Epic

Woke up this morning at 6 (after having gone to bed at 2) to finish studying for my physiology exam. Index cards, index cards, index cards. Exam at 8. Lasts til noon. Check my answers: 72.5%, only 2.5 points from “good enough” but thankfully on the right side of good enough. Still, disappointing. School, and especially Dr. E’s classes, are a friggin STRUGGLE for me.
Meanwhile, a snowstorm has been brewing, and a good 6 inches are covering my car and the landscape. Figure I had better get myself to the airport pronto. I already missed the 10:43am train, so I drive myself in (all my friends were busy). The MassPike inches along at 30 mph with occasional white-outs thrown in for good measure. Originally I planned on parking the car at a friend’s house and cabbing it to the aeropuerto, but whether due to the snowstorm or other such situation, I call 3 taxi companies and never have an answer. Soooo, I drive myself there, sucking up the fact I’ll have to pay an arm and a leg to keep my car there a few days before my friend can pick it up for me. On the way, the ice builds up so much on my windshield wipers that one just un-does itself and snaps off! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I’m on The Pike, though, and I can’t stop to retrieve it or even to jerryrig something. One wet, freezing arm out the window with my ice scraper allows me to see enough of the taillights in front of me that I make it somehow to an airport terminal where I can pick the broken wiper off the shield and use the functioning one (on the passenger side. Of course.). Thank god the traffic was slow. As I pull into the economy lot, a full-on blizzard begins to really really rage—total white-outs, thunder and lightning (!) (this is a new one for me!). Pulling my baggage 50 feet to the bus stop is a nightmare because my suitcase on wheels only succeeds in shoveling a foot of snow into my shoes and up my pantlegs every 6 inches.
Eventually, I make it to my terminal. Wait patiently in the very long line, and when I tell the check-in lady I am going to Lexington via Detroit, she looks at me stupidly for a second and says, “We don’t go to Detroit”. I am at the wrong airline. Not just wrong airline, but the wrong terminal. At this point, everything has been cancelled—Logan Airport is shut down for a few hours til the bus drivers can see again and the planes can move on the runway without lightning blizzard storms to contend with—but the combination of the day to that point makes me a little weepy and I shed a few tears of overwhelmtion (that should be a real word. “overwhelmedness” has one too many syllables).
Pull myself together and find my way to the correct terminal (after going to a second wrong terminal as per one ‘helpful’ lady’s directions). My baggage weighs 16 pounds more than maximum (when’d they change that?), but the guy, who calls me Asylum, didn’t charge me, “Since it’s highly unlikely you’ll actually make it tonight to your final destination”. Small comfort.
Here I sit hours after I was supposed to be in Lexington, in the baggage claim of Detroit. Cold, tired, hungry. First plane to Lexington is at noon tomorrow. Can’t afford a hotel room. Sad. At least I have my laptop to write this up.