Sorry Orlando, some other time

About a week ago, we gave in to the cold and got the gas fireplace cranking. J and I felt somewhat pathetic, as though we were being 'soft' and wimpy about the colder temperatures, but damn - that heat felt so good. A few days later, in the space of only 24 hours, at least three people - all locals who are used to the Northwest - told me that this weather was not normal for this time of year. There I was, thinking the endless heavy rain (not drizzle), storms, and icy winds were just par for the course after summer, but apparently not. Good to know.

It seems that autumn decided to do a runner. She raced past us, ensured that the trees would all turn spectacular colours... but as for a gradual transition with the temperatures, nope. In the space of less than three weeks, I've gone from wearing singlet tops and T-shirts to multiple layers, boots and rain jackets. Miss Pie even wore her new puffy down jacket today, which I hoped wouldn't be needed until around Thanksgiving at the earliest.

A screenshot of my Instagram feed, from this week.
I really am sinking into new lazily low territory.

Fortunately, we'll soon be getting a respite from this cold. It snuck up on us, but our little trip back to Australia is almost here - as in, we leave in eight days.

Last year, our visit home was preceded by counting the months, weeks, and days until we went. It had been two and a half years since we'd last seen everyone, so our excitement was at an all time high.

This year, it really was a case of J and I looking at each other last week, and exclaiming Oh fuck! We're going to Australia in a few weeks. Fuuuuck!

It's not that we felt no joy at the idea, but that we've had a tonne of things to organise lately, thrown in with small kids settling in to new routines of a new school and preschool. J is swamped under at work, and getting our visa renewal paperwork sorted for the trip has been fraught with stress and complications that has put us in fowl moods. On top of that, this trip is only two weeks long - with a family wedding in Canberra in the middle - so fielding queries about our itinerary from well-meaning family and friends has been tricky (partly to do with the visa renewal process making it uncertain if or when I'd need to go to the US Consulate in Sydney, and the only time slots available were two days before the wedding... in Canberra).

In terms of personal relationships, I've also been more than a little anxious about having to see someone who - the last time I spent days on end with, a few years ago - did not end on a good note. I won't lie, my stomach is in knots at the thought of the potential drama she'll create. We just never know with her. When she's happy in life, she's a wonderful person to be around and in the past, I've held tremendous respect for her but in recent years, things have disintegrated and it can be like walking on eggshells. Seeing her is unavoidable though, and I just need to put on my big girl pants.

But then last night, the cloud lifted. The visa renewal process turned a corner and we also discovered I don't need to front up in person at the US Consulate (assuming there are no problems with our paperwork), so I guess I'm not likely to meet Orlando Bloom there this time. Yay about the US Consulate, but bummer about Orlando, dude.

Other things began to fall into place, and despite our concerns about how on earth we'll find the time to catch up properly with everyone we want to, we began to feel the first tingles of excitement about the trip. Our first twenty-four hours in Sydney will be a blank canvas, so we are keeping it that way, to just hang out as our own little family of four. A night in a nice hotel in the heart of the city, a ferry ride to Manly (a place which is special to me, and I was unable to get to last year), and deep breaths to prepare for the following two weeks of madness.

I'm trying not to think about the fact that we can't fly directly from Seattle, so what is already a long flight now has another three hours plus layover time at LAX added. Calming me is the knowledge that Miss Pie is now the age that the Faery was when we very first flew from Sydney to Los Angeles. Three and a half is a much more manageable age for long-haul flights. With any luck, we won't have half the dramas we had last time - either with Customs or the luggage mix up. Big learning curves there. BIG.

And there you have it. Things will be even quieter on this blog front - for a while, I suspect - but it's all good. I will be in sunshine, making the most of a brief top-up of sweet spring air, and time with our most-loved ones south of the Equator.

Homecoming, Part 2

This story picks up from my last post. The one where we were exhausted after a long-haul flight to Sydney, got delayed going through Immigration, had trouble finding our luggage, made it through the line to Customs, only to realise one of our suitcases had been left behind - on the floor next to the luggage carousel.


Trying to keep as calm as possible, I explained the situation to the Customs officer, gesturing to the lone suitcase in the distance, on the other side of the secure barrier. He enlisted another officer to escort me back to collect the suitcase. After being ushered past what felt like several hundred people, and pushing through the crowd waiting to line up for Customs, I dashed over to the suitcase. At that moment, an airport employee was doing the rounds in one of those motorised buggies. He reached down and began to pick up the suitcase and I had to shout out to get his attention. I couldn't believe the timing of it - if I'd been escorted over only another five seconds later, that suitcase would have vanished and been in need of further tracking down.

