To Make a Long Story Short...

Oh wait, this is perhaps the longest post ever. Bear with me…

What a weekend. Friday finally (slowly) arrived. Thursday I got all ready for a trip to Winnipeg with the boys. Getting ready included things like getting activities and snacks for the trip (we don’t pass any fast food during the 6-hour drive to Winnipeg), going over my directions and studying the map (I’ve only been to Winnipeg one time 10 years ago), setting up the DVD player in the car and checking out movies at the library, and loading my ipod.

I needed to go for an immigration physical sometime in Winnipeg as part of my application for permanent resident. The doctor’s office agreed to fit me in on Friday so that I wouldn’t have to make the trip again in February. So I also needed to get special photos taken before I left and make sure I had all my paperwork in order. Getting ready for a trip is always stressful to me, and even more so with the immigration things I would be doing in Winnipeg and the fact that I was doing it on my own.

Did I mention that the roads are snow/ice covered? When Kendall drove to Winnipeg last week, the roads were dry. Saturday after he left, it rained (almost unheard of in January). Everything was covered in solid ice. (I had to crawl into the back seat of my car from the front and kick the doors open because they were so frozen shut.) Anyway, after the ice, it suddenly got very, very cold. At a certain temperature, salt no longer works on the roads and we’re stuck with ice. So I’ll just say that I didn’t feel the safest driving down the highway.

Anyway, I woke up bright and early Friday morning, long before it was light. I pulled the boys out of bed and took them to the running car. And we were off by 5:45. In spite of my tension on the road, it was absolutely beautiful. The snow is very thick on the trees and the moon was full. Between the snow and the moonlight I could see fairly well, which felt a lot safer with the always-lurking moose. The sunrise was gorgeous. So, it was a long trip, but 6 hours and 15 minutes later we were at the doctor’s office for my immigration physical.

Kendall arrived at the Winnipeg airport at 12:45. He knew he would have to wait on me for awhile. We left the doctor’s office by 1:45 and had a rather stressful drive to the airport. At the airport I took a slow pass by the arrival area, hoping that Kendall would be looking out the window and come running after us. That didn’t happen, so I had to find parking. Well, the parking lot was full and I felt very stressed. Finally, we found parking and rushed into the airport. And there he was. I’m not much of a crier, but I cried when we saw him. It was so good to see him. I had missed him so much and even though I felt like the time went really well, there was just an underlying stress the whole time. And it didn’t help that I had just been navigating a new city by myself while shushing the boys and not being able to find parking.

The boys saw a play area in the airport and wanted to play a bit. And then….well, (I just asked Kendall how I should say what happened next. He says that I should say, “We had different expectations and I started crying and scared Kendall and he thought I had gone over the edge. The end.”) My side of the story says that we left the airport and then….well, had different expectations for the afternoon….

Basically, we got into a spat right from the get-go and I started sobbing. I sobbed. And I sobbed. For a long time. The boys were slightly dumbfounded. Like I said, I don’t cry often. I’ve cried more while Kendall has been gone, but I don’t think the boys ever knew. I know it was a release of a week and half of a lot of tension and being strong and trying not to be afraid.

Eventually, I did stop crying. Kendall and I figured out a plan for the afternoon, which included needing to be at a radiology clinic sometime before 5:00pm for a necessary chest x-ray (a requirement of the immigration physical).

Unfortunately, traffic was much, much worse than expected and we got the radiology clinic at approximately 4:58. I jumped out of the car and flew into the clinic. The woman behind the desk saw me and immediately turned off the lights. They were closed. There was no reasoning with them. No matter that we lived 6 hours away and that the clinic would not be open again until Monday morning. I got teary again. (And, on the other hand, because of working at a doctor’s office, I realized that you just cannot always make other people’s emergencies your emergency. And she did have to get to daycare to pick up her child.)

We weren’t sure what we were going to do. They told us about another place where I could get a chest x-ray, but they said I would wait for hours there. Do we do that? Or stay in Winnipeg until Monday morning? I’ll say that I was disappointed and we’ll know that’s an understatement.

So, off to the hotel. We had a voucher for a free night at a Best Western. I had booked a room ahead of time. This Best Western had a pool with a waterslide. I had really wanted to be sure that this voucher would work at this hotel. When I called ahead, the woman I talked to said, Yes, no problem. She took my information and a credit card number for incidentals. After I got off the phone with her, I looked over my voucher some more and saw some details that concerned me. So I called her again and said that I just wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t fall through any loop holes. She reassured me that, Yes, everything would be fine. The room was ours. It was going to be great.

We pulled up at the hotel and I ran in while the men waited in the car. Uh oh. They couldn’t find my reservation. Oh well, where’s the voucher. I hand her my voucher. Oh no, you can’t use this here. Calmly I explain. She says, Sorry, we can’t accept this voucher. I politely stand my ground. She goes to the back to call someone. I’m sorry, we can’t accept this voucher. I still politely stand my ground: I think Best Western needs to honor what they told me. She goes to the back to make another phone call. And what do you know, I start crying. I. Never. Do. That. No, no, not me. (Okay, so Judy caught me in the freezer aisle at the grocery store last week and asked me how I was doing and made me cry.) But trust me, this is not the way my normal self works. The woman kindly asks me to take a seat while she does some more checking. I tell her I’m going to run out to the car.

I get in the car and start sobbing. Woo wee, my men were concerned about this bawling stranger. We sit there and I try to collect myself. Pretty soon, the woman runs out to our car and says, We can give you a room.

Wow, I’m thinking I need to work on the skill of crying on command. Evan even had a suggestion for me: “You should cry like I do. Lay down on the floor kicking and screaming.”

After we got to the promised room, we made some calls and found out that they can do the chest x-ray for me in Red Lake. (Hoping it’s true.) After that, we had a wonderful time. And I don’t think I’ve cried since. :)

So, we’re getting back into a routine and I am LOVING having Kendall around again. Oh yeah, and I lost my voice. I don’t really feel sick, but my voice is just really messed up. Stress? Lots of talking? Lots of crying? Who knows.