I don't have any really good pictures to accompany this entry, If I come across any, I will upload them. I have a choppy video of our pooch playing with Hannah
During the last month or so, I had the opportunity to visit home. Now before I go any further, its important for those people already thinking to themselves, "you dirty rat, you didn't come visit!" to know that I was there only for the funeral of my dear Grandmother. She was the primary reason I came back and I didn't stay long enough to see anyone. On top of that I had Abbi with me which made any real visits quite impossible. Oh the joys of traveling with an infant.....never again......
Cue the wavy story lines.
About mid may or so Grandma passed away. My grandmother raised the first four of us during a difficult time for my parents. I was very close to Grandma, having been one of the two oldest grand kids and able to remember her care. My Grandma had very severe Alzheimer's disease, she has for years now and we all knew it was just a matter of time before she passed away. It helped to know that I had had my chance to say good bye a few years after I returned from the mission field and before she had lost her cognitive abilities completely. But all in all it was still very difficult for me to see her gone. This was a first for me. In all my immediate and extended family this was the first real death that was close, or well, part of me. I've never had to say goodbye to a cousin or an uncle that I was particularly close to, in this same capacity. It was always someone else's relative that passed away. I don't care to go into too much detail on the actual service other than to say it was beautiful. It was well organized and I feel like it could not have gone any better. I will tell you that my stay was very brief and I am sorry for not getting to make the rounds to see everyone. Aaron Thomson, my good friend and emotionally adopted brother, works for Delta airlines and was kind enough to give up one of his very limited buddy passes for me to travel with. This pass saved me almost $700. If it weren't for that opportunity I would not have been able to fly to UT. We are making ends meet here but just barely. A full priced ticket would have been hundreds of dollars out of the question, and not for lack of wanting, but for sincere lack of funds. Moving on.
A buddy pass is basically a stand by pass. You are allowed on the plane if there are empty seats and no one with a higher priority trumps you out of that seat. April and I decided that the only way for me to make the trip happen was to take Abbi with me. April is contracted into a certain amount of hours during her '90 probational period' with her new job. She couldn't take the time off to be home. Having Hannah watched by ward members and Uncle Don was easy enough but an infant is another ball of wax entirely, 'specially my lil puka (pooka) who has stranger danger anxiety up the wazoo. Since she's not two yet, she came as a lap child. I knew ahead of time that having a child with me would prevent me from getting into any empty first class seat, what I didn't know is how much I would later regret that fact. Coach is always full, first class isn't. The first night we tried to board a flight to SLC we missed it by a grundle of seats. There were several folks ahead of me with a higher priority. Which meant that the following days would be full of those same people trying to get wherever they were going. Aaron counselled me into flying to LAX and then on to SLC. The next night, Thursday, I made the flight by the last seat. Lucky indeed. It was nice to be on my way. The tension and nervousness of flying is something I always get. I don't know why. I am not afraid of anything except my girls going into puberty. But for undisclosed purposes, I get that small shot of adrenaline accompanied by the pit in the stomach. My hands sweat a little, my breathing speeds up. Similar to the feeling of a the anticipation of the rocket ride at lagoon, you know the one that shoots you down. Only not to that extreme. Later it all turns to a floating sensation in my head, odd, I know. The flight to LA was a six hour red eye. I figured that would be good because my lap ornament would sleep most of the way, right, WRONG. I got lucky and was on a 767 with nice seats and a great 4 year old seat partner. If you've never been on a plane that big, it has three rows of seating. Two seats on the outer most rows and four in the middle. The little guy to my left was a Hawaiian boy flying with his papa, (granddad) and a few other members of his family. It was his first time flying. He looked out the window and would lean over and tug on my shirt sleeve "uncle, uncle, whats that?!" I had a good time answering his questions. Some may have been annoyed with his constant petitioning