We decide to take a trip… and “Hitch” tags along

No, this is not the story of how we met Will Smith at the airport…. although I wish it would had been.

My husband had this incredible ‘last minute’ idea of taking a plane to Argentina and surprise my father for his birthday.

Experience tells me that ‘last-minute-anything’ tends to go-south starting from the first minute, but we didn’t listened to our instincts and bought two round trips for the weekend.

My husband’s brother was in NY, so we had lunch with him prior to starting our adventure… arugula and prosciutto crepes were enjoyed over New York tap water.

We headed to the airport, high-spirited and full of excitement for the prospect of becoming the advanced Christmas presents to fifty members of my family (yes, we already covered the extent of my father’s side clan).

Whilst driving, a small bird defecated over my recently washed car, so being the clean freak that I am; I cleaned it with a baby wipe when we arrived.

Immigrations happened without any incident and we decided to peruse some bookstore and find something entertaining to read for the 17-hour trip ahead of us.

 While doing this, I started to feel strangely warm (considering that we were in a -2°C weather) and I removed my sweater and scarf… this brought some itching to my neck and I started scratching nonchalantly until I realized that I was rubbing my scalp… did I had lice? I didn’t think that after 20-year out of primary school the lice would’ve decided to make me theirs again, so a visit to the bathroom settled my curiosity… I definitely didn’t had lice, nor any type of bugs over me, however, I was starting to show some red areas in my stomach and my neck, as well as my whole face.

I assumed this was something related to a temporary itch, so I went out to look for my husband. He saw me and understood that something wasn’t right, so he insisted on going to the pharmacy to get an anti-allergic.

I stayed seated on a coffee shop and my ears began disturbing me, I couldn’t stop scratching them… this added to the fact that now all of my upper body parts were on fire.

I have a high-tolerance to pain and disturbing things… my husband doesn’t like this because I never get sick or complain about being sick, however, when I do have a problem, we usually end up in the E.R.

I called him (because it couldn’t take more than 5 minutes to get some medicine) and as soon as he saw my call, he realized that I was in utter and complete discomfort (I never call him for these things).

He run back and I swallowed four pills immediately, while staring at my wrist watch… the medicine was suppose to be effective ‘within 15 minutes’ and I wanted desperately to feel the ‘instant relief’.

My ears became bigger and my neck was scorching red, as well as my underarms, my back, my stomach, my inner thighs… I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to prevent myself from scratching and that’s when… even though I kept saying that I was A.OK… my husband; who knows something about ‘desperate circumstances calls for desperate measures’, requested the airport doctor.

Not 2 minutes later, I had an EMT with a defibrillator (he thought I was unconscious), two paramedics checking my vitals (they received a distressed called of someone dying on an airport gate), an oxygen mask tide to my face (allergy and asthma don’t mix too well… and I, supposedly, had both) all of our bags strapped to a stretcher and me and my husband, riding over the airport runways in an ambulance headed to the nearest hospital.

Needless to say that when we got home, it was midnight, we were exhausted, I felt renewed after that cortisone IV that reduced the swelling and the itching and the redness and the hives…. we missed our one-time opportunity to visit our family in an over Atlantic adventure, though.

However, we had our adventure … not cross-oceanic, not family related, no barbecue was involved… we spent 4 hours at the hospital, they drugged me until I was white enough to ease their minds that I wasn’t going to die of respiratory failure, we shared an overcrowded E.R. area full of sick people… and most importantly, we learned that ‘last minute’ anything, is not something we’ll be trying again soon.

As for my allergy, if it was the prosciutto, the arugula, the crepes or the bird’s crap… we’re not sure... what I definitely know, is that I’ll not be trying those in the near future.

Luggage keeps pilling up and I didn’t even put my clothes in yet!!

Here we are, 3 days before our departure, and as always, we women tend to get ahead of things so I started packing for our holiday trip to Argentina.
Have you ever lived outside your home country? It’s like this:
2 months prior to our arrival, I started to get these emails:
“Could you please bring me a blouse / pant / shoes / boots / wallet / purse / belt that I saw online, is really tiny, and it’s not heavy, I promise” or “I’m dying to have those new sunglasses / watch / key ring / cuff link, but here they’re really expensive, would it bother you if I ordered them and you can, maybe, bring them with you in a small corner of your bag?” or “I want an iPod / headphones / cover case / new laptop / Wii / Stereo system… I’ll pay the custom taxes, but could you please go to the store and bought them for me? They don’t accept international cards”… (To someone else with that story; do I look stupid to you?... ok, don’t answer that) and they add “pretty please?” as if THAT is going to make the difference… come on! You’re asking for a 10 pound favor… didn’t you notice that we have weight restrictions in airplanes now? Where do you want me to put MY clothes? Send them by courier? Pay overweight for my 0.01 pound bathing suit?
What is it with people and decency? Forget about shame... nowadays people just ask and expect that you’ll be OK with them; don’t even think about deny them a favor… let me warn you, families keep grudges; so if you want to be in the white list, you better do whatever it takes to get that stuff down there; and I mean WHATEVER IT TAKES!
It all started with this spectacular idea that today I’ll finish with the packing business, so I dived inside our spare mini-room / closet to get our biggest valise; and I started to put the presents and requests first; big mistake there; because now the bag is full and where am I suppose to put all of our stuff? Is not like I can tell my husband to bring a few things, it’s a 3 week trip! Its summer there, so no coats or heavy clothes, but a girl needs her attire!! shoes, bathing suits, hair products, make-up… options, options, options!
So, yeah… maybe I’m a bit stupid because you should really see my luggage! I look like a walking department store; except for the beauty department (thank god for small favors! or our very nice relative that forgot to ask for a perfume / rejuvenating cream / make-up, etc.).
Anything to be kept away from the family's black list; I don’t want to be poisoned when we get there… and I want nice Christmas presents. So I did the second logical option: I found the other big valise and started dividing the weight between both of them… problem is; both are overweight now; and I’ll probably pay USD 200 to get them to Argentina; USD 500 when we arrive at customs and USD 75 to rent a mini-van to transport them to my father’s house.
In short, next time, don’t even let them know you’re coming! A surprise is much more fun, don’t you think? And you don’t have to worry about requests!... or better yet, change your email address and don’t even tell them… or commit to everything they ask and arrive with your empty hand and tell them you got robbed!
Laugh now, but this is definitely going to happen to you as well, and when it does, don’t say I didn’t warn you.