What sort of transportation lands you in Denver for an 18-hour lay-over? An error plane!

Eighteen hours would have been a LOT of solitaire.

 The definition of being an adult, for me, is (a) always having money on you, (b) enjoying coffee, and (c) applying crucial important documents at appropriate times. Sigh. I will NEVER fulfill the needed criteria for proper adulting. I guess Savannah's driver's license test should have told me that.

But in a rare moment of maturity, I inadvertently stumbled onto a piece of information that might have messed up my Merry Christmas. I admire the "check-in early" people. I really do. But I am not one of them. When, the day before departure, my airline sent a thoughtful e-mail encouraging me to check-in, I barely resisted the impulse to hit delete. But for some reason (Picture me kissing my fingers, tapping my heart twice, and pointing up to The Man Upstairs), I opened the e-mail. Even MORE extraordinary...I READ it. And then almost hyperventilated. "Arrive in Denver Christmas Eve for an 18-hour layover to arrive in San Diego at 9 am on Christmas morning?!?!?" What?!?!? Eighteen hours???!!!

Airport inhibitions disappear after
awhile as I ignored my fellow
food court customers to position
myself under ceiling "art" to look like
I'm wearing a hat. 

Naturally, I called the airline. After waiting the usual exasperatingly long period of time designed to
make you give up, I got through to a woman with a marked Dothraki accent who assured me that nothing could be done. "Surely not..." I countered, inexplicably countering with a stiff British accent. Brad watched with interest at his perch by the pellet stove as my emotions underwent a terrifying metamorphosis. My voice squeaked, shook, and shivered. Thirty minutes later, I was offered the choice of cancelling my flight altogether or receiving a hundred dollar credit for my inconvenience.  "One hundred dollars that I will never use for me to sit in a Denver airport for 18 hours?" I asked incredulously, "Isn't that less than minimum wage?" Brad held up a paper reading $5.50 an hour. "And what makes you think that I would EVER use your airline again?" I paused and took a shuddering breath. Brad narrowed his eyes and leaned in to hear better as I hissed into the phone. "You have an important decision to make at this time," I told the airline representative, "We can continue and I will shout like crazy at you or you can get me a supervisor, preferably from Westeros, and I will yell at them." "Hold, please," she said (I think).

Sleepy...

Now well over an hour into an incredibly stressful phone call, I "suddenly" 😏 found myself with a better flight than before, getting in much earlier than I had intended which meant that I would be able to attend Christmas Eve services with my daughters. God's timing? Airline incompetence? Either way, I was relieved and satisfied with the results. I had to be assertive, persistent, and uncomfortably rude to get my way while responding to an industry that does not value me a customer but instead views me as cattle to be herded along and stuffed into cramped quarters for endless hours. Scratch that. The cattle in Wyoming County are treated much better than airline customers.  But in the end, would I have sat in a Denver airport for 18 hours? Of course. But not because that's what adults do. It's what moms do.