The Yellowknife Misadventures

I should start a t-shirt slogan company, but who would buy shirts that read 'I survived a weekend with my family and all I got was this lousy t-shirt'?

Well, gimme the t-shirt all the same! Where was I? Well, yours truliest woke up at an ungodly hour on Wednesday morning to get to the airport to fly to....Yellowknife. I know, I know...you must be in shock and awe, but please try to contain your obvious envy.

My sister and brother-in-law decided to go AWOL to Vegas this for the long weekend, and I was flown up there at no expense to myself to care for the boys. I arrived early Wednesday morning and was picked up by mum, with whom I spent the day until it was time to go to Karyne's to start the adventure. Prior to my arrival, Karyne and Scott had put together a schedule/dossier of details about taking care of them, school/babysitters, etc. Mum found this funny, seeing as how she had managed to raise kids herself and seemed to know how to take care of kids.

Karyne and Scott breezed out to the airport shortly after we got there, and the games officially began. The boys are good kids, meaning both that they are well behaved much of the time AND they are good at being kids...really. They played, ran, made messes, fought the rules, used their outside voices inside, etc. But they were a lot better then I had expected so I can't really complain. Yay me. They just made me really stop and think about procreation, and how I just really should not.

And everyone who knows either me or Yellowknife, knows that it's not the place for me to be. In the course of the 4 days I was mobile, I had covered every part of town several times. The boredom of a Friday night in Yellowknife is enough to make one want to get in the car and drive....far, far, far away to a better place...like hell.

While at the pool, I spotted a certain ex-boyfriend, and never have I been so glad that Brady and Austin are gadabout boys who need to be henpecked into doing things, so I didn't have to make overly-awkward conversation with a man whose heart I had broken and with whom I've never made any attempts to be friends. Call it the coward's way, but when I saw him, I turned and ran the other way, and if he recognized me, he made no attempts at contact either, so we'll just shudder a bit and forget about it.

Some minor fights, a few bumps and another ungodly early morning flight later, I was back in Edmonton. But wait...where was Rod?

My flight was due to land at 11:45 am, so when we landed at 11:30, I wasn't too concerned that he wasn't at the airport. I called his cell and left a message, and then sat and waited. And waited. And waited. I tried the cell a few more times, but I knew by then that he'd probably forgotten it. I called Jette and Chris to see if maybe they knew where he was (as I wouldn't put it past him to forget, but this was ridiculous), and no, there was still now Rod. 11:45...11:55...12:00....12:10...12:15. By this time, I was on the ground for 45 minutes without any way to find him. I was upset, tired, cranky and hungry. I moved over to the central part of the arrivals terminal so that I could see him if he came.

Well, at 12:20, Rod comes walking up to me just as I'm on the phone leaving him a nasty message. He had been at the airport since 11:45. He didn't check the old terminal, for if he had, he would have seen me sitting there looking abandoned and mad. He did not think to ask information if my flight had landed or to have me paged (I considered having him paged, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn't). He was upstairs on the departures level. Having a hamburger.

Well, I called Chris back to inform him that Rod was, in fact, alive and well, and not stuck in a ditch in the downpour by the highway. Chris wanted to know why Rod hadn't thought to use a payphone to try to call *me* on my cell. I received a sanction to hit Rod because he was late, forgetful and had the common sense of a Goat.

Gawd, it's good to be home. Or something.