July 27

This was it. The morning that we'd fly home. We wouldn't really sleep again until we'd be in our own bed with our boys just down the hall. I could not wait.

I LOVE this t-shirt.
"I've been saving it for this day," he'd said.

Hong Kong, even from the airport hotel, was awesome.
I can't wait to go back and explore that place.

Brunch before we got on the plane.

"Bye-bye, Hong Kong."

(I can sorta see the slow descent into madness in these photos and then we get to this picture and smack "madness" full in its face: <giggle>

This was taken about an hour outside of Detroit. I was exhausted, 
I'd changed her into her Pjs in a vain attempt to convince her to sleep,
we were on our upteenth bottle because she just couldn't get full -explanation below, and I was frazzled beyond frazzle. I have on sunglasses because someone, who shall remain unnamed - I am married to him, just so you know :)  -  kept opening the ding-dang window to try to see some sign of Detroit and I was determined NOT to have a complete come-apart that close to getting off that stupid airplane.)

F I F T E E N

and

1/2

H O U R S

later

on a Friday afternoon in Detroit but very early Sunday morning, for us, we landed in Detroit, Michigan.

"Hello, Detroit. Hello, good ole' USA!"

About two hours from Detroit, while still in the air, K-Man had asked me, "So, how do you think the trip has gone so far?"  I'd replied, "Ai Yi Yi! But, it could have been so much worse and, at this point, I'm REALLY afraid to say that out loud."  He'd kinda laughed, "Yeah, the next two hours could be really bad, huh?"  I'd just put my fingers over my lips, Shhhhh....

I gotta tell ya, I'm just not that impressed with any airline now a days but when Delta served my two yo Chinese child an egg salad sandwich for dinner that I wouldn't even eat, that was a new low. This was the "baby flight," there were about 4 or 5 other Chinese adoptees on this flight. This happens every week.  They KNOW it, they know these kids are gonna be on board.  And, they served our kids with Chinese taste buds stale, tasteless, egg salad sandwiches. On a fifteen hour flight. Really? How hard (and cheap) would it have been to serve them rice or noodles?  <sigh>  Good gawd, they could have just boiled some water and thrown a packet of Ramen in a cup, Lyric would have loved that.  <sigh>

Lyric slept about 4 hours, total, and the only thing that would put her to sleep was the movie Tangled. Which was really weird as she'd never seen it before and couldn't hear it then, because I couldn’t get her to let me put the ear buds in her ears….but she could see it so she’d lay on me in front of it until she fell asleep.  The first time through I lay sorta hunched over on top of K-Man, with her on top of me, trying to get her as flat as possible. The movie was just meaningless movement on the screen but she just lay there glued to it. She finally fell asleep.

Several hours after she'd woken up from that "nap," she began to get whiny again so I gave her a bottle (from water that I had to get from the stewardess, but that's another story) and turned the movie back on. I  was losing my mind from boredom by this time so I stuck the ear buds in and listened to it ( it IS cute.) At the end when the hero, Flynn Rider, says,  “She was a princess worth waiting for.”   I got choked up and kissed my own little Asian Princess on the top of her head. Yes, she was.

While she slept I was, apparently, not feeling emotional enough so I watched a documentary on US immigrants.  The filmmaker went to naturalization programs in all 50 states and asked the immigrants why they wanted to become US citizens, why they’d leave the countries where they were born and come to another country, so different from their own. THAT had me blubbering, just thinking about going through immigration with her.

Oh, good grief.

Immigration was, actually, strangely anti-climatic and undramatic - stood in a line, waited while the guy in the TSA uniform did our paperwork, listened to my hubby and him discuss OSU/Michigan football, a stamp above Lyric's American Visa in her Chinese passport, and done.

Except for that other guy in a TSA uniform who, later, looked up at us from his desk and sorta sarcastically said, “Good luck.”
I was too tired to get whatever slightly veiled innuendo he was throwing my way, so I said, “Thank you.”
He kinda snarled at me, nodded to Lyric, and said in a SNARKY voice,
“ I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to her.”

Oh, how I wish I had been in a stronger frame of mind -  I was just too tired to process his snarkiness, at that point in time.

