Back from North Carolina

Feb 24, 2008
Just got back from a trip to North Carolina to see my sister and her three kids, and to scout out the neighborhood for a possible move when Jack gets to kindergarten in 18 months. We talked to a great consultant, of sorts, who helps people deal with special needs school and services issues, and she will be a great contact as we get closer. We also looked at houses in both Cary and Chapel Hill. Wow, you get a lot for your money. The size and quality of the homes make me want to move out of our crappy apartment immediately and figure out Jack’s situation when we get there. Ellen would never let me do that, thankfully.

Jack got sick in bed one night with some sort of tummy bug. He spread it to Olivia, to Amanda (their 15 month old baby), to me (I was in bed all of Thursday after arriving Monday and leaving Friday), to my sister, and to Alexis (my sister’s middle child). Now that we are home, Ellen is really sick, was in bed most of yesterday afternoon and threw up a lot all night and is still in bed Sunday morning.
Coming home, we got to the Raleigh/Durham airport Friday morning to find out our flight had been cancelled and it was snowing in New York. After waiting 30 minutes in a 2 person line, the attendant began madly typing as I continually asked her what she was doing. “There,” she exclaimed happily with a fake-cheery smile, “I have you on standby on the 2:45 pm flight today! How many bags are you checking?” After explaining that I did not want to check bags for a flight I was unlikely to get onto, and finding out that the first flight she could guarantee was not until Monday, we decided to head back to my sister’s home and regroup. We ended up returning our rental car to Enterprise and renting another one from National so that we could drive it to the Newark airport (Enterprise was going to charge us by the mile). It was 9 hours on the road, about 2 hours of stops, and then we switched to our car and drove another 2 hours to our weekend home in CT, arriving at 2 a.m.
Really fun stuff, and the kind of travel idiocy that usually ticks me off. There was a time I would have stewed over the nature of airline travel – They make you wait three hours one way, with two kids running around the airport, and then cancel your flight on the return, they can bump your seat, and then they all lose money anyway. I don’t understand that business.
But you know, I consider the trip a success. We made some good contacts, got a feel for the area, and Ellen really liked it, and Olivia had a good time with her cousins. For all the bad and all the hassle, there was some good. I’ve always been pretty patient and a take-it-as-it-comes type of person, but I think Jack has taught me to roll with the sucker punches even more. His “punches” come so constantly, and yet unexpectedly, that you learn to love the good stuff and just move past the bad.