I wish I'd never been born

Our flight home for Christmas got canceled yesterday and I was more or less devastated. Yesterday was just awful, well, the first half at least. It was snowing and we had errands to run before our evening flight that we still thought we'd be taking. I had to go to the DMV to get a new license so I could have some ID with my real name on it before trying to get through security at the airport. Getting to the DMV was awful -it was snowing, State street was a block of ice, and on the way over we bumped into somebody's back bumper because our car just kept on sliding. Luckily there was no damage and the guy was really nice.

So I went and took my written test, but the driving and the testing took long enough that I was going to be late for my doctor's appointment (nothing serious) so I had to call and reschedule, which if you change your appointment without giving an hour's notice they will charge you for the missed appointment. I explained that I was in Orem, that the roads were ice, and that we had actually hit someone already today, and the girl on the phone was nice and said I probably wouldn't be charged because of how terrible it was outside.

So we got to the health center and as I waited to be called in, Optimistic., who had been on the phone, told me that our flight had officially been canceled, that nothing was going in or out of Portland, and that we'd essentially be missing Christmas with our families this year. So I sat and tried not to cry thinking about everything I was going to miss out on as the health center played Christmas music at me -songs like "I'll be home for Christmas" (I won't) and "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" (I'm not). Driving home I just cried and cried and cried some more when we got home and poured myself some cereal and tried to eat it without choking because it's hard to eat while you're crying.

Optimistic. was much more, well, optimistic about the whole thing and got on the phone and worked on rescheduling our flight. The news is, we're not going home until Saturday the 27th and I think that really bites for a lot of reasons. I'm very much into tradition and have a lot of specific Christmas traditions. Christmas eve I'm supposed to watch It's A Wonderful Life with my family and open the gift from my sibling. Christmas morning I'm supposed to wake up at 5:57, gather up Rough Draft and Huff Draft and do our own little tradition of eating toast and watching Wallace and Gromit until the rest of the family gets up two hours later. And I'm not going to get to do any of those things.

After we'd rescheduled everything Optimistic. decided that we needed to drown our sorrows at Brick Oven, which we did after picking up Uffish and M-Lite to go along with us. We ate and had fun, went to M-Lite's and watched Waking Ned Devine, then tromped our way back home through the snow which was surprisingly fun. So to make a very long story shorter, it could have been much worse -the guy whose car we hit could have been angry, but he wasn't. The girl I talked to about switching appointments didn't have to be understanding, but she was. And as I write this I'm remembering that I have left over pizza in the fridge that I can eat right now. All in all it's been humbling to see the things I value about Christmas taken away, to see it stripped down to nothing but a day and to remember what that day is for.