O dark thirty, we can hear them up and getting ready to leave and mumbling. We hide until the last minute. We told them we'd get up early, go to breakfast and get them to the airport in time to go through security.
As an appeasement thing, hubby asks me very nicely if I would wear the gawd-awful shirt she "embroidered", he would wear his too. Oh... my... gawd. FINE. A quick note on that:
1.) If she sat there for hours with thread and needle and did it, I would appreciate the effort (as long as she didn't constantly bring up the blood, sweat and tears it took), but come on. She bought a really expensive sewing machine, that hooks up to a computer, that uses a software program to automatically whip out the design. She's taken up sweat shop as a hobby apparently. There's no thought (other than picking out the software and thread it requires) she just sits and watches this thing whip up a design.
2.) She put them on denim shirts. Hubby's shirt makes him look like a prison bitch (you can call me Vicki), complete with a cute husky head on the pocket. We both look like pathetic 70 year olds.
So, we come out with our stupid shirts on, and M is so pleased. So pleased in fact that she starts on the "take a picture of them in their shirts B, take a picture, don't forget to take a picture, look at them in the shirts, we need to have a picture of that.".
We get out to the car, its pitch black out, and B wants to take a picture of us in the shirts. He takes one, its too dark, starts to take another, and in my lack of coffee, freayed nerves mood, I suggest we wait til the freakin sun comes up before we pose again. M pouts.
To Bob Evans near where I work. As we walk to the door I'm begging and pleading in my head that none of my co-workers have showed up for breakfast and see us wearing these asinine shirts. We order breakfast and wait a zillion years for it to arrive. Meanwhile we endure endless prattling from M, who we alternately piss off and please depending on her bi-polar mood that second.
Breakfast over, we drive to the airport. We park, endure the long ass walk to the check in area. They don't walk on the moving walkways, they just stand there. We crawl along the moving walkway at a snail's pace. The inner keeing in my head is raging.
We stroll over to the Delta check in, and hubby asks if they need to stand in line, or do they need to go to the automatic kiosk place. They stand there and argue among themselves and ignore him, so I pull hubby to the side to let them figure it out. So, they have two rolling bags, two carry on bags. Hubby had one roll on bag and carry on bag, B had the other roll bag and M had her bag. She just up and leaves all of the bags and gets in line, leaving B to handle two roll bags and a big carry bag. Hubby goes over and helps M get in line, meanwhile people have lined up behind M. Hubby tells M, come back here with B. She says "oh, no thanks, I'm fine". He yells at her to get back in the line with B, which causes a huge pout event. Hubby gets out of line and stands away with me, looking like escaped convicts from an embroidary prison.
They stand in line for 10 minutes, then are told to go to the kiosk. Ugh, we follow them over and they fiddle with the kiosk and get checked in. Now is that uncomfortable time where we want to bail as quickly as possible without making them feel like we're dumping them as quickly as possible, so we suggest walking toward their security check point and check out some of the interesting bookstores and coffee shops.
We make small talk "ooh, look at this book" "yes, a book" silence. "Here's an interesting book" "yes". "gee, look at the time, you have 2 hours to get through security, you'd better go before it gets busy". No line at security. We do the obligatory hugs goodbye (limp, cold hug from M, tearful I'm going to die and never see you again hug from B), we watch them gather their ID, tickets, bags and crawl through the security line. Wait until they make it through security and wave for the last time, wait a little longer just in case... then RUN back to the truck, start chainsmoking and praying our cell phones don't ring.
We're home, we're alone, we're alive, we're so stressed out we both decide we can't go back to work today, we just want to be left ALONE!!!!
Of course, in the guest room, they left all sorts of heirlooms (albums of pictures, books we'll never read, stamp collections) with a snippy note from M "we didn't get a chance to go through all of this with you (YOU HAD 5 FREAKIN DAYS), so just throw away what you want. Except for the photo albums, we did.