for information, but I found it endearing. His family apologized and I told them not to worry a wink. I started a conversation with them and found out that they live only minutes from me. That settled it, they provided all the inflight food and drinks for us, I had snacks and Spam Musubi's all I could eat the rest of the flight. Abbi was too restless on my lap to sleep. It had been a long day for her but this was all new, not to mention the fact that she only sleeps in a crib, never in arms. Nearly three and a half hours into the flight she finally fell asleep. It was about 2 am and the cabin was silent. She had settled into an awkward position with her head in my left armpit with her torso on my lap and legs between mine. I shifted her hoping to make her more comfortable and that's when my right leg went warm. The kind of free flowing warm that you can only get from a hot liquid soaking through the fabric of your jeans. Yep, she peed on me. SOAKED my whole leg. Still sleeping like an angel though. I had to change her, I got up and ferried her to the back of the plane and attempted a diaper change in that TINY lavatory. I managed to change her diaper and drenched clothes but had no remedy for my leg. I only had her diaper bag on board, My luggage had been checked. I sopped up as much as I could with toilet paper and then tried to blot out the rest. I made my way back to our seat and tried to get her to settle back down. She was a full mast now and didn't show any signs of interest in sleeping. By this time the plane was due to land in about an hour or so anyway. I coddled her the best I could and entertained her with the nice lcd screen in front of us. The free games and such were nice. She watched the first half of Bolt in silence. My Headphones weren't working. We landed in LAX at about 4:30 am. The next flight to SLC was about 30 minutes later but was already full to capacity. So I called Aaron who was gracious enough to sit by his laptop all day and help me every step of the way. I really owe him for this one! He got me booked on the next flight and we began the 'wait'. This time it was only an hour more and the gate was only two away from our arrival gate. The lady at the gate was kind enough to find out who I was and where I was going. She booked me on the flight knowing that I wasn't going to get on but there was another hours to kill and there's always the chance. Abbi had no interest in sleeping. She wanted to walk around. So we walked to the bathrooms and did some butt changing. We then bided our time till the flight came. I talked to the same gate lady and asked what it was looking like, the answer was "not good, Mr. Foley, its filling up fast, I can tell you that you're not getting on this flight unless someone doesn't show up". We waited there anyway. She was right, an hour and a half at LAX and we were weren't going anywhere. Sure enough, the flight filled up and took off leaving me in my blue carpet and bench seated kingdom. The next flight out was leaving from a different terminal in little less than 35 minutes. The gate lady said she was headed over there and would make sure I got transferred over. I thanked her and started the LONG walk to terminal 5. Because the airport wasn't open yet, I had to go outside and walk all the way around and go back through security. We hustled the best we could and made it there with only minutes to spare. On the previous flight to SLC I had missed the seat by two people. The last person to get on was a young lady, partnered with a freckled guy, that didn't want to be separated from her boyfriend. He insisted on her going anyway and he'd catch up. The gate agent tried to tell them, pointing to me, 'he only needs one seat and has a child, the man, late 20's skinny freckles, horsey face, snubbed his nose at me and ran his bony fingers through is wool-like orange/blond hair. Turning to the girlfriend, 'No, you go now and I'll meet you in Salt lake.' he insisted. She reluctantly boarded the plane. 'What a douche,' I thought to myself, but hey that's the way you play the game. Well the same douche was waiting at the next terminal when I got there, how he'd beat me I don't know, well, I guess he wasn't carrying an infant, a car seat and a duffel. I couldn't find a bench seat anywhere and my cell phone had nearly died. I found an outlet near the ticket booth and sat on the floor with my dear daughter. She was over tired, hungry and ornery as a wildebeest. The gate agent, same one from the previous terminal, found me in the crowd and smiled. She was a pretty lady, early 30's, Hispanic but raised American. She told me that my chances were good on this flight but that it was a small plane. She coo'ed at Abbi a second and went back to her counter. The flight began to fill. Now, in LA you can see the standby