HITTING THE WALL

This past weekend my son and his wife had a baby.  The baby came a little early, not shockingly so, but I planned on packing an emergency bag on Saturday.  I anticipated the arrival might be this weekend coming up. 

I miscalculated.

Last Friday night around 11, the call came in -- All systems GO.  I immediately started booking flights and a rental car and a hotel, and I threw together my emergency bag with less items than I've ever taken anywhere for anything that involved an overnight.  That's right - overnight - because I had to be back for work Monday morning.

I managed to plan the entire trip in about eleven minutes, packed up and got myself organized in about forty minutes, including checking in to the airline online and printing out my boarding pass.  I was way too excited to sleep and should've just booked the flight for the very next available time, but, silly me, thought I'd "rest up" before the trip.

I had a fabulous visit, spent some time with grandchild #1 before meeting grandchild #2, slept on and off at the hotel, and had a relaxing day until I had to get back on another flight.  My return flight ended up being delayed for a family that was stuck in customs, and we sat on the tarmac for an hour.

I arrived home happy and still totally psyched at 1:45 a.m. Monday morning. I slept a little Monday before the alarm went off at 5:05 a.m., then figured I'd sleep Monday night.  That sort of happened, but not really.  I pieced together about five hours of sleep.  Tuesday night I slept for about six hours. 

Honestly -- I just wasn't tired.  Maybe it's from all those third shift experiences where I trained my body to go-go-go on four hours of sleep a day.  Maybe I was channeling my inner Churchill and napping instead of wasting time sleeping.  I don't know ... or I didn't ... until Wednesday afternoon.

Somewhere between noontime and 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, I started sinking.  By 8:00 p.m., I was done for.  I had hit the wall face first.  I slept seven and a half hours, and by Thursday morning, I felt like my body had been through a boxing match.

I don't care!  The price to pay was sooooo worth it, and I'd do it again!  Except ... maybe next time I won't book the last flight of the night.  This is the second time I've made that mistake, but this is the first time I tried it on my first day back at work after a week's break.  For some reason, the airlines seem to believe that the last flight of the night is some kind of "flexible flying time."  Yeah -- no.  We may be crazy risk-takers (there was quite a bit of turbulence, so it was a crap-shoot on getting home at all), but we still enjoy making it back to our place of origin at a reasonable hour ... even if that hour is after midnight. 

Okay, so not really reasonable.  But, like I said: Worth it.  So, so, so very worth it.