The Last Minute Rush

What a day.

I planned well. My luggage was packed the day before, still open, but with all the contents inside. I had weighed everything, and I was perfect. I was more than 10 pounds under on my big case and right on with my carry-on.

The day was meant to be about finishing up a few things around the house, with plenty of time for tea breaks in between. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

From the time I got up, it seemed like I was running from one task to the next. One of those tasks was printing our cruise documents for both cruises. It should have been an easy thing, when the printer cooperates.

I couldn’t get the e-print to work, so I finally reinstalled it. The paper went through, but there was nothing on it. The ink cartridges were full, so I cleaned the cartridges and managed to print one set before the printer refused to do anything else. I assumed the cartridges must have dried up, so I changed them.

Now the printer wouldn’t recognize the new cartridges.

After 45 minutes of this, I finally did what I should have done in the first place and used John’s printer. That one didn’t want to cooperate either and required me to email the documents to John so he could print them. Finally, success.

A lot of my time was also spent downloading shows to watch on our flights and during those late evenings when we’re away. If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you’ll know that the TV viewing leaves much to be desired. I’m in the habit of needing to watch something before falling asleep, so I wanted to have a few things downloaded.

I managed to get a few, but our Wi-Fi became painfully slow, probably because everyone was doing exactly the same thing. That took a lot longer than expected.

Then there were all the household tasks that needed to be done before leaving. I don’t like leaving things until we get home, so that included washing the towels and sheets on the bed. Having someone stay in the house while we’re gone also meant I couldn’t just leave a mess behind.

Then it was time to go pick up my brother, who will be staying at the house while we’re gone to take care of our elderly cat.

Have you ever driven the QEW at 4 p.m. toward Hamilton? If not, don’t.

From the moment I got on the highway until I got off, it was stop-and-go traffic, making the trip more than twice as long as it should have been. And, of course, we had to do it all over again on the way home.

Once we were back home, we threw pizza down our throats, gave Stephen the necessary information he would need, and realized I still needed to close up my bags and pack my personal item.  Somehow, the suitcase that had been more than 10 pounds under the limit was now right at 50 pounds.

How did that happen?

Son #1 was also over by 10 pounds, so he needed to do some readjusting of his own.

We were zipping everything up as we were heading out the door!

Thankfully, the remainder of the process went smoothly. Check-in at the airport was quick and easy, and we made it to the gate with two hours to spare, which is unheard of for us.

We used that extra time trying to recover Son #1’s iPhone, which had crashed shortly before we left the house while he was trying to do an update. We weren’t successful.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to try a couple of different things once we check into the hotel in Amsterdam. If not, an Apple Store will be added to our list of things to do and see.

Not exactly the start to our trip that I had envisioned, but things can only get better from here.