BUT, at this point in time, I can concentrate on him...

(Well, looka there -  proof that insensitive little pricks exist in every culture.

Asshole.  

Give me a minute to shift moods…and yes, it is strangely cathartic to write it here, now.)

...OR I can concentrate on the wonderful woman, also in the TSA uniform, who took one look at Lyric, smiled hugely, and said, "Awwwww, you got you a baaaaabeeeeee!”

Yes, we did!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the newest American Citizen. Oh, the pressure. :)

Doesn't everybody become a United States citizen in their pajamas?

We grabbed all of our luggage, went through customs, rechecked the bags, and got in line to go through security.  I put Lyric down on the floor only to realize that my shifting her had caused a river, a literal river, to come gushing out of her belly button and that it was running down her leg (and my front) at that exact moment.  Well, that Ergo is going straight into the washer, tonight!   Thank God, I'd packed us both a change of clothes.  We made it through security and went upstairs to catch our connecting flight to north Alabama (almost HOME!! I couldn't help but wonder how Lyric would react when we finally stopped moving, all she'd known with us was constant movement - airplanes, hotel rooms, eating at buffets, car trips, etc.) Just before our gate we found a family bathroom and went inside. There, we completely changed Lyric - diapers and wet Pjs and everything.  I washed myself down with diaper wipes, changed into my dress, and crammed our yucky stuff into plastic bags. We'd arrived with time to spare!

It was sorta funny, after we got to the Detroit airport,
I caught her staring intently at the people as they walked by.
"They look different, huh?"
This is a subject that will come up again in our life together, I am sure.

Pretty girl in her new duds from the silk factory.

It was cancelled. Our flight, the LAST leg of our trip home, was cancelled. Weather got us again. We then spent EIGHT more HOURS in the airport before we got seats on a flight the next day, figured out our bag situation, and made hotel reservations. "Stuck in Detroit" had replaced "Stuck in China" as our theme. "Exhausted" was still at the top of the list.


Note to the passenger who acted like a jerk because his plane got delayed for a few hours on the way from Detroit to somewhere farther west ( ? didn't really catch the particulars, don't really care) :

Some OTHER passengers have been through hell in the last 24 (+) hours.  If they AND their two year old can keep it together enough to be NICE to people who really have no control over the situation, then I'm hazarding a guess that your 40-something-year-old, spoiled-rotten, self should be able to do so, also. That is all.

Oh, BTW Mr. Spoiled Rotten, remember the Delta worker that was the object of your ugly fit? The one who looked you straight in your face and sternly responded, "Sorry Sir, there is nothing we can do to help you?" Remember her? I'm sure she'll remember you, for a while. Anyway, the Delta worker sitting RIGHT NEXT to her, took one look at our itinerary and said,  "You came from Hong Kong? You must be exhausted," and then slipped us hotel and meal vouchers "under the table."  Hmmmm, seems being nice and having a legitimate beef,  DO pay off.  Much better than your sucky attitude. Might wanna remember that for the next time.


(Yes, I was exhausted, "the world beginning to spin" exhausted. I felt myself starting to do that crazy "I've had about as much as I can take" giggling standing right there next to the Delta counter because all I could think about was Steve Martin and John Candy in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."   hahahahahahaha)

We made it to the hotel and I vaguely remember taking Lyric's dress off, washing it in the bathroom sink, laying Lyric down and falling onto the bed next to her. Poor K-Man had to go back out, catch a cab, find a supermarket, buy diapers, formula, gauze to treat Lyric, etc. before he could come back and go to sleep.  I woke up sometime in the night, took off my dress and washed it in the bathroom sink. I hung it next to the Ergo which was dripping dry from the shower rod.

Right now, as I am typing this, I am giggling to myself about what my friend, Robbie, told me, referring to that horrible eye infection that I developed the day we finally got home (it was awful, lasted longer than the worst parts of the jet lag, and took 3 eye doctors, 2 antibiotics, and a steroid to clear up.)

"(You got that eye infection) because you gave Detroit the 'Stink Eye' and it bounced back."

hahahahahahahahahaha

She has no idea just how much "Detroit" deserved it.