Craziness!

So I took Haidy to the airport yesterday (Thursday) morning and let me just tell you that day was a disaster! The night before Haidy decided she was going to stay up all night to finish going through the mountains of papers, clothes, books, etc. in her room & our living room. I stayed up until 5am with her & then had to get some sleep because I had to work & go to class that day so I needed to take care of myself. I slept for about 2 and 1/2 hours & then got up and realized that Haidy was far from ready to go. Two of our friends were coming by the house at 8:30am to put her bags in the car & take her to the airport. Well, in Haidy's time, we were of course late. We had to force her to get dressed and leave things behind in her room (for me to take care of later).

We got to the airport around 9:30am for her 10:30am international flight. We had called Lufthansa and Horizon before to check on baggage policies, etc. to make sure she would be able to take the most for her money. However, there was a big mis-communication. Horizon told us that they would honor any of Lufthansa's baggage policies (since she was flying from Spokane to Seattle on Horizon, then Lufthansa from Seattle to Germany, then to Egypt). Ok, that was fine; however, apparently Lufthansa changed their baggage policies in the last two days (not really--we were told the wrong information by TWO different ladies over the phone) so Haidy had to change her plans. We were told that she could bring 2 free bags, and then each additional bag would $150. If the bags were overweight or over-sized, it would be $50 for each of those conditions. The total weight could not exceed 218 pounds, meaning that we could pack on bag a little heavy & just pay $50 extra (much better than shipping through the mail). Well, apparently this was NOT correct. The Horizon lady (not very friendly) told us that only one bag was free, until we insisted that this was an international flight & Lufthansa told us 2 were free. THEN, she proceeded to tell us that each additional bag (after 2 free) would be $250! Then, the overweight bag would be $500!!! Ridiculous!

After weighing all of Haidy's bags, we found that they were ALL overweight :( We scrambled at the ticket counter, sorting through "necessities" in all four checked bags & two carry-ons. Ugh! We managed to talk Haidy out of several things because two of her friends would be taking suitcases for her in the fall to visit Egypt. Finally, we got all the bags down to 50.9 pounds (the maximum weight they allow--so strict!) and Haidy said goodbye and went to security at 10am, for her 10:30am flight. Yikes!! Did I forget to mention that it was pouring raining that morning? So, I trudged through the rain (no covered airport walkways here) with a trash bag (thanks to the airport janitor) of Haidy's belongings and drove home, rather stressed out and in dire need of sleep. On the way home all I could think about was my nice warm bed & how it was calling out to me to sleep.



I got home and realized how big of a MESS our house was even though Haidy had already left. I instinctively started cleaning, while in my head I was telling myself I needed to take a nap before having to go to work. While I was cleaning and contemplating sleep, our building manager came to check things out. She was going to shampoo the carpets that afternoon because another girl would be moving in this weekend...um, not happening! Fortunately, she is a merciful woman and she said she would come the next morning. This still left me worried because I had to work soon and then class until 7:30pm and still NO sleep :( I decided to power through and move all of Haidy's things out of her room and clean out her stuff in the bathroom. I managed to do this, but left a lot in the kitchen, my room, and the rest in the living room. I did throw SIX trash bags of donations into my car to take to my wonderful friend who works with immigrants and refugees in the area.

I went to work, then planned for a phonology clinic to work on pronunciation with some students, then class. Almost fell asleep and promised myself that I would go to bed right when I got home, after eating of course. This, however, did not quite happen. I got home, ate dinner, and then moved all of the stuff out of the kitchen and proceeded to go through Haidy's things, throwing stuff away, adding the the swelling donation pile, and recycling several bags of papers. I also tried to rearrange things in Haidy's two suitcases and add things she took out at the airport, but I had to remove a lot in order to make things fit and weigh under 50 pounds. This is difficult because they weren't my things to decide... Needless to say, the people we are donating to will be well dressed this year :) So, I finally went to bed around 11 something or close to midnight and slept until 10am. It felt truly wonderful to finally get some rest.

I got an email from Haidy's program director asking when he could pick up her car. Well, I hadn't had time to clean it out yet, so...I had to stall, but I quickly got all the trash out and made it look somewhat presentable. He came and got that (check one thing off the list for today). Then, I decided I better get to work to make sure that I got more things taken care of. Haidy had put together a box of books that she wanted me to ship to her. I got that all taped up and hauled it over to the post office. It weighed a whopping 27.3 pounds & was $120 to ship! Thankfully she had left me money for this. Then, I got home and sorted through more things. One of our friends came and picked up a couple of boxes of stuff Haidy left for her and a suitcase to take with her in the fall to Egypt. I then ran a couple other errands to take care of some things and now our living room is fairly clean. We have about 8 trash bags of donations for me to give to my friend, one suitcase for Haidy's friend to pick up someday, and a printer that another friend is coming to pick up.

I did finally get home and enjoyed a nice "skype dinner date" with my good friend from back home. Here's to a less-stressful weekend :)