Storm Troopers

The weatherman warned of the coming snow days before our trip to Michigan. We planned to leave mid-week and stay through the holiday weekend. The day before our trip I was headed into work, earphones on and the latest song I downloaded from iTunes. Cruising down West 34th Street I was just a few stops away from my office and then my phone rang. It was Marc on the other end, I could here him speaking to another person on the line and then he says, "our flight is already canceled for tomorrow and Delta can get us on a flight today that leaves at 12:47pm." I stuttered for a second not really be prepared to leave in a mere three hours and said OK, let's go! I rushed onto the office, grabbed my laptop, spoke to my boss about the flight and tore out as quickly as I came in.

The clock is ticking, I need to get back to Brooklyn, pack, and get the dog over to my mom's house. I jumped into a cab and couldn't stop looking at my watch every 5 minutes. I was fairly optimistic that we could pack our bags, get Zachary together and drop him off in NJ and make it in time to fly out of LaGuardia. Finally, at home, I raced up to the apartment to see Zach's stuff piled up and some luggage partially filled with clothes. Marc was reciting all the things he packed for me and I stared dumbfounded at the clothes hanging in my closet trying to decide what to take. I knew we had "cottage clothes" up at the lake so I scrambled and grabbed some jeans and sweatshirts.

It became obvious that there was no way we could get Zach to my mom's house and we started to go back and forth with other options. We called our driver, Rafi, to pick us up and asked him if he could make two trips. "Rafi, can you bring us to LaGuardia, and then take Zachary to Anthony's mother's house in NJ?" Rafi was more than happy to oblige so we hurriedly finished packing and waiting for him to arrive.

Marc, Zachary and I were piled into the back seat of a town car with luggage between us. I was excited to be up at the lake house in the winter as I've only been there in summer and fall. Arriving at LaGuardia, I kissed Zachary on the head, made sure he was comfortable in his bed in the backseat, thanked Rafi and walked into a very crowded terminal. Checking in wasn't too bad but the security line was so long it wrapped around a corner so we couldn't really tell where it ended. We trudged to the end of the line and waited patiently to get up to security. Almost immediately, two women behind us started to fight over who knows what and their truck driver-inspired comments to each other were shocking! I kept my distance from these burly gals as we slunk up to the security checkpoint. Finally at the gate we were ready to board.

As I sunk into my seat, I finally had a chance to catch my breath and relax with my venti iced two-pump vanilla non-fat latter from Starbucks. Happily, we were on our way racing against time, weather and brash women.