Stood up and then not

I'm enjoying the luxury of wireless internet connection at a city hotel to update you and if you have difficulty keeping up with the details you could be forgiven as it reads like a sitcom with all the twists and turns.

I tracked down daughter # 2 this a.m. to see if she'd had to take her father in on Sunday night or had found him room at an inn somewhere. Apparently she'd emailed the details but our server was down at work so email was being picked off and not getting through (amongst many other technological difficulties this week) She explained he'd stayed at the Future Inn in Bayers Lake so this meant (you'd think) that he would be here tonight as I type this eh? Not so fast.

I catch a ride to the city with a work colleague after we make a number of false starts which are thwarted and then a successful run for it at almost 3 pm. She drops me at the above mentioned hotel and heads off to her accomodation. I check in and advise my husband (who's reservation it is) will be along at some point. I settle in and then hoof it across a paving project on a 6 lane highway over to Bayers Lake and as I'm making my way along the sidewalk at rush hour the cell rings and it's mister saying 1. they're not heading back tonight but staying in Maine 2. he's cancelled the hotel reservation. So I advise I've already checked in, my boss will now have to cover the hotel and I wouldn't have stayed at the other end of the city for a 8 a.m. start to a session if I'd known this. He tells me he'll see me at some point tomorrow, so I clarify the situation for him. I'm finished at 4 p.m. at the Westin, if he's not made his way there by the time I'm ready to leave, he can seek his own way home tomorrow. He doesn't argue but sounds mildly surprised.

I head over to Kent and browse scrapbook supplies, then to Staples to buy a new version of Norton (finally) and make the return trip through the construction. I confer with the baby daughter about her classes and she advises there is the possiblity of overseas study for semester in year 3 - Thailand is we both agree more exciting than the USA - and the difference in tuition/accomodation/meals will more than pay for the travel costs. She is instructed to 'look into it and go for it if she can. She is heading to clinical in the a.m. and a bit psyched about it.

I confer with daughter # 2 and we decide she'll keep the car until tomorrow as she has her first day at Montessori school as teacher assistant and has to be there early. I will seek alternate transportation to my session and she'll be there to pick me up at 4 p.m. when it finishes and I advise her to call me should her father make contact and attempt to arrange any kind of travel plans with her.

I find an OHN colleague at Staples who kindly drives me back to the hotel. We had originally planned to get together to look at the Norway trip photos but by now it's 8:30 p.m. she has her daughter with her, her husband is at home and cranky and I haven't had supper. We decide neither of us are fit to socialize, she tells me about a job interview she's had and I head in to the Redwood Grill for a club wrap with sweet pototao fries which improves my attitude immensely. I stop at the desk and advise them to switch billing to me and the clerk tells me "your husband called and tried to reach you when he was cancelling the room at about 5, I thought I'd put the wrong person in the room as you had the same last name" "Oh no" I tell her - "I'm not really married to him, I'm a widow when I connect with him after all this crazy stuff - he should NOT be allowed to engage in travel planning". She agrees.

I head up to the room and do some research for the presentations taking advantage of high speed and....you guessed it - the cell rings. It is (of course) the man of the hour and he tells me that they've decided to drive straight through and...he will be joining me after all as originally planned (I sense he expects me to react more joyously than I do) and the GPS says it will be almost 1 a.m. He asks what room I'm in and I say (as calmly as I am able to) you are honestly expecting that I will get up and let you in at that hour of the night? I will call the desk and you can pick up the card there as you are really pushing it, even for you this time. Then I remind him that since he has (yet again) changed his travel plans that there is no vehicle here for him in the a.m. for his meeting. He tells me the meeting doesn't start until afternoon and I explain that there will be no magic materialization of a vehicle by then either as I am heading to the session without a car for the day and the Montessori assistant will not be free to chauffeur until about 2 pm. His final comment is "we'll work something out" so I clarify that he'll work something out as I'm leaving early.

I now await his (silent I'm sure) arrival in the dead of the night. The good news is that in the over three decades he's been crawling into and out of bed at ALL hours of the night and day I have become so accustomed to it that I have no idea as to his whereabouts so I likely really won't notice if the great communicator that he is, is here in the am.