Hello again. We got back from Boston on Wednesday, a day
later than planned. We were booked on the Monday night flight, arriving in
Krakow on Tuesday morning. Monday was a holiday in Poland so the kids didn’t
have school, so they were only going to miss Tuesday. On Monday we spent the
day packing and at the mall shopping for last minute things of course! So due
to our time crunch and the fact that I misplaced the luggage scale at Nina’s
house, we had no choice but to just load
all our things into our suitcases and hope for the best (normally, we weigh
them all to make sure they are the allowed 23 kgs, and if anything is too heavy
we stuff it into our carry ons, mail a box back home or we run out to TJ Maxx to buy another suitcase! ).
Our flight was at 8:20 pm so we had a car service booked for 5:00 so we could get
there nice and early and have time to eat something, seeing as none of us
really eats the plane food. I was a bit optimistic this time though, as I had remembered
to call ahead and order kids’ meals and a vegetarian meal for myself. We left
Braintree around 5:15 and zipped right into the airport, there was no traffic
and no lines at the check-in desk. Surprisingly the woman did not care that ALL
of our bags were overweight – score! There was a bit of a line going through
security, but it wasn’t too bad and we were sitting in the airport restaurant a
little after 6. We had some chowder and a beer and finally we were all sitting on the plane and ready to go. Ava had lready started watching a movie and
Jack and Mike were on the iPads – of course my TV screen was not working and I
was hoping it was just because we were still on the ground so I was just nervously flipping through a magazine as I usually do. After a bit of
waiting the pilot came on the PA and told us that they were having trouble
getting one of the engines started, but that they would keep trying and he’d
update us soon. WTF?? I really wish he had not told us that. I immediately sensed a panic attack coming on (a wave of heat shooting down the back of my neck, then around to my stomach). I tried to remain calm but really, who the heck wants to fly 8
hours over the Atlantic with an engine that might be faulty?? I was so scared. After
a little while the pilot updated us and told us they still couldn’t get it
started so maintenance was coming out to have a look. At this point my hands were shaking and I was
starting to hyperventilate. I knew there was no way I could stay sane on the flight if they got the engine running and took off. It reminded me of the time when our flight from Dublin to London was struck by lightning and we returned to the airport to have maintenance look at the plane - finally they let us off the plane (Thank God) and were directing us to other flights but I told Mike we had to go home because there was no way I was going back in the air (sorry again Claire and Don!!). Jack had to use the bathroom so we got up to head to the
toilet. On the way back the flight attendants were standing at the top of the
stairs (the bathrooms are downstairs on the long-haul Lufthansa flights) so I
asked one of them if the pilot was able to actually get the engine started,
would it be safe to fly? They assured me that there was no way the pilot would
fly the plane if it weren’t safe, and that they wouldn’t go up if it wasn’t
safe either. I headed back to my seat and tried to remain calm but it just
didn’t work. I found myself praying that they would not get the plane started and we would
have to be let off. I knew this would be a total hassle for us, but I
just did not know how I was going to cope if it took off.
‘Thankfully” about an hour later the pilot said they couldn’t get it started so
the flight had to be cancelled. I honestly don’t think I was the only one to
breathe a sigh of relief, as it didn’t seem that too many people around us were
annoyed by this news (except the one girls at baggage claim who was in tears). At this point it was almost 3 hours after we had boarded the
plane – when I nudged Jack and told him it was time to get off, he was really
confused because he thought we were in the air! It was 11pm and they told us
that they were short on hotel rooms, so anyone who lived locally should go home
and there would be a person in the terminal handing out taxi vouchers. Or if we
didn’t want to wait, we could just take a taxi home and submit the receipt for
reimbursement the next day. We got back into the terminal and it was a bit of a
mess because there were only 3 people to help all 250+ people getting off the plane. We didn't really feel like hiking all the way back to Braintree with all of our overweight bags, but we heard someone say that it would be a 3 hour wait to get a hotel voucher and the crowd around the man handing out taxi vouchers was huge, so we collected our bags and jumped in a taxi and went back to Braintree. We got back to Nina's at midnight, exactly 7 hours after we had left! When we got there Mike called Lufthansa and got us booked on the same flight for the
next day.
The next day the weather was gorgeous – about 70 degrees and
sunny. We didn’t want to leave! Mike had spent a few hours the previous day in the Apple
store getting the screen on his iPhone fixed (someone stepped on it at a conference he went to), and he discovered on the plane
that the phone wasn’t working correctly anymore so it was a plus that we got
delayed because he went back to the Apple store and ended up getting a new
phone (of course this took several more hours!). We ran a few more errands that we didn’t have time to do the day before, and
then had the car service pick us up at 5:00 – again. Of course this time there was
traffic, but once at the airport there were no lines and thankfully we had the same woman check us in and she didn't charge us for the overweight bags again. Yeah! We made our way back to the
same restaurant and had more chowder and beer. I ordered a different kind of
beer because I didn’t want to jinx us... I was still a little worried that we
were about to get on the same plane from the day before, after they had
duct-taped the engine or something. But when we were boarding the flight, I
recognized the man who took our tickets
from the day before and I said something like, let’s hope we don’t sit here all
night again! And he told me not to worry, that it was a different plane. Whew!!
