the joys of traveling -- and not

Here is where we are supposed to be at this moment:

Here is where we are:

We woke at 5, showered, watered the plants, remarked the bright massy stars in the chilly darkness as we climbed up to the car, stopped at the Post Office to drop off the bills in the chilly outside mailbox, and at the airport were smug at not having to wait in the unusually long line because we'd already printed our boarding passes and had no luggage to check.

Until our friend Diane walked over out of the line to ask, "And where were you imagining you were going this morning?" She told us the plane was delayed three hours. Later, on the Northwest website, we read that the reason was that the plane crew needed required rest time -- usually you can count on that first flight out in the mornings as the most reliable flight, because it goes on the plane that came in the night before, but all we can figure is that the plane got in late last night and so the crew weren't allowed to leave on time. We hope they slept well. But at the airport the airline people were all too busy up to tell any of us.

From those past days of hanging around with Cindy Selfe I know that when there is a long line and a flight change you go to the phones, so we pretty quickly learned that there was no way we were going to make it to Seattle today, unless we wanted to risk stand-by.

So our plans have changes and we fly out on Tuesday, instead, fingers crossed. B&B won't be able to meet us at the airport, as they would have today (they spent the night in Seattle last night so they could meet us) -- so we're trying to figure out whether to take the bus from the Seattle airport to the ferry or the little plane to the island. There are less happy things to spend an afternoon considering.

We came home from the airport, still in the dark, slept a little, cleaned out the basement a little (amused at ourselves that this is what we do with a gift of a little time), shopped for food for the next day and a half -- and bought ourselves a bottle of champagne and some local smoked fish for tomorrow morning: this is our Christmas plan if we are here, a delicious one that has provided many good memories from the past -- like the Christmas morning a few years back where we came up with the five disk set of the best women's music of all time, in an operatic narrative of love sustained.