Who you gonna call?

IMG_7551
Originally uploaded by DianaCrabtree.

I am glad to be home.

The trip went fine until last night. We boarded the plane on time, even though a windshield wiper motor had to be replaced. As the Jet-bridge was pulled away I looked outside, and I just knew something would happen. There were clouds in the sky. Bad clouds. Ghostbuster-ass clouds.

We pulled out as normal and I knew we would have a bumpy takeoff. I felt bad for the pilots. While we taxied I snuck into the galley and took some snapshots of the ghostbuster-ass clouds.

We stopped and waited awhile as is normal at this time of day, it is not unusual to be on the ground for 40 minutes waiting to take off. But then I heard that high-low chime.

A high-low chime means one of three things...we have ascended or decended through 10,000 feet; We are in final decent; or it's the flight deck calling. We hadn't even left the alley, so all that sound could be was them calling. They don't call for ice or to pick on me unless we are at crusing altitude so this high-low meant...bad news.

We were in a ground hold. The weather was too dangerous over the airport so no-one could take off until it passed. The captian made an announcement but had told me not to start a service so when the hold was released we could take off quick and not lose our slot. I walked through with pretzels (thank god I still had some- they have neglected stocking us enough with them since they are going to start selling trail mix instead) once I had passed out the pretzels I hid in the galley some more.

I was fine for quite some time. I sat, snapped a few pictures and day dreamed up a brilliant art installation about the images we see daily and how they are imprinted in our brains, even years after we don't see the images anymore, maybe for a lifetime. This entertained me, as did analyzing my mood now that my medication has increased, and chatting with some very empathetic business travelers.

Enough time passed that the captain agreed to let me do a water service. I sincerely believed that I wouldn't get through the whole thing. I ended up running out of water and serving the people in the back juice and soda (and got the privledge of listening to some elderly women kvetch "No water! How can they not supply enough water, I can't drink carbonated bever...bla bla bla bla bla") I had done my service, I got to hide some more.

Finally, an hour and a half later or so, the ground hold was released. We were like 30th in line to take off. We drove around the runways, slowly but surely (I think I got some shots of a funnel cloud forming!) and we came to another stop. A SECOND ground hold! I knew we would have 20 minutes, I went ahead and did a full beverage service (this way people could go to sleep and I wouldn't bug them with the cart- oh, and I could get that part over with) Finally, 3 hours after we had closed the main cabin door, we took off.

During the flight 2 of the water drinking ladies told me they needed an electric cart. They did not order wheelchairs or an electric cart. I called up and told the pilots who contacted the ground, who said all of the wheelchair pushers had gone home. These ladies needed them, Houston Airport (You notice I included no hyphen) is big, so we let the ground know we must have 2 wheelchairs.

When we arrived there were 2 chairs waiting. I watched a lady (who had been standing up much of the flight) go halfway up the stairs and back down into one of the wheelchairs. I was livid! I was not going to have a little old lady with a bad knee waiting for another wheelchair while this woman was in the car on the way home. I said to the pilots "That woman DID NOT order a wheelchair, tell the ramp we need another one" It was hilarious. The ramper said "Thats fine, but we have no wheelchair pushers, it may take as long as an hour" This woman all of a sudden was able to walk! It was a miracle! And the ladies who really needed the chairs got taken good care of by some nice rampers.

We got to the hotel about 1:30AM, if we were to leave on time in the morning we would not have legal rest, so the morning flight was delayed about an hour and a half. I wish we could have delayed it more, because we had the Sharaton special beds. At some Sharatons they have some fancy pillowtop beds with some Sharaton specific name. And wowsahs, they live up to the hype.

At 10:40 there was a Mainline flight going to the same destination, so I only had 5 passengers. One was a woman who knew everything about how to fix the woahs of the airlines (one of her brilliant ideas was to continue to lower ticket prices...[is it a BAD thing for a flight attendant to hurl granola bars at a passenger? Just wondering])

We were speeding up to take off and suddenly we slowed down. They aborted take off because a indicator told them a door had opened. The indicator turned off, but we still had to go back to the gate and have maintenence look at it.

We were replaced for an out & back (fine with me) and so only had one more out and back and then we were done. I fucked up again. I looked at the wrong time on my schedule, and was not watching closely, the captian saved my ass by saying "arent we supposed to be at the gate soon?" and the plane went out on time, but after last month's incident, I am very worried and upset about this. You can't be blase about time in this industry. I am going to let the medication kick in (and my time of the month pass) and then re-examine my behavior, but needless to say I was upset with myself.

I forgot to mention. Yesterday, during this I had PMS, and today I had cramps! Can you imagine? I am so glad its done!

mood: tired