Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Shuttles and Body Pillows

It’s a crazy thing how the mind works. Last week, my sister was flying in from Europe. Since she lives there, she doesn’t have a cell phone that works both there and in the States. (at least that is the story that I get) Since I live the closest to the airport, and talk to her the most, I was tasked with safely picking her up from the airport. Which sounds easy, except she was coming in at 1am on a weeknight and I was already going to be 3 hours away. So I found what I thought to be a wonderful, cheap, shuttle service. Turns out, you get what you pay for.

They called me the day of her flight to confirm and I explained to them that she was flying in from Europe and I would have no way of contacting her. At this time, I was told that their office closed at midnight, so we decided that the driver would be in an assigned spot 30 minutes after she landed. Around 9:30 that night, they called again, to confirm. I explained again that I had no way of contacting her and that the driver was just supposed to be there to meet her. At this point, I was told that the office would stay open until they picked her up. How nice. At 12:30, they called and said that her flight had taken off an hour late from Miami. OK, great. So what? Well, that means she won’t be there at 1:25am to be picked up, and she should be ready around 2:15. But the problem was, they couldn’t get her until 4:15. A.M. From O’Hare International Airport. After she had already been awake for 24 straight hours. Great, now I am not worried at all.

I had told my dear sister that if the shuttle wasn’t there to get her after she got her baggage to find a payphone and call me. Which she did, around 2:30am. I gave her the number to the shuttle, and she called them, and then called me back, and then settled in to read her book. She finally made it to my house around 5:30am. But forgot to call me to tell me she was safe until 6:30am. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.

But the point of this post is not to whine about Pipeline People Movers. They did do what they said they would, they got my sister from point A to point B for $29. They just didn’t do it in an extremely timely manner. My point was to tell you about my friend who is also pregnant.

For whatever reason, she has really poor circulation. So she is always cold, and her fingernails are always bluish-purple. She always sleeps either on her back or on her stomach, because if she lies on her side, then that side of her body will fall asleep while she is asleep. Which, obviously, is irritating. She was telling me about this last week, and how she bought the body pillow that is curved, and how great it was and it really helped her to sleep. So each time my phone rang, at 12:30, 2:30, 2:35, & 6:30; and then when I woke up in a panic at 5:30 because I hadn’t heard from her, and again at 6 when Workaholic returned my text telling me that she had gotten to our house safe, EACH TIME, half of my body was asleep. And I was PISSED. Not because I couldn’t feel my fingers, but I was pissed at my friend. Somehow, I blamed her for falling asleep while I was asleep. I was quite sure it had nothing to do with my rapidly expanding belly, or the weird, super-cushy pillow at the hotel, or the more firm mattress I was sleeping on…NONONO…it was my friend’s fault. And I HATED her for it.

Fortunately for both of us, my hatred lasted only until I got up for the day. In fact, I completely forgot that I hated her until I thought about going to work later that weekend. She understands, and isn’t mad at me for blaming her and hating her in my sleep. Or lack thereof. My point? It’s funny how the mind works. That’s all.

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