My brother is home from Iraq for R&R and the chaos that surrounded the event

Hey everyone. Sorry it's been several days but I went out of town unexpectedly. My brother, after 4 days of crazy travel, finally landed in the States Thursday morning. I wasn't going to get to see him while he was here (Texas) due to finances and schedule conflicts. However, Linda (my MIL) who works for American Airlines saw an opening for a flight @ 5:50 AM that would land 45 min after my brothers flight @ DFW airport. She was going to meet him there anyways. So she was going to bring him to my gate to surprise him, since he wasn't supposed to leave DFW for Austin until 4:00 pm. However some gate officials greeted his flight and said there was a flight leaving in 10 min so he took it. He didn't even get to see my MIL before he left. So it looked like I came all that way for nothing. He called his girlfriend Naema when he got on his new flight and she told him I was on my way but he was already on his plane and couldn't get off. She called my MIL and then when my plane landed she told me what happened and I was pissed. (That is really an understatement, but I try to keep thing PG on here LOL!) Well, when he landed in Austin he called me and said that after Naema dealt with her RCIA candidate (A person who is in the process of converting to Catholicism) they would drive to Dallas. They arrived around 10:30 that night. We stayed up until 3:00 am playing Trivial Pursuit and looking at photos and videos from Iraq.

While we spent the day waiting for Patrick the weather decided to dump 5" of snow on DFW and the surrounding areas. All the flights for the rest of the day were cancelled. That meant that if Patrick hadn't gotten on his flight he wouldn't have been able to leave so it was lucky he got out when he did, but it also meant he had to drive through the mess to get back to me. That also meant that the 8:00 am flight I was supposed to take back to Tucson on Friday morining was highly unlikely. I ended up being # 87 on the stand-by list. It looked as though I wouldn't get out until Sunday night.

So instead Patrick took Naema and me to breakfast. Then we had a snowball fight, got in trouble at CVS, and then they left to get Naema back in time for her afternoon class. All in all a good time was had by everyone. I didn't cry at all. It was kinda weird, it actually felt like I had just seen him even though he's been gone for over 10 months. Very surreal, but also probably had to do with the fact that I'd only had 4 hours of sleep in a 36 hours period.

I then spent the day knitting my mystery shawl. I'm still over a week behind but what are you going to do? My MIL kept checking in letting me know that the flights were not looking any better. Then @ 4:00 PM she said are you ready to go? I said yes, (which was a lie but I know how to hustle when necessary!) and she said good b/c you need to be at the airport and through security by 4:45 b/c it looks like you will get on this next flight. So I hopped in the shower & was at the airport @ 4:35. Fortunately I didn't have any bags to check but the security line was crazy long. I got to the gate while Final boarding was occurring. I looked at the screen and saw that there was 15 people ahead of my on the stand-by list. I thought this isn't going to happen. Long story short they called a bunch of names and no one came to the counter so I got on the flight and made it home and here I am. I was so tired at the end of all this excitement that I went to sleep at Midnight last night and didn't wake up until noon today. Crazy!!!!

In other news, I got my box from Knit Picks on Tuesday, but spent most of the day at my grandparents so I didn't get to do much with it. Then Wednesday I was knitting some mice for my cats (2 each) when I got the call that I was going to get to see my brother. I had just finished hand felting them and they have been sitting on a towel for 2 & 1/2 days. After I am done here I will check on them and finish them and will post pics tomorrow.

Also, Donna posted this (scroll down to Monday March 3rd) on her blog about my book tour blog posting. I was so excited by the kind things she had to say! I was really nervous but I guess what I decided to do was the right thing after all. I really need to work on my whole self confidence thing.

Lastly, I start my new job on Monday. I work from 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM. In light of this I am making a promise to my readers and myself that I will continue knitting and will also blog more consistently. I am so sorry that I have been so sporadic the last few weeks!

Have a great weekend!

Eileen