Deflated

Saturday was such a happy day and then turned sour. It started out pretty productive and exciting and ended on a bummed note. We went to Home Depot and we were finally able to get a BBQ. I have been saving my pennies for a while to get a nice, fancy BBQ that would last and I finally had enough and they finally had the one in we wanted. However, it wouldn't fit in our car, so my dad came down and helped us with their van so we could get it home. We also looked into garbage disposals to see if we can buy the missing parts for ours to finally get it hooked up. We actually decided to just get a new disposal, it needed it anyways, and we could either buy the new part now and in a few months buy the new disposal that comes with the part we needed or just get the new disposal now, which is what we decided to do. Ross wasn't so excited about putting it in and I didn't want to deal with it so I bribed him. I told him while he puts the disposal in, which he wasn't excited for, I would cut off and hem some shorts for him, which I wasn't excited for. But we both put a couple hours into getting these things done which for me wasn't easy cause I had a puppy who wanted to "help" and pull the shorts out of my hand and run or drag me over to his leash for a walk. And I heard lots of moans and groans from the kitchen. But, we prevailed and got done and I was so excited to have a dishwasher. We ran a cleaner through the dishwasher before using it to make sure it worked and sanitize it. There weren't any leaks and everything seemed to be working, then much to my dismay the dishwasher wasn't draining. I tried the drain button on the dishwasher but no luck. I was so excited to not have to wash dishes anymore but I still have to wash dishes, but its so nice to have two sinks that work. Now when people dump water in the left sink it doesn't go to the cupboard below.

There's No Place Like Home

As I was sitting in the airport in Baton Rouge yesterday and I heard over the PA that my flight was yet again delayed, I learned that clicking my heels together 3 times and repeating "there's no place like home" does not really work. So, add that to my growing list of annoyances at trying to get home. I am also starting to realize that maybe I don't enjoy travel as much as I once did. I am not sure if its due to this last trip or if its just a compilation of past experiences.

To start off we were very lucky we actually got into Louisiana. Had we gone a day earlier all the flights into Baton Rouge were cancelled, if we had gone a day later all the flights in were cancelled, had we gone through Texas (like we do 95% of the time) we wouldn't have been able to leave Salt Lake and had we gone into New Orleans our flight would have been cancelled. There was a lot of freak snow in the south closing Texas, Atlanta and Louisiana at different times. But we did make it in to Baton Rouge without any delays or problems, just to find things were not as planned. It was extremely frustrating to spend all that money and take time off work for things to turn out the way they did, but we decided to make the best of it.

We did get to go to a couple of parades, one of which was in Baton Rouge and it was so much better than the parades in New Orleans. We went to Spanish Town in Baton Rouge, which from my understanding is Spanish Town (part of downtown Baton Rouge) used to be the gay part of town but not so much anymore. The big theme for this parade every year is pink flamingos and all the floats were covered in pink, including those riding on the floats. They were decked head to toe in pink, complete with pink wigs. I don't really have pictures of the parades because I was too busy during the parade. This was a very fun parade because they didn't have the barriers on the streets so you could go right up to the floats and it was easier to get cool things from people when you made eye contact. I only had one person on this parade ask to see my boobs, but honestly, had I wanted to show them I couldn't. I had beads up to my ears and my coat on, it would have taken 20 min to be able to flash. But we came away with tons of beads, 90% of the beads we brought home came from this parade, my in-laws gave me the majority of the beads they caught as well as what Ross and I got.

On Sunday Ross and I went down to New Orleans. We had actually gone down for the big parade that night, Bachus. All the parades have names and they run at the same time every year and Bachus runs Sunday at 5. When we got to New Orleans we had some shopping to do so we ran to do that and caught the end of the Rex parade and in the process of getting back to the car to drop off our stuff we got caught in the Thoth parade but was able to get a really good spot for the Bachus parade. The parade started at 5 but because they move so slow it got to us at about 7:30 but it was INSANE. Drew Brees (for those of you that don't know he was the Saints MVP from the Superbowl) was the king of the Bachus parade and Southerner's LOVE their football. People came from out of state to see this parade and it was deafening when the float with the king came by. One thing the parades in New Orleans has that Baton Rouge lacks is the fire guys. I don't quite understand their purpose but they have a propane tank strapped to their backs and they have there big metal contraptions that has 4 horizontal spouts that shoot fire and a group of them walk the parade route, between the floats and bands and you throw change at them. Some had so much change in their pockets they were loosing their pants, which inspired me and the old guy standing next to me to sing Pants on the Ground. However, the parades in New Orleans were so stingy with what they threw. I did get asked to flash but I showed the guy that I wasn't able to get to my boobs with everything on so he gave me the cool beads anyways. We didn't stay for the whole last parade, we were done by the 12th float. But it was fun to just go down with Ross and hang out.

Then came getting home. I never dreamed it would become the ordeal that it was. We were supposed to fly out at noon on Monday and on the way to the airport we found out that our flight was cancelled and they had put us on a flight leaving at 5pm the next day getting back into Salt Lake at midnight. No was was that going to work because I wasn't about to ask my parent's to pick us up that late and by the time we got home we would have 3 hours to sleep before getting up for work. So we went in and talked to them. They claimed that the flight was cancelled for routine maintenance. If it was routine maintenance then they would know about it and one would think they wouldn't schedule flights for that time. So, we got on a flight to Atlanta the next morning at 8. We get to the airport, again, and find that our 8am flight was cancelled and we were put on a 10:00 flight. About 9:30 we find that our 10:00 flight was delayed and pushed back until noon, which would cause us to miss our connecting flight. We were so annoyed/frustrated. Luckily they were able to put us on another carrier and we went through Dallas instead of Atlanta and we were finally able to get home about 4 on Tuesday. I have never had such troubles and I am not sure if it was because of the Baton Rouge airport, but if we had gone in through New Orleans on Thursday we wouldn't have gotten in, all the flights that night into NO was cancelled, so we would have been stuck in Atlanta, where it snowed so no flights were leaving there. Anyways, long story short, it was a big mess, but we did get home and our jobs were understanding. Over all we did have a good trip and we did enjoy the time we got to spend with my mother-in-law and the break from work.

Reminders

I don't know if anyone else is as effected by this as I am, but smells and some foods remind me of times and places in the past, mainly from my mission, and some of them are really strong. I am sitting here enjoying some Baked Lays sour cream and onion chips and every time I eat these it reminds me of my p-days in my last area with one of my favorite companions. Berrett and I would do our laundry and then go grocery shopping and we always got a bag of these chips each and after our activity and play was done we would end up back at our apartment eating the chips and playing speed. It was quite the combination and helped to pass many a p-day. This companion was a lot of fun and we found great joy in the stupid and simple things of life. When I shower it takes me back to my 2nd area in my mission. We were in a very ghetto apartment surrounded by Mexicans and gang members. A couple nights we sat in the middle of our apartment listening to gun shots in the neighborhood. The walls in this apartment were so thin that we could hear the next door neighbor when he would pee and talk on the phone. So, now when I use the same shampoo or conditioner I used in that area I can almost hear the neighbor peeing while talking on the phone. That one is one of the stronger associations I have, and the fact that the bathroom and shower head is extremely close to the way the bathroom there was. Maybe its just that my mission was a big influence on my life that so much reminds me of places and people.