I just hope when I see her tomorrow I can keep from giggling

I am the worst Sister in history. I can’t help it. The whole situation is absolutely dreadful and so God damned funny, I can hardly breathe.

Poor Ava had to go to Albuquerque for a meeting tomorrow. The whole trip was absolutely insane – a round trip flight, hotel, two days of food, and a car rental all for a two hour meeting. She didn’t want to go – for a whole lot of reasons, but most especially because she’d be bored and alone and I wouldn’t be there to take care of her and drive her around.  Also, because how stupid is this whole thing for a two hour meeting?

Regardless, she packed her little bag and she went to the airport.

She told me she decided not to check her bag because it was so small. I had a few questions about that, but I got sidetracked and I forgot to ask them. When she got to the security checkpoint she expected to breeze through. After all, she had hardly anything with her. Do you see what’s coming? You would if you knew our dear Ava better. She was toting in her overnight bag huge cans of hair spray, shampoo and lotion – none of which were in the nice three ounce sizes as prescribed by the Transportation Security Administration. Ava described her predicament as something that “excited the security people.” She also said, “they were quite nice after quickly arriving at the fairly obvious fact that I am retarded.”

Three of the “quite nice” security guards escorted her to the check in desk and watched her check her bag. Unfortunately, the whole thing made her flustered and she checked her sweater and her book inside. The TSA people then took her picture and let her go. I’m sure they’re posting her likeness in the break room as a warning. I blame myself for this portion of Ava’s troubles. That thing I wanted to talk to her about earlier – I just new she hadn’t considered the liquids in her bag. I just knew it.

The next exciting development was that they cancelled her 12:00pm flight to Phoenix because of mechanical difficulties. They next flight out was at 5 pm so Ava got to cool her heel in our exceedingly modern and well appointed airport. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA. Boy, do I crack myself up.  Our airport might as well be a shoe box for as large as it is. There isn’t even a Starbucks. She made the best of her time while she was there though. She ate chocolate for lunch and bought a new book. Apparently a man noticed she was cold without her sweater and offered her his socks. I also understand she made some new friends by insulting a crying Australian woman and told a man reading Who Moved My Cheese that it was written by a communist and he’d do just as well to read nothing at all and sit and meditate.  I’m sure that, secretly, those people were thankful for her unsolicited council.

Finally, she gets on the plane to Phoenix. I received a text at 4:38 that she was boarding the plane. At 4:52 I received a computerized call from the airline informing me that her flight from Phoenix to Albuquerque was cancelled. OH HOLY CRAP! I called right away but her phone was off. I immediately called Ed, her husband, and our reaction was very similar. This was not going to be good.

I got on the internet to see if there were any flights coming back home tonight only I accidently put the Tucson airport code as TUC instead of TUS and found her a lovely flight that left Phoenix to arrive in Mexico City, taking off for Panama City the next morning to Buenos Aires and ultimately landing in Tucuman, Argentina two days later. After I picked myself up off the floor and wiped the hysterical tears from my eyes, I checked for the correct flights.

So we all waited and waited and waited for Ava to get off the plane so we could let her know the horrible news. I’m totally going to hell for it, but I couldn’t stop laughing.  Ava was going to be furious. F. U. R. I. O. U. S.  Ed and I debated driving up to fetch her. We even considered getting on the road already so by the time she landed one of us would already be half way there. We pondered if she’d take the last flight to Albuquerque landing at midnight or just say the hell with it and get on the first flight home. If she took the one home, she wouldn’t have her luggage with her and Ed thought that would be very uncharacteristic of his wife. I thought she wouldn’t even care anymore.

Poor Ava got back home sometime around nine-ish so that means she traveled for eleven hours and got exactly zero miles from home. Poor, poor Ava.