So, suitcase in hand, I was escorted back to the Customs section, where J had been waiting with the girls. All the other bags had been let through without a search, but because I'd declared the beef jerky (bought for a friend who'd asked for it), I had to pull it out to show the officer.

He immediately reached over and said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to take that. No meat products of any kind are allowed into the country."

"What, not even cured, prepackaged stuff?" His withering look was all I needed to know it was not the time to put up a fight. I kissed goodbye the twenty-odd dollars I'd spent on that jerky, and moments later, we stepped outside into the cool Sydney air.

We found a taxi van that could fit all our things, and made the short journey to our friends' place. It was a little surreal, because they'd moved to a new house only a month earlier, in an unfamiliar area. Instead of whizzing through streets I knew, I found myself staring at neighbourhoods and shops that I didn't recognise. I know Sydney pretty well, but not the pocket they'd moved to.

Ringing their doorbell led to the first of many excited reunions for the trip. Squishy hugs and kisses all round, kids squealing up and down the hallway, and relieved looks exchanged between J and I. We were finally in Sydney, with friends, and we could relax a little - at last. There was no need to start the three-hour drive south to my parents until after lunch. It was only 9am.

My friend needed to leave for work in about half an hour, and her husband was all set to play daddy day care with their son, the Faery and Miss Pie, while J and I hopped on a train to fetch our rental car.

I realised with a sense of urgency that it had been far too long since I'd last brushed my teeth (long-haul travel sans kids is so much easier), so I went to the purple suitcase to retrieve the bathroom bag. There was a padlock on it, so I called out to Justin in the next room for the combo.

He called back that he didn't know as he'd never used the padlock before. I stood there, wondering what kind of fucking idiot puts a padlock on something when they don't know the combo.

Can you guess where this is going?

Not wanting to entertain the growing panicked thoughts in my head, I unzipped the side pocket of the bag, holding my breath, hoping to see the girls' underwear as I'd packed it.

Calvin Klein G-strings... definitely not our luggage. Identical, though.

What were the odds? The owner must have picked up our bag first, because this had been the only purple bag on the floor next to the luggage carousel.

I dropped to the floor and curled into the foetal position. I may or may not have resembled Basil Fawlty at that moment.

Thankfully, my wonderful friend sprang into action. She immediately pulled up some Qantas phone numbers online, and began calling to enquire what needed to be done with mistaken luggage.

We decided that the best plan of action was for us to head straight into town for the rental car, and bring the purple case along, then drop it off at the airport once we had the car, on our way back to their place (if you're wondering why we didn't just book a car rental from the airport, the reason was a good $1,000 difference over the three-week period we'd be needing it).

Lugging a complete stranger's suitcase on Sydney trains? While massively sleep-deprived? Not something I thought I'd be doing on my first morning in Sydney.

My lovely friend had to catch the same train to work so we set off with J, and before getting on the train, she treated us to a round of much-needed coffee. Riding the train with her and J, coffees in hand,  minus kids - it was a mindfuck. It was just like old times, twenty-something again.

If emerging from the underground station into broad daylight at Kings Cross is not enough to pull you back to earth and shake the last rattles of long distance travel out of your bones, then nothing else will. I pulled my phone out to discover some choppy voicemail from Qantas staff, asking about the mistaken bag and wanting to know how far away we were from the airport. Phew. My biggest fear was that the person with our purple bag had left Sydney and was long out of town before realising she had the wrong bag. (I'm going to assume 'she', judging from the Calvin Klein G-strings.)

With our rental car sorted out, we drove back to the airport (baptism by fire for poor J - we've been driving on the other side of the road since first moving to L.A.). We found the office we'd been described, and a quick exchange of the purple bags ensued. Thank fuck, because ours had 95% of the girls' belongings in it. There would have been tears and meltdowns if we'd had to go without.

An hour later, we were packed up and back on the road, heading down to the NSW south coast to see my parents. We were in a daze and still unsure whether to laugh or cry about the morning we'd just experienced.

It's funny though - things could have been so much worse. So many ifs.

If I hadn't bought beef jerky back at a friend's request, we may not have even noticed we were one suitcase short as we were going through customs. At what point would we have realised? I hate to think. Or perhaps if I'd packed the beef jerky into the purple bag, we'd have discovered much sooner that we had the wrong purple suitcase. (I should be thanking Paul for his random requests.)

If I hadn't gone to brush my teeth at my friend's house, I may not have discovered we had the wrong purple suitcase until we'd arrived at my parent's house... nearly 200km away. Three hours away. How much more of an inconvenience would that have been?

