Once they realize it's actually all well within limits except for the .6" the handle adds one of two things happens, they begrudgingly allow me to take it on, saying they'll "let it go" or, in this case, get high and mighty that they spotted such a minuscule difference and demand it be sorted as check-in and not carry-on. A shrill "Yes, this is too large. We have a full flight, this must be checked in." and it dawns on me; we were one of the last people to board (Jeremy prefers to wait it out until the line dwindles down to nothing rather than stand in line) and they're getting nervous about their cabin space because in actuality their plane is probably not equipped to handle a completely packed flight. I looked around and sure enough, three other people were being pulled aside for carry-ons that were "too large".
If you haven't flown in a while, everyone is now allowed a carry-on plus a personal item. This is because, I imagine (no research went into this), women wanted a carry-on and their purse, because who would deny a woman their purse, and once that was allowed then men were like "shoot, I want in on this" and started carrying man purses or demanding equality or whatnot and boom! now everyone can have their carry-on plus a huge ass purse or laptop bag or diaper bag. Seriously, the woman two rows in front of me has a purse as big as her carry-on. The later is supposed to be fit under the seat in front of you but who wants to do that when that is the only leg room you have? So then the carry-ons and the personal items, not to mention everyone's winter coats, were all getting shoved into cabin space and the staff was panicking about no room and taking it out on the last people to board.
So I get it, you don't have enough space, but how about instead of borderline screaming at me about my supposedly astronomically large carry-on you instead speak to me like a normal person? "Excuse me, ma'am? We're running low on cabin space, would you mind if I check in your carry-on at no additional cost?" "Oh sure, no problem!" cause you see the problem with me, and a lot of people, is if you come at me offensively I'm gonna get nasty back. I'm not going to pretend for one second I was an angel in this. Once the eyerolls came when I asked her to measure it, my brat side came out. Now I'm grumpy, you're grumpy, you treat the next person unpleasantly, the cycle continues.
Now that I've spent four paragraphs ranting about a piece of luggage, let's continue on with our story. The rest of the flight was good until we started descending. It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes during descent I get real sick. First, my sinuses start aching, then my body stars getting ridiculously hot and sweaty, I get dizzy and light-headed, my sinuses go from aching to screaming, and lastly my extremities start tingling like when they fall asleep. It's very unpleasant and the poor woman next to me was moving herself and her things as far away as possible from me in fear of some projectile vomiting coming her way.
We landed and US customs was a breeze. There were no other incoming flights so what took us almost 3 hours last summer took us maybe 15 minutes. My TSA agent didn't even ask about what I was bringing with me. For instance only a certain amount of liquor can be brought in so they typically ask. Also, only certain types of cheese, tea, and honey can be brought in so they'll ask what kind of food you're bringing. He just asked the worth of what I was bringing with me and sent me on my merry way. Then we got our luggage and went to meet my dad.
We were staying for 15 days so Jeremy's family gets 5, my father gets 5, and my mother gets 5. These are just the days we spend sleeping at their house, this does not mean we spend 24/7 with them on these days. There was apparently some confusion on that front. It was also important to me to spend extra time with Jeremy's family as not only was this the first time in about 5 years that the whole family was together (his brother was in the military and his one sister is in the navy), but also because I feel they get a little cheated since my parents are divorced. I mean, my dad gets 5 days, my mom gets 5 days, and then Jeremy's mother, father, and three siblings get 5 days? It just seems unfair so I tried my best to spend extra time with them, but then that makes others unhappy and in the end, I feel like all sides were unhappy even though we planned and sacrificed a lot to make things work. But more of the internal goings-on in the next post, considering my anti-American Airlines rant took up 4 paragraphs.