AKA – Murphy’s Law says that once the first thing goes wrong – everything else will just domino into chaos.
Arriving home, I was surprised to see the 18 year-old still there. Scheduled to leave for Vienna on a music trip with a class in the morning, our plan had been for her to overnight with a classmate in Stuttgart in order to make a 0615 flight.
Dashing, we were on the way to the train station when she realized she did not have her cell phone. I was going to give her mine, and just tell her to pay cash for the train ride, but then she would not have had enough money along. Turning around, we went home, got her phone and some more cash and then bought her ticket from the Bahn’s vending machine.
Rather than a direct connection, it involved an S-Bahn to Mannheim and a change to an IC. 45 minutes later, I get this upset call – she left her carry-on bag on the S-Bahn. Checking with the Bahn – it had not been turned in and the S-Bahn was at the Karlsruhe Betriebshof. She now is in Stuttgart without a change of clothes.
Her classmate is not the same size, and it turns out her asthma meds were in the case. I look at packing another bag and sending it down with her sister yet tonight (but the youngest was unable to reach any of her friends so that she would not have a place to stay – and I didn’t want a 14 year old wandering on the trains at 2300).
It is now after 2330 when the bedraggled kid gets back to Heidelberg. I have found her some clothes (she has little that is clean) and an alternate medication. There is a possible train connection that will get her to the airport at 0522. But it turns out that her passport is in Stuttgart and she has missed the window to go and pick it up.
We hang the whole thing and I start to send her to bed. She is still not recovered from her illness this weekend and is now walking into walls with exhaustion.
When I think about it – I should have cancelled her early on (as she still is not feeling well) – or helped her watch the clock so that we had enough time at the train station in the first place. She is normally my most organized and driven teen, but even planning this trip has been a disaster from the git-go.
Knitting
On the knitting front – I have less than 2 cm to the shoulders on the Valley Jacket and should take some socks out of hibernation.
Audio Books
Big Trouble – by Dave Berry. A really fun romp complete with teens, Russian mobsters, gun runners, FBI, local cops and airline pilots not old enough to have cleared their acne. Probably no redeeming literary value, but the story does a nice job of using sterotypes and poking fun.
-Holly
