August 5

I'm currently caught in that weird space between emotional and physical exhaustion that often leaves me wired and rambling incoherently, so my apologies in advance if that comes to pass.

We began our day in Pleasanton (as evidenced by Abby and Isaac over there to the left in the kitchen giving each other bunny ears while one enjoyed a mocha cookie crumble frap and the other polished off his third corn dog of the morning). 

We fetched Brady a wee bit early from the last day of his day camp and after some tears (and swallowed tears), we headed off to Oakland airport, where we parked out in the middle of nowhere in the economy lot (seriously, I have no idea if I'll be able to find the car on Monday) and lugged our stuff to the terminal to board a flight to Chicago.

The flight boarded without incident and no one threatened anyone thus forcing us all to deplane so I was very nearly fooled into thinking it would actually depart on time, but no: we sat on the jetway for 20 minutes waiting to take off. Oh well. I sat with the boys in the second to last row of the plane while Adam and Abby --who was inexplicably gifted with a berth in the A-boarding group while the rest of us schmoes were relegated to mid-B territory-- were significantly closer to the front.

The flight itself was okay, save the 20 minutes late thing, but then when we finally landed at Midway, a delayed plane was parked at our gate and there were eight other recent arrivals hungrily hunting a place to deplane, so we sat for another 45 minutes on the jetway waiting for a spot to open up. 

One that finally happened (and the people in the front of the plane finally moved, geez), Adam went off to get the rental car while the rest of us waited in the most jam-packed baggage claim area I've ever seen --there were hundreds of people waiting, some of whom displayed that hopeless body language that suggested they'd been there for hours-- and at least 15 flights listed on the not-moving carousels. But eventually our flight flashed IN and the carousel moved and courtesy of God's grace and Isaac's strength (seriously, he's a stud. He could see over people and dead-lift bags over their heads with apparent ease. I love having a tall, athletic 14-year old at my beck and call), we made our way out to the curb with our 15 (slight exaggeration) bags and found Adam and hit the road for the hotel.

And that's where I am now. It's nearly 1 AM Pacific time --so 3 AM here-- and I'm both utterly exhausted and completely wired. Not a great combo. But we're here, and we fortunately have no concrete plans for tomorrow. So I'm going to try to get to sleep now, feeling thankful to be with my girl as she gets ready to begin this next extremely exciting chapter of life. There's nowhere else I'd rather be.