Success!!!

I'm Home! And I came home WITH DD!!!!

I felt very calm and comforted the entire trip, like everything was going to be just fine, and I know it's because of all the prayers offered up for our family. And I know there were lots.

Here's the rundown.

I was traveling standby (buddy passes from a friend at Delta) and Thursday my flight got bumped twice, but it turned out okay. Took quite a while to get the rental car, and the gal who helped me was Polynesian. She asked me if my last name was Samoan or Tongan (Samoan name, Tongan husband), and said, "Do you have much luggage?" I gestured toward my backpack, asked which Island she was from (from Fiji, but her dad is Samoan), and she handed me keys and said, "You don't mind that I just gave you a Mustang, do you?" Man, that car was fun to drive.

The ex (we'll call her Renee) wanted me to meet her at her mother's house (Val -- she's the one who came and got them last summer and she creeps me out). I guess Val lives with her mother, Ola, and Renee and Small Fry live in a house with a bunch of other people. I decided that if I felt weird about it, I'd go somewhere public and ask her to meet me there, but when I got there, I felt like it was fine. Called the house and Ola was so sweet -- like NORMAL -- and said Val was gone to Sacramento and wouldn't be home for a few hours. Score. She would've been there if I'd made the first flight.

Renee showed up shortly thereafter and we took off -- picked up J (DD's little half-sister, she's almost two), and got the papers signed and had dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant. Took Renee back to Ola's and Val had shown up, so we made it brief and I kept my distance from her. We went to the hotel and eventually fell asleep in a very uncomfortable bed (it was a 2-bed room, but the other bed stunk ... so ... we squished in the double bed). Got up at 3:30 PST, dropped off the rental car, caught the shuttle to the airport, checked in, and waited. We *barely* made the flight -- like, we sat down and it started moving. Flying standby for this trip was fine because it was extremely inexpensive and I didn't want to spend a lot money for something that might not happen, but I probably wouldn't do it again unless I had to. (the rental car and hotel cost more than all of our tickets).

On a side note: The guy who sold us our older used car moved to Cali right after we bought it. We didn't have a form we needed to get it registered, so I called him a few weeks ago and asked him if I could mail it to him and he said, "sure, but I'm moving to DC tomorrow, so I'll give you a call and get you the address then." Well, I never heard from him but while I was sitting in front of Ola/Val's house, I found his phone number (which I'd been looking for for days) and gave him a call. Turns out, they decided not to go to DC and are moving to Bakersfield next week instead, so they've been staying with his sister in Sacramento -- about 5 minutes away from our hotel. So he came to the hotel last night and the staff was really great -- the asst. manager took us to her office so we could get the paperwork printed off the DMV website and got it all signed and stuff, so I can go get it registered next week. Woohoo!

Anyway. I'm safe, kidlet is home, hubby and other kidlet are happy, and I had a nap, and then we went to a movie (Surf's Up) and dinner (Chinese) so I feel even better. Yay!