How Did You Spend Your Fourth of July?

I spent mine moving to Canada.  The irony is almost too much.  Brilliantly, my flight was booked for 6:30 am, so guess who got to the airport at 4:30 am?  THIS girl.  And if any of you have been around me lately you know that I basically cry approximately every 6.8 minutes.  I was such a mess that when I got to security and the lady was checking my passport and boarding pass she ended up having to talk to me for about 5 minutes to calm me down and then she gave me a hug.  A TSA agent hugged me?  That just added to things to cry about; All the years that I have spent saying how uninterested and frankly mean government TSA workers are and then the last hug I get when leaving the country is from the nicest woman ever.  GAH!

At 6:30 I took off and landed in Dallas for a 3 hour layover (FYI, you cannot fly to Calgary direct from Atlanta.  Crazy.)  The three hours in Dallas only added to my anxiety for a few reasons:

·         I am moving to Canada for Christ sake.

·         I was STARVING and it is so hard to find decent breakfasts in airports.  Does it weird anyone else out that when you are walking through places like T.G.I.Fridays are serving breakfast?  Umm, PASS.  The lady from some barbeque place basically was chasing me down to try and get me to eat breakfast there.  Listen lady, I don’t like barbeque anyway so I certainly don’t intend to eat a pulled pork omelet. 

·         There was a Tim Tebow Jockey undershirt vending machine.  W-H-A-T?  I literally stood and stared at it for half an hour and took an embarrassing amount (happy Mom?) number of photos.  I was praying that someone would come and buy one just so I could see it in action.  I was imagining some inspirational speech to be played as you were purchasing your t-shirt.  Maybe even just a bible verse.

Tim Tebow Jockey T-Shirt Vending Machine

Well that was when I decided it was anxiety medicine time!  20 minutes to boarding I popped myself a klonopin, vowed to curl up with a glass of wine, and sing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” the whole way there.  I felt a nano second of guilt for whoever got stuck sitting next to me but was over that immediately when I heard someone next to me in line talking about hockey.  I should have requested to sit next to him.

On we boar!  I flew first class because I’m rich, bitch! the upgrade fee was less than all of my baggage fees.  Luck of all lucks I had no one sitting next to me!  And let me just tell you something.  American Airlines does not mess around.  My flight attendant was on me like white on rice; I never even finished one bloody mary before she had a brand new one in front of me.  My lunch was awesome, warm towels to clean your hands, freshly baked cookies.  When everyone else got one bag of peanuts I got toasted warm mixed nuts in a ceramic ramekin.  At that point it was on.  The flight attendant was going to be my friend whether she liked it or not.  I talked her ear off, cried a little, when she was taking a break reading a magazine in her jump chair I got a hold of her on the way to the lavatory.  We hugged when I got off.  BFF.   No idea what her name was.

Snack time!



Warm chicken sandwich on herb foccacia, greek salad, pita chips and hummus...and more vodka.

When I got off the plane I went to the customs desk where he or she (I HONESTLY had NO idea) sent me to immigration…because that’s right…I am an immigrant.  I probably should have thought through my bottomless bloody mary’s because Britton said that they are seriously intense when they interview you.  I handed him my packet of info provided by Britton’s employers and he went to typing away, never speaking a word.  Finally we get to the interview portion.  I was drunk terrified.

1.       Mrs. McConathy, what does your husband do?
Umm…he works for Deloitte…in Advisory…Capital Projects…uhh…he’s an engineer?

(He stared directly at me with ZERO expression so I just kept rambling about who knows what until finally he says ok, I got it…)

2.       How tall are you?

How tall am I? 5’2”

Typing, typing, typing, typing, silence, printing, stapling, stamping. 

“Here you go.”

THAT. WAS. IT.  Meanwhile, the 68 year old man next to me who is a turf grass, golf course soil, consultant was being DRILLED by a woman who was about 20 with a thick Canadian accent.  Like REALLY drilled.  What exactly do you do?  How do you test these soils?  Who contacts who? What is in this for you?  Why do you do this?  Seriously, I would have totaled buckled and just told them never mind; I’ll head back to America where we let everyone in.  But all they really want to know about me is my height?  Perhaps there is a shortage (pun INTENDED!) of vertically challenged people in Canada and I’m appealing to bring in for some diversity?

I snatched that permit and ran before Sergeant Bitchface got a hold of me.  I still had to go to pay for it but that was somewhere else.

Fast forward.  Britton picked me up.  I wore American flag shutter shades, JUST to make sure all the Canadians around knew I was an obnoxious American.  That’s right.

So we got in the car at 2:15 and let me tell you what we accomplished by 5:15:

·         Work Permit approved and paid for

·         Social Service Card – this is sort of like our Social Security Card, except apparently they just give these puppies out...citizen or not.

·         Health Insurance Card

·         Package picked up at the post office with a line of ten people

I challenge anyone to get ONE of those things done in a 3 hour time frame in Atlanta.  It was ridiculous.  Completely insane. Everyone was fast, efficient, friendly.  The lady at the health insurance place came up to me in line at 4:55 pm when they close  and asked me to go ahead and give her my paperwork so she could get started on it since they closed in 5 minutes.  I almost fainted. 

We spent the rest of the day just driving around seeing things, seeing our house, etc, etc.  By 8 pm (10 pm EST) I was exhausted.  And it was still broad daylight here.  No kidding it doesn’t not get fully dark until 11 pm.  And then the sun is up and shining by 5:15 am. 

I will update with more entertaining stuff later tonight.  Sorry this is so dull.  But I at least wanted to let y’all know I arrived safely.  Don’t worry, not a single ‘eh has come OUUUT of my mouth yet. 

P.S. Can someone (eh hmm, Rachel) help me figure out how to create tags??