So... what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right? Or something like that. The intensity of that morning seemed to wipe out most the jet lag and reset my body clock. I had no choice but to get with the programme, but that night? I slept like the proverbial baby. Don't even remember my head hitting the pillow.

My only real concession to jet lag the following day was that I woke up at 6am, and that was it. I was tempted to try and sleep some more, but then I caught a glimpse of the golden light bouncing off the walls. I grabbed both my camera and iPhone (sad, yes, I know), threw on an old dressing gown, and crept outside.

I'm glad I did. Possibly the most beautiful sunrise - ever - was waiting for me, and the stresses of the day before just melted away.

I was home.

Homecoming, Part 1

If our arrival in Sydney was to be any indicator, our visit there was destined to be one big ol' stinky pile of poo. From the time we checked in at LAX, until we'd been on Australian soil for a good five hours, one unlucky turn of events evolved into another, and another. That old adage - what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger - was one that ran through my head many times that morning.

The first piece of bad luck we had was the downgrading of the plane for our flight. It was supposed to be an Airbus 380, and J had already pre-booked our seats online so that we could all sit together in the same row of four seats. Upon check-in, we were told that the aircraft was no longer an Airbus 380, but a 747 - smaller plane, obviously, so our pre-booked seats were no longer valid. We were assigned new seats.

When it was time to finally board, we walked down the aisle, searching for our row... and kept walking... and walking. Turned out that our row was the very last one at the back. Cramped and squishy? Understatement.

Lucky for me, the girls were in top form for the flight and gave us the least amount of grief possible, so I was willing to forgive Qantas.... until the final hour before landing. This is normally when the landing cards are handed out, but it was announced that the crew had been given the wrong pile of landing cards before departing LAX. Most of the cards were in Spanish only. There weren't enough English landing cards for everyone on the flight, and passengers at the back of the plane would be handed cards in Sydney, after getting off the plane. Translation: anyone sitting towards the back of the plane were royally fucked if they had hopes of a speedy getaway.

Being in the back row, naturally, we were last off the plane. After stepping off, I was handed four landing cards, and we walked along numerous corridors and travelators until finding an available seat where I could fill out all four cards while J helped the girls burn off some steam running around.

I don't know how long it took, but bear in mind it was 6am local time and I'd just stepped off a fourteen-hour flight - with a grand total of maybe fifteen minutes' sleep (I don't sleep well on long-haul flights under the best of circumstances, let alone dealing with a bored toddler). Each landing card required names, birth dates, passport numbers, flight numbers, reasons for visit, citizen status, customs declarations - it was excruciating to do. Four times. This is why they normally give out landing cards during the flight, when there isn't a sense of immediacy to join the queues through Immigration, before they get even longer... and one's brain hasn't completely farted from exhaustion.

Our plan was - once out of the airport - to grab a taxi and head to our friends' place. They didn't live far from the airport and we were going to refresh/recharge, leave the girls with them, jump on a train to Kings Cross (where we were to collect out rental car), drive back, pack up the car, then begin the three-hour drive south to my parents' house.

A long day, already somewhat complicated, and not in need of any further drama.

Despite it being only 7am at this point, the queues through Immigration were already insane. By the time we made it through and over to the luggage carousel, it looked empty of all luggage from our flight.

Fuck.

We needed to collect three suitcases: one black, one purple, and one grey. Then from oversized luggage, we needed to collect an infant car seat, a booster seat, and a stroller. I went ahead and retrieved our oversized luggage while J waited with the girls at the carousel. And waited. And waited.

After about another ten minutes, we realised our bags weren't going to be found there anymore, so we asked around and staff radioed one another to see where our luggage could be. In the end, they'd been pulled off and put on the floor next to the carousel - but right down the other end, where the crowds were milling to join the queues for Customs. People had been standing around our bags on the floor, which is why we didn't see them.

Heaving big sighs of relief, J loaded up the bags onto a trolley, while I attempted to stop Miss Pie from running off, out of sight. Then we reconvened into the queue for Customs... another long line, of course.

Eventually, it was our turn to declare whatever goods needed to be declared. I informed them that I had some American beef jerky (as requested by a friend). The Customs official asked me which bag, I looked at our trolley, and saw that the bag in question wasn't there. J - as sleep deprived as I was - had only put two of our suitcases on the trolley. With all the oversized luggage needing to be rearranged, it was an easy oversight.

I frantically glanced through the glass wall, past the long queues through Customs, and saw our grey suitcase, standing alone on the floor by the carousel.

I wanted to cry...


(to be continued)