I could tell you about my weekend….

Or you can go read my sister’s blog (Kristin). She’s got a good recap, and it’s done in traditional Kristin style so you’ll have extra fun reading it.

No, I won’t tell you about the really fun weekend I had with my sister, or the really nice, relaxing evening Trey and I had today. Instead I will tell you about something else really stupid that I did – my stupid thing for 2005 - because it came to my attention earlier today that I had yet to share this story with the majority of you.

Last summer I had the double honor of being both an attendant and the vocalist for my friend Laura’s wedding. As I had not been to Chicago for about 8 months I decided to make it an extended stay and booked my flight for the Thursday a week before the wedding. Only problem was, I was flying out of Rome, which meant that I either had to leave Naples around 4am, or spend the night in a hotel in Rome. I chose to stay in a hotel.

The night before my flight, after schlepping my very heavy suitcase on the train up from Naples and the Rome subway, I finally arrived at the hotel. I decided I’d better take the bridesmaids dress out of the suitcase so it doesn’t wrinkle, and along with it took out everything I needed prior to flying. I then decided to head down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, read a little, and hit the hay.

The next morning I got up around 5:30 so I had plenty of time to get things together and check out (7am) before getting to the airport (8am) and flying out (10:30am). I’m always anxious before an overseas flight, so I took my time getting ready and did my best to stay relaxed. Before heading out I triple checked the room, mainly the bathroom, to make sure I wasn’t not leaving anything behind, but still had this terrible feeling that I was forgetting something. I checked the room one more time, don’t notice anything, and off I went.

The next few hours were your standard getting to the airport, checking in, etc. The plane took off on time, and the flight started off very well – we got up in the air, had lunch, and started the movies. All was well until….

The dress!!! Holy shit!! It’s in the hotel room!!!

I almost had a heart attack in my seat. I frantically searched for one of those plane phones in the seat back in front of me, but this plane didn’t seem to have any of these. I then calmly walked up to a flight attendant and asked her if there was any way to call anyone on the ground. Nope. None of that mattered, of course, because I didn’t have the phone number for the hotel anyway. At this point I decided that since I still had 8 hours to go in the flight, I was going to calm down, drink some more wine, and try to relax. Right.

I was on the phone with Trey to get the hotel’s phone number the minute I got off the plane. He found it in the Italian phone book – only problem was it wasn’t correct! Two hours later I finally had the right phone number and called the hotel, but by then it was too late in Rome and the whole housekeeping staff had left for the day. Ach! I was up before 5am the next morning (noon in Rome) and managed to get a hold of someone who confirmed that they’d found the dress. They could have it sent via FedEx as long as I arranged for it so I got charged. I could not open a FedEx account until 7am. Rrrrr.

7am, got a FedEx account open, called the hotel and gave them the number, address, and any other pertinent information. Great! 2 hours later, get a call from the hotel – the FedEx people over there are worried about customs. Rrrrrrrrrrr. I call FedEx in the US – they tell me that the package should arrive by early next week, but if customs doesn’t let it through it could take weeks because garments coming from Italy could be designer and you could be “importing.” Fantastic. I’m ripping my hair out. I call the hotel back and tell them to write on the customs form “dress purchased in the US.” I track the package all weekend and finally stop holding my breath when it’s on it’s way to Chicago. Hooray! It came on Monday.

What an ordeal. The best part of this whole thing was that it only cost around $50, which was less than I was planning on spending had I needed any alterations, which I didn’t.

So, now you have a funny story for Tuesday. :-)