Trials and Tribulations

Hi long lost friends and readers! Thanks for sticking with me and still stopping by even though lately I have been a terrible, terrible blogger! Of course you all know we had a super quick move across the country. Since then we’ve had a seemingly endless string of bad luck, which has resulted in a serious lack of blogging.

Now, I am not normally a complainer… but… I am about to complain. A lot.

And since this is still a food blog, and I don’t really like to write non-food-related posts, I’ll scatted in a few photos from the last few weeks as well. Like amazing California-style sashimi we had in Fresno.

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter (both @jessfuel), you may have seen some of these already! If you don’t follow me, you should!

Anyways… the reason we had to get to California so quickly was because Nick had to report for a 2 week training. A few days after we made it to the West coast, we were struck with a pretty bad stomach bug. The night before Nick was supposed to leave for training, he passed out in the bathroom and we ended up in the ER for a concussion and 4 staples to the head. So that was fun.

Obviously he didn’t make it to his training.

The next couple days passed somewhat uneventfully, and then it was time for me to fly back to Mississippi to meet the movers at our old house (we had to move so quickly that we didn’t have time to bring our stuff with us!).

Pomegranate sake enjoyed before my ridiculous flight. I’m not normally a sake fan, but this was amazing.

I had originally booked my ticket out of San Diego (thinking I’d be hanging out there on the beach while Nick was at his training). But since we never made it down there, and our new home is about a 6 hour drive from San Diego, that wasn’t going to work. After searching all the options for changing my flight, it appeared as if the cheapest way to do it was going to be to buy a completely separate ticket to get me to San Diego. In the end I ended up with 4 layovers. Yes, four.

I was supposed to leave at 4 pm West coast time and arrive at 10:15 the next morning. How fun!!!

I should have known this was going to be a bad idea, especially since I don’t have particularly good luck with traveling.

Before I even had issues, I had issues. For the record, booking a red eye through Orlando is not a good idea. Ever. Pretty much every flight in and out of that place is 50% children. Even I’M grumpy on red eye flights. Kids who are up hours past their bedtime and should be sleeping? Uhm, yeah. Not happy.

So after not sleeping all night due to screaming babies and cranky kids, I made it to Orlando. Three legs of my trip successfully down. As I’m waiting in line to board my next flight, my phone rings.

“We have an important message about your flight. Press 1.”

I press 1.

“Your flight to Jackson is cancelled. Goodbye!”

Say WHAT?

After breathing a sigh of… annoyance… I headed over to the nice gate lady, who cheerily informed me that there was no way I was getting to Jackson that day, or any time soon. Or to Meridian. Or to Tuscaloosa. Or to Hattiesburg.

In a last ditch effort, I suggested checking Birmingham, which is not at all close or convenient, but at least in the same general region of the South.

Aha! Success!

Luckily I have a really awesome, amazing friend who I owe forever and ever for taking 6 hours out of her day to come pick me up. And so I made it to Meridian, finally.

We stopped at Bottletree in Birmingham and I started with a much needed Bloody Mary. It made me feel, at least, a little better.

I also had some pimento cheese grit cakes with eggs, black beans and some Mexican fixin’s. It seemed like a good transition from Mississippi to California!

The next morning, Nick called me to tell me our cars had been broken into and over $1,000 of stuff had been stolen. Terrific. Welcome to your new home.

I figured our bad luck must surely be coming to an end. But, no. Then the movers showed up. Considering all the horror stories I have heard about military moves, we have had pretty good luck in the past. We haven’t had anything lost or broken (although we did almost acquire some new stuff—our movers insisted we take a lamp that was most definitely not ours. Since it had our color sticker on it, it just HAD to be our. Comforting).

Well, this time around I was not so satisfied. Not only did our movers run out of room in their truck, but they also came up with a really innovative solution. They decided to start unpacking boxes and shoving random, loose items into every crack and crevice they could find. Random, loose, un-inventoried items, that I am most certain I will never see again. After all the crevices were filled, they opened up the little compartments underneath their truck (like where they keep spare tires and tools and God knows what else), and started shoving my things in there. The driver pretty much refused to inventory the items and told me not to worry.

Needless to say, I was not pleased. If you can avoid using Mayflower movers, avoid them.

All right, so let’s catch up… stomach bug, concussion, cancelled flights, robbery, terrible movers…

You thought I was done, right? One’s bad luck must run out eventually, right? Uhm, no.

I won’t go into too much detail since I’ve been rambling on so long… but yesterday I flew back from Mississippi to California (after staying overnight at the sketchiest hotel in existence). I was supposed to land at 1:30 pm. I ended up getting home at 1:30 am. My trip included 2 cancelled flights, a missed connection, and a lost bag. Seriously? Can’t I catch a break??

OK, now let me stop complaining. Now that I got it all out of my system, I feel much better. So I’ll switch gears to the silver lining in all of this.

Since Nick couldn’t go to his training… we are going to Hawaii on a honeymoon!!

It’s pretty last minute and we leave tomorrow– not sure if I will be able to update the blog at all while I am there but I will definitely post a full recap when we return!!

Thanks for sticking around and I promise to be back soon. 🙂