364 Days Late

As difficult as it may be to believe, I am writing this whilst shoehorned into a middle seat of…Hawai’ian Air flight 27. That’s right. The flight 27 that we were scheduled to depart on a mere 364 days ago. I won’t believe our year-long flight delay is actually over until we are wheels down in Kona but we are a lot closer than we were!!

Both kids made it home without incident although I will confess to some parental angst when Adam texted me last week and wanted to know if I could give them a weather report for the Siskiyous. The weather wasn’t bad, but I’m a mom and it is my job to worry! I also suffered some more angst a couple of days later when Alena was coming home because the weather in Eastern Washington was crappy, but she made it. I keep telling them that they wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t worried them home, a belief they both just roll their eyes at.

Nearly all the shopping has now been done, save for the Costco and Hilo Hattie’s runs that will need to be made once we make it into Kona. I have tried my best to be a personal economic stimulus in North Seattle, so now it is time to do my patriotic duty in Hawai’i. We all spent most of yesterday running around packing, with the invaluable aid of the Three Amigos, our canine personal assistants. William Wallace was convinced that he needed to personally inspect every item that went into my suitcase and any time the top of the suitcase was down, he would poke at it with his nose. He would then look at me as if to say, “Kibble Lady, how the hell am I supposed to supervise your packing if you can’t keep the suitcase open?” Alena had much assistance from Fernando and Lolita, but even those two couldn’t seem to keep one of our pesky dining room chairs from trying to stow away. The dogs certainly knew something was up and they were pretty sure it wasn’t going to end in a dog party.

Our arrival at the airport was reasonably uneventful. Olga, the shuttle driver, was late because she couldn’t find the house. Rob tried to give her directions but she was somewhat reluctant to go past the “Dead End” sign that marks the entrance to our driveway. “Damn Russians, you can’t tell them anything,” he muttered not so under his breath. Check in was fine, TSA no big deal, the dash for the gate the usual scramble. Thanks to the advent of texting, Julie was able to ask me to get coffee for them while they were shepherding Judy through the check in and security lines.

Ah. What would a Sea-Tac Christmas be without the entertainment? Once past TSA, we were overjoyed to be entertained by a wandering steel-drum player playing “Let It Snow.” Whoohoo! Just what I needed was a steel-drum ear worm, but even that couldn’t be beaten by…the Victorian-costumed vocal quartet from last year. Yup. They were back, and they still haven’t learned A) to harmonize, or B) another song besides “Angels We Have Heard On High.” Gloria In Excelcis Mahalo.

So, here we sit, in a cramped tube hurtling across the Pacific. Mom just observed that she can see water out the window. It had better be water, or we are going to have to have a geography lesson with the pilot. It is my hope that “We’ll get you as close to Honolulu as possible” is still the idea.