didn't set me on fire or anything. So we walked 30 gates to customer service (I'd hate that job, by the way) and used the self-serve kiosk to try to figure out what was going on. According to that, our flight had been re-booked... to 3:30 this afternoon. WHAT!? So we then stood in the hour long line for a real person. The guy behind us (about 6 foot, kind of looked like a mix between Toby Keith and the guy from Psych, about 30 years old) gets on his phone and finds out his dog has died. He is now openly sobbing to us about his dog and his poor mom who is home alone with a dead dog. Poor guy, for sure, but super awkward as well. Eventually, he left, and we finally got to the front of the line which leads to the River Styx. We get to the front and they tell us we can have a $50 travel voucher and a hotel for the night. Can we get our airline miles back? Probably not. We'll have to call corporate. I mean, sure? Why not? It's not like it's Delta's fault that we had no flight. OH wait... it totally is. Well, we are completely unsatisfied with leaving at 3:30 the next day. Deg has to get back to work. So we decide to embark up on...

Hellish event 3: Driving from Detroit to Louisville (6 hours) starting at 11:30 pm.
We decide this is our best option. This being the case, we will have to have our luggage flown here and we'll be able to pick it up at 5 this afternoon. That's amazing, too. Really, that should be hellish event 4, but who's counting at this point? So we call around and rent a car from Enterprise, complete with a GPS (because we have no idea where we are). We get ourselves all snuggled in... and drive for 6 bloody hours and pull in this morning sometime after we've both gone insane. Do you know what's between Detroit and Louisville? 2 cities. And n-o-t-h-i-n-g else. It was comparable to our drive across Kansas, except it was dark and cold and we were not in the greatest of moods. Sometime around 1:30 in the morning, we stopped for some delectable McDonald's (eh, you get what you pay for). Other than that, we didn't stop. 6 amazing hours later, we have to wake up my friend Monica, who's been taking in our mail, to get our house key so we can get in our apartment. (Sorry, Monica! I love you forever and owe you BIG time!) By the time we got into bed and started getting to sleep, it was around 6 in the morning. That's when I normally wake up for the day. Oh I love my life. And Deg went to work at about 10:45 this morning to work a full day.

Moral of the story... I now know why I never want to go to Hell. And this will be, I'm sure, quite comical once we catch up on our sleep and have our luggage back. :)