A slight change in plans

*twitch*

It’s always in the last week that everything goes (pardon my French) tits up, isn’t it? One has everything cleverly planned for the holiday, and the last week is that week where lady Fortuna is having her ‘mensies’ (visitation of Aunt Flo / period) and decides to mess everything up.

Daan turned to me today and said: “We’re not leaving at 9AM, we’re going at 5 PM. After I dislodged my neck from between my shoulders and got my vein to stop throbbing, I calmly asked him why.

He told me that the actual KLM plane won’t leave until 5, otherwise we’re flying Delta. The latter would mean that we not only travel less comfortably, but that we’ll be lower on the list of getting a seat.

The problem with 5PM, is that if we can’t go on that flight, we’re basically screwed, and we’ll have to wait until the next day. If we couldn’t get on the 9 AM flight we would have had plenty of other flights to try. This does not easy my stressful mind.

And more problems reared their ugly head with this new development. As I said, I had everything nicely planned out. We would arrive in Atlanta around 12:30 PM local time, which would be 6:30 PM our time. Then we’d get the car and drive to Valdosta. It would be little under 4 hour drive, but I figured we’d be there around midnight Dutch time (taking the customs and luggage in consideration), which would be do-able.

Instead, we’re now arriving 8:15 PM local time, which will be 2:15 AM our time… YIKES. That means by the time we get out of the airport it will be closer to 4 AM. That’s going to be fun with a tired 8 year old. Also, no way is Daan still driving  4 hours then.

I did the only thing I could do; I cancelled the cheap motel in Valdosta and booked a slightly less cheap one (still the cheapest I could find) near the Atlanta airport. That means that the next day we’ll have to travel the full 8 hours to Orlando. I was all pleased with myself when I had cut that journey in half, but Lady Fortuna is having her strop on.

This sucks on so many levels. The journey went from ‘as relaxed as a standby flight could be’ to ‘utter freaking nightmare’. It’s not quite a night flight, but late enough to be a huge toll on Elora. Plus now we have two full day journeys ahead of us, instead of a day and a half.

There is a positive side, and I’m clinging to that. Elora can go to school in the morning, which means

that we can change her free day to the Monday after the trip. This will be a load off. Also, we don’t have to get up really early… actually we kind of do, because Elora’s going to school, lol… never mind on the latter.

Anyway, it is what it is. And I’m still very happy we’re going. I could do without the ‘not fun surprises’ from now on though. If there are more surprises, I would like them to come in the form of lots of money.