Rescues

Craig has officially started his life of commuting to Birmingham every week.  He leaves on the same flight every Monday afternoon and returns late Friday night...except when there's weather in HOU and then his plane might have to be diverted to Oklahoma City.  

Last night, McKay was on a camp out and the girls and I were invited to a neighbor's house for a little birthday party which I was totally looking forward to because it's been a long week of moping around and I really needed a distraction.  We got there around 6:30 and I had planned to leave around 10:15 to pick Craig up at the airport.  Plenty of time to eat birthday cake and play a few games.  An hour later, I checked my phone and found about 20 messages from Craig and a bunch of those angry, red emoji faces. 😡 ...that's never a good thing.  

His flight from BIRM to HOU (where he was supposed to catch a connecting flight onto DAL) had been diverted directly to OKC because of weather in HOU.  There were no seats available on the direct flight from BIRM to DAL and no flights from OKC to DAL until Saturday morning.  So he was texting to let me know he wouldn't be home until sometime Saturday morning and that he would be spending the night in the OKC airport.  Blah...that sounded horrible, especially after a whole week on the road, and Oklahoma is only one state away from us, so how far could the OKC airport really be??  

It's three hours away.   

I thought the girls would want to stay at our neighbor's house for the night, but Megan wanted to come with me and Emma was thrilled to stay at home by herself (...something about playing her music really loud, which is exactly what Megan and I did in the car, so I don't know why she couldn't have just come with us...) 

After changing into more comfortable clothes, consulting with the GPS, and making one quick stop at Sonic for large Diet DPs (it's been months since I've had one of those, but I wasn't about to drive three hours at night without one,) Megan and I started our adventure.  We made it exactly 5 miles before hitting the biggest wreck I've ever seen.  20 minute diversion off and back on the freeway 2 exits further south.  

Megan was in charge of navigation which is not a great job to give a 17 yr old who's never driven a car before.  I had three places to exit one freeway and get onto a new one, and exactly three times I got off and headed in the wrong direction.  Another 15 minutes of u-turn delays in our already long drive.

We hit major construction a couple of times which also held us up for awhile.  

But at 11:30pm...3 1/2 hours from the time we left home and one hour after Craig's flight had landed, we pulled into the OKC airport terminal to rescue him from what probably would have been a long, uncomfortable, sleepless night.  He was so happy.    

Megan and I slept almost the entire way home while Craig drove and listened to his book, but guess what was the best part of this whole crazy adventure...well, besides the part where I rescued my husband...it was going on a late night, spontaneous road trip with Megan.  She was so chatty, I'm sure in an effort to keep me awake.  We talked about everything, which isn't unusual, but the part where we were uninterrupted for three whole hours was unusual...and great!  She also may or may not have said that she would like to tattoo "ELO" across her forehead, she loves them so much.  I discouraged the tattoo because...you know, our bodies are temples and all, but how cute is it that on the way to Oklahoma she discovered how much she loves all that music on my Spotify?  I adore that girl!  

I think that road trip...and Megan and the music and the Diet DP were exactly what I needed to breathe life back into me after a gloomy, pitiful week.  How grateful I am for spontaneous road trips and husbands who occasionally need rescuing.