03.04.14 - 10:04 pm

"whats in the container?" the check out counter lady narrowed her eyes and queried.
"perishables," i replied.
"any dry ice?"
"no ma'am."
"alright."
and with that, i could breathe again. a sticker was placed on the plastic tote, and down the conveyor it went with our luggage. had this single moment gone differently, it would have completely fucked up....everything. in two previous phone calls to Southwest Airlines customer service, they were pretty adamant than they would not allow any live animals to be checked as luggage. their website was vague and emphasized that my luggage could be denied at any point if it was found to violate their policies. but my loophole was the shipping of live fish and shrimp for food purposes category. this is what i would fall back on if they pressed me. right on their own damn website.

so, with our six huge bags conveying towards our aircraft, julie, ash, my mom and i meandered towards lunch. julie suggested a cafe style meal. i insisted on a hot restaurant meal. a reward for a morning, nay a month, fraught with anxiety. as delicious as this meal would be, and as cold and refreshing as the two last drop tops id ever drink were, this meal would be one of four critical steps to missing our flight to florida.

step one: lunch went long. the waitress took her time to even check on us, let alone bring us our check. everyone in the airport restaurant industry should be aware that all their patrons will need to catch a flight with some level of heightened urgency. our waitress was clearly not aware of this.
step two: julie looked at university of oregon padded neckwear.
step three: final bathroom break.
step four: we collapsed down in the seats at our gate at 1:20 pm.

the gate was mostly empty, but we didnt seem to notice enough to be worried. after a few minutes we decided to check in and see about getting onboard our flight. this is when they told us our seats had already been given away to standby passengers.

what.

apparently there is a ten minute window at southwest. one in which if you havent already boarded, they will call your name and if you still dont respond, immediately give your seat to someone on standby. well for us, the name calling never occurred. the most frustrating part is that the lady behind the desk mentioned she looked us up on her computer and saw we were in fact in the building somewhere. she saw we had checked our luggage. gone through security. and still she gave our seats away. julie and i were dumbfounded. how does something like this happen in real life? the lady said there was one seat available, but no other flights to florida available til thursday. julie and i looked at each other, who should take it? less than twelve seconds passed and the door to the plane closed and apparently they had already made the decision for us. fuck.

fuck fuck fuck. so there we stood. still in complete shock and growing increasingly more frustrated that here we were, standing in front of our plane and they would not let us board it. ashton would periodically let out very audible sighs of frustration even though we didnt need the input of a ten year old. even better, our luggage, my fish, everything we owned was now on that plane. without us. so the annoying lady behind the counter began to check on later flights. none today. one seat available tomorrow at 645 am. two other seats available thursday. that would mean julie and ashton would be in town for another two whole days without clothes, toothpaste, socks, anything but what they were currently wearing. worse yet, it meant my fish would be stuck in the orlando airport for well over 24 hours. passed 24 hours and things get dire fast.

fine. fuck you. we'll do it.