Thursday, June 3, 2010

plane ticket woes

so today . . . i am forced out of my comfort zone by the evil lakers.

diandra and i are going to go to portland in july to visit my parents. we have done this for the last few summers, and it is always so much fun! but it requires plane tickets to be purchased . . .

i haven't done a lot of traveling in my life. as a kid, most of our vacations were spent in the car traveling to the midwest to visit family. i have lots of good memories about those trips, but it meant days spent in the backseat of our car with my little brother.

you do the math.

as an adult, most of our vacations have been spent traveling to the portland area to visit my parents. thankfully we have always lived on the same coast, so the travel time was shorter, but it still meant many hours in the car. only now, i get to sit in the front seat!

so until recently i hadn't flown much. and when i did fly, rollie took care of all the arrangements, and i just followed him around with my carry-on bag trying to look inconspicuous. because for some reason, rollie always gets singled out in the security line. i don't know what it is. i think he must look a little bit sinister when we fly, because he is so tall and he is always on the lookout for suspicious characters . . . which probably makes him look a little suspicious!

but this time, it was up to me to get the plane tickets. i have been online for days now, checking out the prices, scared that they would go up before we could finalize our plans. which, of course they did--in a matter of hours, because i checked them today right before i came home from school! and then when i went to book them tonight, the price on the return flight had jumped $50!!! so i knew i needed to get those tickets NOW!

and why, you ask, was it up to me to get the tickets? why wasn't my wonderful, thoughtful husband taking care of that little task for me, as he usually does? five words . . .

game 1. lakers vs. celtics.

i'm sure rollie would have been happy to take care of this for me, but my time frame happened to fall during the first game of the nba championship series. he has been looking forward to this series since last fall. and really, if i had asked him, he would have done it anyway (he has tivo!) but i decided there was no reason i couldn't do it. i am a competent, capable adult. it isn't rocket science! it is just shopping . . . for something non-negotiable and non-returnable.

but there are so many decisions to make, and you know how i am about decisions! diandra has been easy to work with. she is flexible and keeps saying, "whatever you think." but that just makes it harder for me, because it leaves me with so many choices. and buying plane tickets isn't like shoe shopping--you can't really change your mind and exchange them. (speaking of which, i now have two pair of twinkle toes shoes at my house in two different sizes! the sales clerk finally said maybe it would be best to try them both at home and then return one pair. yes, a sales clerk actually said to bring one pair back. i think i wore her out with all my questions about, "but do you think it is better for them to be a little tight? should i be wearing socks? will they stretch out?" i am pretty sure she just wanted me to go away . . . ) so i played around with different flights and airports--because i am lucky enough to live within 45 minutes of four different airports--until i found what i thought was the best one. i put in all the information, i read all the fine print, but i just couldn't click on the button that said "purchase." i just couldn't do it. i wanted to check with someone, anyone, to make sure i had done it correctly. but it was late and rollie was already asleep, and i was pretty sure my mom was asleep, and diandra was awake of course, but she had already said, "whatever you decide will be fine!"

so finally i did it. i clicked on the purchase button. i bought plane tickets. all by myself.

of course, i only did it after reading all the fine print, which included the words "you may make one change to this itinerary or cancel and refund to original form of payment with no fee within 24 hours of purchase." ah ha! a loophole! admittedly it is a tiny loophole, but it was enough to make me feel like that if i get up tomorrow morning and realize i have made a terrible mistake, i can undo it.

because i need the security of knowing i can change my mind--even if it has to be in the next 24 hours!

2 comments:

Al said...

see? those lakers are no good for anything!

btw, the purchase is for a flight that lasts about an hour right? its not like you are spending days in the plane... just saying....

Jewelielyn said...

that might be true if we went straight to portland on a big plane. but we have to go to seattle, endure a 3 hour layover, and then fly back down to portland--all on a small plane. that's what we get if we want to fly out of long beach. and have cheap tickets. which we do.