lists on the monitors that are placed strategically around the terminals. They list the people in front of you and how many seats are available. Its a bit like watching horse races. Its a constant gamble and the only difference is that the horses are eating cinnabons and drinking Starbucks. Abbi seemed to sense the tension and began to fuss and act up. The numbers began to fly up as the 8:30 flight began to board. They were close, I was getting on the plane, on the last available seat. Just as the final boarding call came up, a pilot came hustling down the isle and trumped the guy in front of me, the red douche guy. The pilot, dressed in full uniform, hat to boot, took a ticket and doomed me to be the first person to not get on the plane. The other douche guy got on and the gate agent looked at me and Abbi, now all red eyed from crying (her not me, well not yet anyway) and said with a forlorn tone. 'I am so sorry, I thought you'd get on that one for sure. I am not the gate agent for the next flight but I will book you on it ok?' I thanked her for all her work and wished her a good day. She looked at my luggage predicament and said, hang on, she walked over to the trolley rack and swished her card by the reader. She pulled a luggage cart off the rack and said, here, I hope this helps a little. I thanked her again. The next flight was at 10:30 am. We had two more wretched hours to kill in a now bustling airport. I had only taken a 5 dollar bill with me, that's all I had. And I knew if I had any hope of calming my poor sweet overtired puka it was with hot greasy cheap burritos. Ok, I didn't really know that but I had my hopes. We sombered back toward our original terminal 4 and the next gate. We got to use the tunnel this time which connects the two terminals without having to go through security again. Its the longest echoing hallway I've ever seen. Abbi loved it, she finally got to run and stretch her legs. We made our way up to the Mcdonalds and I spent my money on some food for Abbi. She snarfed down the breakfast burrito and then yawned. My hopes rose. We had two hours to kill and she was finally showing signs of exhaustion. I rigged the carseat that I had been lugging through LAX to the trolley so that it would lay back slightly. I laid Abbi down and pushed the cart next to me over in a darker corner. I sat in the worn, blue leather seat which creaked as my weight settled in. The light through the windows had fully illuminated the airport now. Much to contrast the darkness we were greeted with when we landed. Notwithstanding the noise, Abbi zonked out. Finally I had some peace. I had been dealing with a fussy infant for 15 hours and had been peed on once. Mind you, I was still wearing those shorts. Slowly the noise began to fade to a dull buzz in the back of my mind and my head began to do the high priest head bob. I tried to stay awake to make sure I didn't miss the call for the next flight, but I had an hour to go still. I caught about 10 minutes sleep and woke when my head fell through my hands. I had propped myself in a familiar 'sleep in church' position and was tyring to look inconspicuous. The final hour began to slow trudge by. The boarding calls began and I perked up. Abbi startled with the overhead announcement, 'attention all passengers, we are now boarding flight **** to Salt Lake City. Will our first class passengers board now followed by zone 1.' Having played this game and communicated many times with Aaron throughout my now 6 hour ordeal. I waited patiently as the standby list came up on the monitor. There were 20 or so seats available for buddy passes and I was number 40 something on the list. Disappointed but not devastated I put my chin back down into my open palms. My fingers rustling the hair over my ears. Suddenly, my ears perked. I sat straight up in my chair as I heard my named called on the loud speaker. "Mr. Chadwin Foley, please report to the agent counter for check in." WHAT!? there was no way I was getting on this flight! I roused Abbi and grabbed out luggage. The two ladies standing there at the counter looked at each other and chuckled in recognition of something. They then smiled at me and said right this way sir, issued my boarding pass and showed me to the gate and onto the plane. I didn't find out till later that the first pretty Hispanic gate agent had done me a solid favor. She had put a little mark on my name when she booked the next flight. Melissa, Aaron's wife, told me it was a letter "N". This gave me, at least, priority over the last person to board. I noticed several other people looking over their seat request tickets and proverbially scratching their heads trying to figure out how I was suddenly in front of them. I nearly shouted I was so thrilled. I was finally on my way to Salt Lake City. Home.
