Coming home!

Well, I'm in the midst of my exhausting journey home, sitting in an airport, looking for something to do. I could sit in a coffee shop, but they're closed, I could do some shopping, but the stores are closed. It's late at night, and not much inside the airport is open. My day started... at 4pm on Jan 15th, when my alarm went off. I set it for then to get a few things done before work that night. When I work nights, I'm always a little short on sleep, because I rarely nap before my first night shift, so I tend to start with some sleep debt. Anyways, started at 4, worked a crazy night shift. 4 nurses on, and 3 patients that needed one-on-one nursing, with some other events to add to the mixture. None of us had any breaks. I was lucky to grab a cup of coffee and an apple while charting in between running in and out of my patient's room. Oh, I also got a handful of the microwave popcorn someone made. :D I love popcorn! Ahem. Anyways, crazy night, not a bad night though. We were busy but it was manageable, and it was my favorite charge nurse, and sometimes that makes all the difference. I left work, went home and did laundry, showered, had breakfast, packed, tidied the apartment, emptied garbages and perishables from the fridge, vacuumed, went to eat some lunch and my ride showed up. So I went to the airport after wolfing down the last of the leftovers that needed to get used up and threw the dishes in the full dishwasher and turned it on. Now hopefully I can return to a nice, clean, apartment. :D
It was a bit of a wait between check-in and boarding, and I almost fell asleep in the chair multiple times. Then a cold walk across the tarmac, with the sun already brushing the horizon.

I didn't even take off my jacket in the plane, it was COLD, even the inside surface was cold! (I had the window seat). But the food... well, I would have preferred the beef, but apparently I was dozing a bit when they came by, so my only option was salmon. I'm still tasting the salmon *insert shiver here*. And I have never seen such small asparagus! Half a centimeter thick by 3 centimeters long, if that. TINY! But hey, at least you get a normal meal. Which is another thing that makes it feel an awful lot like an international flight, which seems to be the only flights that feed you properly anymore. And later, they announced something about coming around with Bailey's Irish Cream, or Coffee with whipped cream. But then I realized I had heard wrong. They were all mixed into one drink. Mmmmmm! So good. Glad I'm flying with them on the way back! The plane landed in Ottawa just as the sun was setting...
Amazing what a difference in length of the days flying directly south can make!
I purposely gave myself a 3 hour layover in Ottawa, because I booked my tickets separately, and I really didn't want to miss a flight. (There's no guarantee a flight will make it out in the north. Just yesterday they had a blizzard and closed the airport.) So that was a long wait. I tried out the massage chairs. I don't think I'd buy one, too generic. But it did feel nice. I found a couch, but was too paranoid of sleeping through my flight departure to let myself sleep on it. So I walked around a bit, then connected to the internet. Oh, did I mention I got a cup of coffee? lol. Ya, so if you're counting, that's the third cup in less than 24 hrs. And I hadn't had any coffee since my last day housesitting, because I managed to break my coffee press a few weeks ago. So that's probably the one thing helping me to stay awake. Flight from Ottawa to Toronto is short, but I slept through the whole thing. Got here, wandered through some stores before they started closing on me. Now I sit among a bunch of very tired looking people. Some appear to be sleeping. There's some men speaking... ? Russian? Some women talking about wanting to get home to their own beds (I'm not eavesdropping, I've been included in the conversation.) etc. My flight's a little delayed. I think I'll get to Winnipeg around 1:30am. Which will feel like 2:30am for me due to time difference. And if you're counting, that means I'll be up for 34 1/2 hours straight, with a couple of short naps. The bed at my parent's will never have felt so good. Hope I'm not grouchy!