Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace

From South Park to Shakespeare. How diverse, eh?

I have 7 1/2 days of school left. And 17 days until we leave. These numbers are deceptive though. Because the number of school days is only school days. And the number of pre-boat days include weekends.

Somehow time is speeding up and slowing down for me. School is speeding by. I've finished cleaning out my classroom with the exception of some boxes of things (fairy wings and tiaras mostly, but that's probably another blog all together!). And yet despite this, I feel like there is hardly enough time to get everything done before we leave. And yet despite that, it feels like we'll never leave.

Is this what it's like to go coo coo loo loo? Or am I already gone.

Don't answer that, Abby.

You know Kyle, I've learned something today...

Here's an interesting tidbit for those of you, like me, who buy the cheapest, most restricted flights and then cringe every time any changes are made to your flight knowing that you will pay double what you paid for the ticket just to change the flight to a time you want. You don't have to.

So here's what happened. I bought one way tickets on Continental back in March (cheaper than round trip for the length of time we'll be away). Since I bought the tickets in March, they have changed our flights three separate times. Well, last night we hit rock bottom with the changes. What had begun as a 3pm departure, 8 pm arrival into San Diego, had morphed into a 6pm departure, 10:30pm arrival with a 30 minute connection in Houston.

Ricardo was on the case. He called Continental and got the line I expected: You can change the flights for $75/person. Since the tickets only cost $125/person, that seemed a bad choice. So Ricardo came up with the ultimate line, one I think I will use forever: I understand that the ticket I bought was non-refundable. But this is not the ticket I bought. The ticket I bought had different flights.

The Continental guy was stumped and sent Ricardo on to the "Customer Care" line.

In Charlottesville, Sprint telephone used to have a line they referred to as "Customer Escalation." This was where they sent you when you'd become so irate that none of the vanguard would deal with you any more. Sprint doesn't have our local phones here any more. It's now run by Embarq. And they have renamed "Customer Escalation" to "Customer Care."

And so off to "Customer Care" Ricardo went. And when he got off the phone, we had flights leaving at 1pm, with a 2 hour layover (perfect for getting dinner) and arriving at 7pm in San Diego. Oh, and how much did it cost? Nothing. It was done for free.

So why the run around all the time with the airlines? Why the constant line of "We can't do anything for you suck it up and give us more money?" Is it because that's the only way to bail themselves out of the chasm of bankruptcy? It's food for thought.

Packing Dreams

Last night I had a dream that I had no clothes on the boat. It wasn't a normal no clothes kind of dream. It was a more literal, I'm on the boat, and I have not bothered to pack any clothes. So all I have for the whole trip is the one outfit I'm wearing. In the course of the dream, my clothes become ragged and more tattered until I look like some kind of Dickensian urchin.

This dream was followed by a dream in which I missed the boat (literally, but probably also figuratively) and found that the whole trip had passed without me.

Needless to day, this woke me up and I lay there a little panicked until I realized it was just a dream.

Then I dreamed that I was giving the Math SOL test (there is absolutely no irony whatsoever to the name SOL in the Commonwealth of Virginia) and instead of my 19 kids, I had 32. This freaked me out because I only have 23 chairs in my room and I didn't know where to put them. Then I realized that someone had doodled on their bubble sheet. Someone else had bubbled in whole rows and I couldn't get it to erase cleanly.

Clearly I seem to be experiencing a little bit of stress. I wonder why?

We're getting close to the time when we need to pack everything and ship it out so that it is waiting for us when we get there. Apparently there is little to no storage on the boat and so most things need to be sent ahead and in boxes. This means that I have to pack a lot of what I am bringing in advance of the actual departure. So I will be left without a lot of the clothes I usually wear. Given my inabilities to put together a decent outfit in the mornings, this should present quite the challenge.

In getting ready for this packing, I also have found that Iggy has grown out of everything. His chompa (I don't know what the name of this is in English, it's a hoodie fleece thing that zips partially and has a big pocket in front), as it turns out is a size 7. I can't believe that my 4 foot 7 inch kid is still pulling this thing on! His feet have grown a size and a half and none of his socks or underwear fit. So this weekend it was off to Target to replace all of that. But where to find a chompa when it's routinely in the 80s? God love ebay!

I figure the packing is like ripping off a bandaid. If I do it, it will suck, but then it will be over and not as bad as I thought it would be. Right?