To DC

Flying by myself (except for the baby, two cats, two suitcases, stroller, carry-on, and large diaper bag/bag of tricks) from one end of the country to the other, I was pretty sure that nothing would go wrong. After all, how hard could this be?

Imagine my shock when I arrive at Albuquerque's ticket counter (my mom helping me lug everything) and there's a problem: the cats. Despite being properly caged and prepped, they weren't going to be allowed on the plane. There's a minimum temperature requirement of 45 degrees, and in Albuquerque right then it was 42 degrees. Sorry, no can do. Plus, they told me, it was 31 degrees in Washington DC, so it just wasn't going to work out at all. (Hmmm... it may have been 31 degrees CENTIGRADE, but there is no way it was below freezing here. When wimpy-I got off the plane and followed Kevin through the parking lot, I had to take off my coat because it was too warm, i.e., not below freezing. Far from it.)

This makes me mad for several reasons. First, the only reason I paid to fly on stupid American Airlines definitely wasn't for their reasonable ticket prices or quality customer service. No, that's why I'd originally bought tickets on Southwest. But Southwest doesn't check cats, and I needed to find an airline that did. So I cancelled that ticket, paid twice as much for an American Airlines ticket, and then paid an arm and a leg to check two lousy suitcases. When I called their customer "service" hotline to ask questions about taking the cats, I never found an option on their menu to give me any help. And despite my laborious efforts, I never got a chance to talk to an actual person. I hate that airline.

I had to leave the cats with my mom, and she is trying to figure out how to send them to me. We'll get it straightened out, one way or the other, though.

Only one other thing went wrong on the trip, though: I missed my opportunity to board with my group in Dallas, which meant I boarded after the overhead bin space had all been filled. I'm a trooper, but it was quite inconvenient to try and fit my diaper bag, backpack, coat, baby's coat, and baby all on my lap and under the seat in front of me. It's a good thing I have a cute baby, because when the flight attendants would walk by to check if we were ready to go, they would just look at cute Penny and move on. It also helps to have a backpack and coat that matched the blue airplane carpet.

But everything else went well. Penny is delightful and travels as well as any kid. She beamed and cooed for the first flight, and then after fussing for maybe 25 minutes, she napped for a lot of the second flight.