Vacation Adventures --- You know you're sick...

when you're willing to sleep on an airport floor.  Okay, at least I knew my husband was sick when he was willing to do it...twice.  I think he would have preferred checking into a hotel for the 6 hours between us checking out of our hotel, and being able to go to the airport, but I'm a mean taskmaster, so I wouldn't let him.  Truthfully, neither of us realized how sick he was, and we wanted to attempt to get our last day of Universal Studios in.  Yeah, that didn't happen.

We had to check out of our hotel by 10am, but since the husband wasn't feeling well, I did all of the packing and it took me a couple of hours that morning to get my tired butt up, and to get two suitcases packed to perfection.  Have you seen this video? It was totally my packing inspiration. I had one suitcase packed with nothing but 90% of our clothing, and the other was our 10% that we had been wearing the night before, or were dirty, or were being used to wrap up our souvenir glasses.  It works, well, but don't expect to be able to shove stuff in around your clothing.  

So we were off, and then stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some breakfast, and then went to the park. I even paid the extra $5 to get the preferred parking so that we didn't have to walk 'as far.' That sort of a crock though, since you have to walk a half mile from the garage just to get to either park.  Since we weren't there when they opened, but 3 hours later...Harry Potter World was PACKED, and any chance of hitting up rides that last day, with a sick husband in tow, were dashed. I took a couple of pictures and then we started the long walk back around the park to the car.  It's like...11:30 at this point and our flight doesn't leave until 8pm.  So...I tell him to put his seat back and take a nap...and I start reading the book I'm posting a review for tomorrow. 

'Throngs' of people, as the husband calls them, and a 126 minute wait, at 10:30am. First time we went, I walked in, no line at all. I should have ridden everything 5 times, instead of once!  

Around 1pm, we go get gas, drive to the airport, return the car and are hanging out on the bottom floor. In the Orlando airport, they have these (bolted the floor lest you start to think they are nice) wicker seating areas, and it's quieter and much emptier than the gates upstairs.  After attempting to sleep sitting up, the hubby just says, I'm laying on the floor and proceeds to wedge himself between the chair and a column.  After warning him that he would contract a communicable disease, and that I was burning his clothing when we got home, I gave him my coat to lay on, and kindly arranged our luggage so it sort of shielded him from people looking at him. 

There we sat for a couple of hours while I found out about a new Pope being selected and stalked Huffington Post waiting to find out who it was. A nice girl, a college sophomore in town to play golf, asked to borrow my phone to call her ride, and we ended up finding out about Pope Francis at the same time, and I even was able to watch his first remarks LIVE...all from my phone, in an airport in Orlando.  Seriously, I love love love technology.  

Sadly, that technology  didn't serve us terribly well at the Southwest/AirTran counter were the poor women couldn't figure out how to check our bags as well as get our tickets. Apparently they just changed it that week, and it was giving them a massive headache. Luckily, that gave me time to realize that one of our bags was over weight by 5lbs, and I quickly shoved my husbands shoes (umm..3lbs..he has some heavy shoes), the candy from Harry Potter World, and a beach towel (1.5lbs!) into the duffel bag I'd smartly gotten the hubs to buy the day before.  

Getting through security it's own adventure, with TSA agents telling us (as we funneled from one line to the next), that we needed to be 'assertive' to get into line. Seriously?  I'm not a fan of crowds like that...not a fan at all.  Luckily it was moving quickly, although they made me go through one of the body scanners I generally abhor. I wasn't standing around for an hour waiting to get pat down, so I just went through the thing, all the while the TSA agent insisting that it gave off, 'like a thousand less times the amount of radiation than a cell phone.' Uh-huh.   It showed a spot on my arm, and while the lady patted my arm down, I mentioned I'd given myself a huge bruise there the night before. I'm pretty sure that set it off, but at least the underwire in my bra didn't set off the metal detector this time. 

The lady behind me in line had her luggage stopped under the x-ray machine and was worried because she'd packed her son's toy ax, and thought they might think it was a weapon. Uh nope...they were more concerned about the 4 large bottles of suntan lotion in her bag.  Yep! Totally slipped her mind. 

Long story short, I drugged my husband up with Sudafed and ibuprofen at our gate, and tried really hard to get him to not try to sleep on the mashed into the carpet Craisins that were on the floor that he, once again, insisted on laying on.  We rolled onto a plane that was VERY luckily only about 25% full, and after a rather scary landing that made me question the sanity, and ability of the pilot, we got home.  Seriously, that landing was so bad and shaky that some poor woman a few rows up puked. Apparently all of us were feeling pretty motion sick.  After that, I was happy that we paid an extra couple of dollars a day to have a bus that drove us to our car, this time the bus even had a nice Chevy Chase doppelganger on it. The husband insists that the 'real' Chevy Chase wouldn't be wearing a tie. Who knows.  

So we're home, with the kitties, and nothing like being away to make you more grateful to be home.  Now if only all the laundry were done!