Journey back to North Carolina

I knew this was the plan when the kids and I flew to Frankfurt; that I would be returning to North Carolina to wrap everything up once the Audi was finally taken care of. I knew it, but the reality of it was a hard blow. 

Steven and I have worked together to get this next week in order...and it's a whopper. 

We left Linden at 6:15 Monday morning...the kids were nearly silent in the car. 6:15 in Germany in the middle of January feels like smack dab in the middle of the night. It's dark until nearly eight. We got to Frankfurt about an hour and a half later and I hopped onto the first of my flights. There are no straight through flights from Frankfurt to Raleigh, so I flew into Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. A little out of my way, actually. The onboard map showed North Carolina as we were flying over it and there I was, in my seat for another two and a half hours.

It was a long flight...about 12 hours, actually, but I had a fun travel companion; a woman who has lived in Germany and worked on the Ramstein base for two years. She works in the NATO offices and her husband is deployed in Qatar right now. She was flying home to California to see her family. It was the first time she'd been back to the states since landing in Germany. We kept each other entertained. There was also an older German fellow across the aisle who drank about 3/4 of a bottle of vodka during the flight. He entertained us as well.

I got a window seat on the flight from DFW to Raleigh. 

"Hi, Steve and Laura!" Okay...so they aren't in Dallas, but they're in Texas. We shared the same state for a few hours.

I slept on and off for most of this flight and when it was time to get off, I was struggling to reach my parka which had been pushed way far back into the overhead bin. Someone helped me and when he handed me my coat, I realized it was Jack...a librarian from our Cary library. How weird is life? He said the rest of our librarian friends would never believe him when he told him he'd seen me on the flight. I was so tired I barely remember everything that happened, but I hopped a cab and I arrived at our house at about 9:15 pm. Of course that was 4:15 am Germany time. I was running on empty, but happy to back on the ground again safe and sound. 

Today begins my four day marathon. Packers on Wednesday and Thursday, professional cleaners on Thursday afternoon, carpet cleaners on Friday morning, walk through with realtor Friday afternoon, flight back to Frankfurt at 6:05 Friday evening. Today I am doing laundry, shipping boxes back to Germany and running around Cary like a mad woman doing my other 400 errands that need to be done before they pack up my little silver car.

What am I doing blogging???? Gotta run!