26 hours in hell

Note to all pregnant women....stay away from the JetBlue terminal at JFK. You may find yourself sleeping on the floor and it's no tempur-pedic. I will spare you all the gory details, which would include a guy wanting to fight me over an outlet and flaring tempers at baggage claim (I left just before the police were called in). As for the floor sleeping, the lucky people found cardboard boxes to sleep in. I wasn't one of them. It was amazing what the hot commodities became: chairs, outlets, and cardboard boxes.

JetBlue employees seem to be very well trained to not notice the hugely pregnant or make any effort to help them get comfortable. One did offer me a chair in baggage services, but that was the only person who seemed to think it was necessary, despite hours spent in their lines.

The good news is I was not one of the people who got on a plane and were still on it, and still at JFK, 8 hours later. I did finally escape. After three flights I was confirmed on were cancelled on Wednesday, I was confirmed on a 5pm flight on Thursday (eventually cancelled too) and standby on a 9am flight. That flight finally boarded around 11:30am and I had a seat on it. I was back in Pittsburgh later that afternoon, looking horrible and feeling worse, but home.

The bad news is that while I was in the air, CD was at the vet with our cat, Arabella, having her put down. I had a feeling there was something wrong before I left for New York. She had started wandering outside "her room". On Thursday morning she woke CD up and was in obvious pain. Not waiting for me to get home was the right thing to do but I am sorry he had to deal with that by himself. Arabella was over 17 years old and had lived with me since she was five months old. In that time we lived in Swarthmore, PA, Williamstown, MA, Walla Walla, WA, and Pittsburgh, and multiple houses and apartments in each of those places. There are few friends who have been in my life anywhere close to that long.

We miss her but know that she lived a nice long life and isn't in pain anymore. I thought I had a picture of her, with her beautiful green eyes, but I'm not finding it at the moment. Will post as soon as I locate the photo.