Difficult: Our Word of the Week

Last week when we said we were ready to come home, we truly were. We should have been landing at Heathrow Airport when last week’s Word of the Week post was scheduled for publication. Little did we know what was in store for us! First of all, we left our mom’s home in Florida just before 2 PM last Thursday for our 5:30 flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were to then catch a flight from there to Heathrow. As it turned out, our first flight was so delayed so it was impossible to catch the Heathrow flight. That was only the beginning of a very difficult weekend.

To cut things short, the next Heathrow flight was canceled (by this time it was almost 11 PM) so we slept in the airport and then got another flight on Friday morning to Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. The first flight was delayed because of the weather they said (it was raining heavily). The canceled one was due to staffing issues they said. Many people were fussing, angry, and quarreling about the canceled flight, but we just told each other to ‘count our lucky stars’.

When these things happen, no matter how difficult they seem, we always say, you just never know what you’ve been spared. It was difficult to sleep on those airport lounge chairs though. Luckily I always have this scarf in my handbag and it came in handy to block out some of the light while I tried to nap.

Our feet were badly swollen and we were so worried that it would get worse before we got home. As a result, when we got onto another Heathrow flight 12 hours after arriving in Durham, we decided it was best not to eat or drink anything! Luckily, that was only about 7 hours long.

At one point I was thinking that I might need to go to the hospital as soon as we landed! I had never seen my feet like this. We wore Crocs because we usually experience a little swelling but never anything like this. Thankfully after 2 days of rest, things were much better and more bearable.

We didn’t get home until almost 6 PM on Saturday after a 3-and-a-half-hour drive from Heathrow to Birmingham. We took the National Express coach service and we don’t remember much as we slept most of the way. Of course, our children were happy to see us and to receive their American goodies and souvenirs. Despite the difficult travel situation, we enjoyed our almost 5 weeks away.

Well, back to work crept up on me and jetlag is a real thing so I woke at 9:15 AM on Tuesday following the very sleepy bank holiday Monday. I was meant to start work at 9 AM. Luckily I was meant to work from home and didn’t need to ‘appear’ online in a meeting until 9:30 or so. Needless to say, it was a difficult start to the work week after such a long break. Sometimes I feel like I am learning some of my work processes all over again. I feel like I am slowly getting back to normal and by next week I should be fine, hopefully.

On Thursday morning we woke to find water dripping from the kitchen ceiling! Yes, the same kitchen that was just renovated! It’s the second year that we’ve come back to find water leaking and subsequent damage in the kitchen. Home insurance called, the workman came out and by that time, for some miraculous reason, the dripping had stopped! As a result, he didn’t want to cut a hole in the ceiling to see what was happening.

A call to a private contractor saw two men come out, cut the hole, find the damage was coming from the toilet, fix the leak, and leave us with an ugly and difficult hole in the kitchen to patch. Pray for us!

Hope you’ve all had a good week. Back to school is upon us too! Prayers for big son who is going off to start his Doctoral studies. All the best for your family members too.