Departure
We sat on the runway in Atlanta for an hour and a half.

The journey
Poppy slept for about 5 hours of the 8 and a half hour flight. She’s a peach of a traveler. I watched “Over the Hedge” and then slept for a little while – maybe an hour – and Rockford didn’t sleep at all. But he did watch “16 Blocks.” I don’t think that’s an even trade.

Arrival
We got off the plane to find that KLM’s baggage handlers had broken our stroller. They snapped one of the legs in half. After we showed our passports to the guy at turnstile, I went straight to the KLM service counter to file a claim. The lady there typed something up and printed it out for me, but we have to mail it in to the KLM office ourselves. After I finished up there and Rockford gathered the luggage that actually made the flight, Rockford went to find the Martinair baggage claim office to see if our fifth bag had made the trip. It hadn’t. Martinair says they never got the bag from US Airways, US Airways says they gave it to Martinair, and it looks, for now at least, that we’ve lost most of our clothing. They gave Rockford a phone number to call. It’s a US number. And we don’t have a phone.

First impression
The cows are taller here.

The apartment
Downstairs isn’t so bad. It’s entirely Ikea-furnished – and we’re not averse to Ikea. But the toilet is in a tiny closet just inside the front door, and the only sink downstairs is in the kitchen. I can’t figure out how to open the door to the “patio” – which, by the way, was the first thing to make me think “tenement housing” – and there’s no oven. The living room area isn’t horrible. It’s just sort of empty and sad.

And then I went upstairs.

There are three bedrooms. This, we thought, was a good thing. I think we were mistaken. The rooms are numbered 1, 2 and 3. The people who arranged our housing put a crib for Poppy in Room 3, the smallest of the bedrooms. A very kind gesture, but the crib is about a foot and a half deep, and it’s broken. Rooms 1 and 2 are basically the same – two twin beds and a tall Ikea bureau in each. Room 2 has 2 big Ikea desks in it, too – perfect for scrapbooking. But all of my scrapbooking stuff is in Charlotte.

The bathroom is pink tile with a sink on one wall, a showerhead on the other and a drain in the floor. When I was first exploring the place, I was worried we didn’t have a toilet at all, that we were just supposed to use the drain in the middle of the bathroom floor. So finding the wee WC was actually a nice surprise.

We’re in Atlanta. They’re supposed to start boarding in about half an hour.

Where I Should Be: Over the Atlantic, halfway to Amsterdam.

Where I Am: Sitting on a balcony on the eighth floor of the Hyatt at the Orlando airport, eating a tuna fish sandwich.

Martinair had some kind of glitch involving a cancelled flight in Miami, and somehow they decided we should be involved. Rockford and Poppy were watching Baby Einstein, I was reading, and then the Intercom Lady said “Butterscotch Sundae Family, we have a very important message for you. Come on down!” So I did.

“We only have one seat left,” she said, “and you are three people.”

“Yes? And?”

“One of you can fly tonight, in business class, or you can all fly tomorrow. Out of Atlanta.”

“We can’t split up. The baby hates to fly alone.”

“Very good,” she said. “Go talk to Reuben.”

So we talked to Reuben and he gave us our three squares and a cot (it’s a very, very nice cot), and some dough for our trouble. The Lord works in mysterious ways.