Bad, Better, Worse

Happy Birthday, Aunt Sandy!!

Wilder and I went to pick up Chris from the airport last night. Yeah! It is so good to have him home, especially after such a crazy (yet ultimately fine) week. However, our odd luck was not to end with his arrival (things happen in threes, right?). Let me run down our week for you:

1. Tuesday
Wilder puts a bead in his nose (you’re already familiar with this story).

2. Thursday
The clutch goes out on our car and it breaks down on the way to our house. It’s me, Sue, Wilder, and Phoebe sitting on the side of the road in our dead car. I call our neighbor Stan to pick us up, and at the same time another neighbor, Johnny, drives by on his moto, stops and, upon hearing about the situation, continues up the hill to the local mechanic’s house, who comes right down to help. The mechanic takes our car to his shop and we pile ourselves and all our stuff into Stan’s truck to head for home. He kindly offers to loan us his truck until we get our car back.

3. Friday
We pick up Chris from the airport. He gets through customs quickly and we head to the car excited to be reunited. Chris is carrying Wilder and I am pulling his suitcase. When we get to the truck, I tell Chris that his bag is to heavy for me to heave into the back of the truck and leave it sitting by the truckbed while I get into the car. Chris is putting Wilder’s car seat into the truckbed and, I think, his suitcase. We get to the hotel and Chris asks, “Where my suitcase?” Uh . . .”Didn’t you put it in the back?” No. So back to the airport we go, hoping that some benevolent soul and not some thief has found his bag – which holds no less than $2500 worth of computer and phone equipment, Chris’ work and personal clothing, two pairs of shoes, a copy of his passport, all of our tax and financial information, as well as all of our most recent US mail – including a brand new Visa/debit card and a blank check from our credit union. Expletive, expletive, expletive…

We get to the airport and the bag is not – surprise – sitting in the parking lot where we left it. We ask customs agents, airport employees, and a few taxi cab drivers if it’s been turned in or if they’ve seen it, but no luck. Adding to the situation is the fact that the phone number Chris has written on his suitcase tag, in the event someone trustworthy did find it and is trying to get a hold of him, is for the phone which is currently turned off and zipped up in his bag. Understandably distressed, we return to our hotel defeated and prepare to cancel and reestablish all of our cards and accounts, which we begin to do first thing Saturday morning.

We entertain many unsavory visions of who has our bag and the potential fraud they could commit with all of our possessions and documents. But, knowing that things are ulitmately out of our conrol, we reach a certain amount of resignation and are just thankful that we’re all together and safe and healthy. Then, gracias a dios y diosa, hours after we get home Saturday night, Chris gets an email from a guy in Playa del Coco who has our bag!!! Hallelujah! We rejoice with gratitude and plan to drive to the beach this week to get it.

So every situation we were faced with this week turned out all right, but obviously we learned a few lessons along the way.

1. Beads make fine ornamentation but an unfortunate addition to the internal passage of the nose.
2. Take the car to the mechanic for maintenance before you find yourself stranded on the side of the road.
3. Do NOT leave your suitcase in the airport parking lot and do NOT put any information that compromises your livelihood in your checked baggage.
4. We have incredibly good support and amazingly good luck.