Best Laid Plans

I admit, I'm a planner.  I like to know what I'm supposed to be doing so I don't get lost in the day's shuffle.  Take yesterday for example.  The yard crew shows up at 8:00 every Thursday morning. 

I picked up my green garbage can on Wednesday and it was still full of leaves and grass completely packed in the container.  It was so bad when the truck came by, it would not come OUT of the bin.

 

I drug it into the far back corral and spent an hour trying to unpack the now stinky mess.  Here's the thing .... when I'm gone, they have to haul it off.  When I'm here, they get to use my bin.  I don't want them filling it up again with the 6" carpet of leaves now sleeping on my lawn from the sycamore trees I want to remove.

The Plan:   Put the now empty bin in the garage and lock it up.  I'll pretend I'm gone when they knock on the door so they have to remove the leaves themselves.  When they are done, I will head off to my accounting job.

In Actuality:   It poured rain in the morning and they didn't show up.  I took off to finish up my client's books for the year.  Maybe they will come back tomorrow.

The Result:   They DID show up and left all the leaves in big piles around the edges of the lawn.  REALLY?  Won't they be surprised when the same thing happens next week!

Our entire Costa Rica trip fared just as well.  I had the exact opposite frame of mind than was required.  Since the trip was scheduled out of Sonora, Patty and I spent the night in a hotel there because the bus was to pick us up at 4:00 am for our trip to the San Francisco Airport.

Why does this picture say Miami?  Because the bus company neglected to tell the booking company back East that it takes a minimum of four hours to get to the airport.  The plane leaves at 6:00 am.  You can do the math.  We got there just as the plane was loading and they refused us entry.

Now what??  I finally called the booking company who said it wasn't their problem.  Are you kidding me? Our best laid plans were waylaid all the way to Miami.  The airport finally allowed four of us to get on a red-eye flight to Miami while the rest stayed in a nice comfy hotel which they had to pay for themselves.  

Once we hit Miami, we had an 8 hour layover before we caught a plane to Costa Rica.  Here's the kicker, all the other people in the group got on a plane the next morning and arrived before us.

 The good part of that was the couple with us were handicapped.  We jumped in as family and were first in line to board the plane.  Luckily when we arrived in San Jose, a place scarier than any Mexico airport, we were picked up and driven to our tiny 2-star hotel that had bars on all the windows.  

Too bad we missed breakfast lunch and dinner.  Patty and I were finally allowed to eat from the buffet, a table of food completely unrecognizable.  What are we eating??

Very early the next morning we were given a brown bag lunch ... no telling what kind of meat THAT was ... while they loaded all of our luggage on the top of a van, not that we had much luggage.  Patty and I seemed to be the only ones traveling light.  All of us squeezed into the van like sardines who could hardly breathe and off we went on a four hour drive North.

Here's the thing about Costa Rica ... they only have about three paved roads.  Who knew?  Here I thought we were off on a luxurious vacation, but discovered quickly it was more like a camping trip in the Amazon jungle.  

We REALLY should have gone to those meetings!!