After that it was smooth sailing, we took off on time but the annoying part was that our special meals had been cancelled and since I didn't hink to call and book them again, we didn't get them (although this has to be done 24 hours in advance so I wouldn't have had time to do it anyway - super annoying!!). The flight was actually a bit
short – I don’t mind long overnight flights because they give us more
time to sleep – we had the kids turn the lights out around 11pm, Jack fell
asleep immediately, Ava took a bit longer and for some reason I could not
sleep. Which is unusual because I never have trouble sleeping anywhere (one
time after college I sat on my bedroom floor to tie my shoes to go out for a run and fell
asleep on the floor. My friends used to call me Sleepy Kara....) Anyway, Mike
had booked us premium economy seats which were really nice and spacious and it
almost seemed like we were in Business Class – but the seats just were not
conducive to sleep – they were too big and I was next to a window and I usually
like to prop my pillow against the wall to get cozy, but there was too much
space around the seats so I couldn’t get comfy. I dozed on and off for a few hours and after an uneventful transfer
through Munich, we arrived in Krakow at around 12:30 and were back to the house
about 1:30. We decided not to take naps so we forced ourselves to stay awake,
had a early dinner and then hit the hay. We noticed that our house was super cold - before we left I had turned down
the heat, I turned it back up when we got home but by dinner time we were
all still freezing. I decided to translate the message I had seen on the thermostat
and realized it said ‘no flame’ or something like that. Whoops! We were all dying to
take showers but unfortunately we had no heat or hot water. I called our
savior Michal who then called the landlord who happened to be out of town.
Michal was home alone with his little boy so he said when his wife came home he
would head over. He got to our place around 9 (( think we all had fallen asleep
by then) and ended up just needing to press a reset button on our thermostat.
Well I could have done that!! I felt terrible.
The water never heated up enough for us to shower that night, so we all had to go to
bed with dirty plane germs on us.
We all had trouble getting up the next day, but thankfully
we had heat and hot water again so we all took nice long hot showers, but I
didn’t get the kids to school until 12:30. They were late the following day too
– jet lag stinks coming home (unlike when we go back to Boston, and we are all
awake and ready to start the day at 7am!). This week we are still struggling to wake in the mornings, but luckily tomorrow is a holiday (Polish Independence Day) so the kids don't have school and Mike doesn't have to work.
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| Ava has only managed to empty the contents of her suitcase onto her floor |
I am still trying to get back into some sort of a routine but I just feel blah. When we were in Boston I bought the books 'It Starts With Food' and 'Whole 30' in anticipation
of starting a new eating program.
Mike and I have been feeling gross lately,
and I have not been able to lose the weight around my middle that I gained
after my surgery last December so I was up for something new. When I flipped
through the book in the store it seemed good, but now that I have read it I am
not sure how practical it will be for me. It’s pretty heavy on meat, which I
haven’t really been eating any lately. It also doesn’t allow beans or legumes,
something I have been eating a lot of. It also list walnuts on the bottom of
the list of beneficial nuts – the exact opposite of some other things I had
just read. There’s so much conflicting information out there! Anyway, I am
still going to try it and maybe I will discover that the beans and the walnuts
have been the source of my bloated belly!! Because of the jet lag I haven’t
really been hungry for my usual meals anyway – I have hunger pains but when I
look through our house there is not one thing that seems appetizing to me.
For some good news, my foot seems to finally be getting better. I was still limping around the whole time I was in Boston and I wasn't able to get an appointment with an orthopedist so I just went to a walk-in clinic in Falmouth to make sure it wasn't broken or something. The doctor there said it could be stress fractures, but there's no treatment for that - or it might be something called metatarsalgia (inflammation around the metatarsal bones) and gave me a prescription for prednisone. I was a bit disappointed because I knew I wasn't going to take a hard steroid like that - I considered it for a bit because I was really desperate and down about not having been able to do any exercise in over 3 weeks -but in the end I was afraid of the side effects so I never took it. I did go to Walmart though, and bought a scooter so I could scoot around our neighborhood, keeping my bad foot on the scooter. It was hard work! And still kind of hurt my foot anyway. I also had a visit with a naturopathic cancer doctor (more on that in another post) and asked for his advice. I had seen him in the summer and he did some bloodwork and noticed that my immune system (specifically, my natural killer NK cells) were really low, so I have been taking supplements to boost it up. I had read that one of the side-effects of the prednisone was to suppress the immune system, so I asked him about it and he agreed that I probably shouldn't take it. He recommended a supplement that I could take to help inflammation, and told me to put my foot in steaming hot water for 3 minutes, followed by 30 seconds in ice water, and keep alternating that 6 times. I did it a few times when I was in Falmouth, and then a few times already in Krakow and have been taking the inflammation pills religiously and yesterday was the first day that I walked without a limp - hallelujah!! It still hurts a bit when if I don't have shoes on and I am not ready to run or anything yet, but I am SO happy to stop limping because it was screwing up my ankle and my back, and now I can at least get back to the gym and yoga. Unfortunately I will have to pass on Monday night soccer games for a bit longer, but hopefully it won't take too much longer to fully heal (fingers crossed).
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