Packed up, Shipped Out

So I'm now in sunny Portugal, very tired, slightly stressing about my chest, half a grand worse off, but keeping my fingers crossed for a week or so of being able to relax.
My brain is so smudgy at the moment, I don't know where I am or what I'm doing. Keep catching myself thinking thoughts which scare me. So hopefully this will be just the ticket to pull me outta my funk.


Can I just say that I am getting slightly concerned about my luck! I'm a bad penny.
And I have the most chaotic travel story to prove it to you :)
Please refer to the trusty bullet points, you may not know this about me but I am a compulsive list-maker. I feel lost and sick without a list, and the feeling of accomplishment when crossing off the simplest task is my heroin. I inherited this from mother hen, along with a host of other obsessive compulsive tendencies. We are the target for constant piss-taking in our house over this!
Well, in my packing haste I have ended up in a foreign country with only ONE notebook with me - one which has assigned content and so I can't multi-list-task - this techno-listing will have to sustain me.
But back to yesterday: (after a small panic over nto actually being able to work out how to DO bullet points on here!)

• Slept for 2 hours before rude awakening for packing.
• Hours spent sorting insurance, and packing in a panic
• Two bad hypos from not having time to eat anything at all
• Mothers other half throws away my travel snacks, thinking that we wouldn't want out-of-date food in the fridge when we got home
• Taxi arrives, it's the wrong kind and fitting the family plus luggage in takes 15 minutes
• Very uncomfortable journey to airport featuring both suitcases and heads pressed against car windows
• Having arrived an hour and a half before boarding time, security problems with my oxygen cylinder mean we have to run to the gate
• On arrival at Gatwick we are informed that our flight is delayed
• After much boring waiting, our gate is revealed as being a 20-minute walk away. By this point I am so tired I can hardly stand, cue embarrasing wheelchair-assisted trek

(I will add a positive here, my brother very much enjoyed scaring me shitless LETTING GO of said wheelchair on slopes)

• After boarding, passengers are told that we are further delayed by at least an hour, and no food, drink or toilet facilities before we air airborne
• And 50% of passengers are in fact, screaming babies.
• Longest, most claustrophobic flight imaginable concludes with discovery that car rental desk is closed because of the late hour
• On sorting the first car rental problem, discover that they have cocked up and given our car away and don't have one big enough for us
• Taxi drops us at wrong end of resort, though we don't realise until after 45 mins of searching for Apt. A-F, finding A-F, not being able to find the locked key box, a late-night phone call to the step-grandparents, and being told that there are in fact TWO A-Fs.
• Arrival at the right A-F finds us unable to open locked key box because the code is wrong

But our story has a happy ending. After another call, we tumble into said apt. A-F after midnight, all complaining of hunger. On turning on the lights, it is revealed that a kindly friend has been round, left half a supermarket of food including chocolate and wine, and even made up the sofa bed.

Oh, and I bought Glee on DVD at the airport so we had a sleepy viewing sesh before bed at 3am :)

Today has been sunny, but windy! Though I am still verrrry tired, everyone has been doing their own thing and apart from the layer of salt that now covers me, (from lovely CF sweat) I have no complaints about my afternoon of lazing and iPod-perusal. Surprised? ;)

I'll stop my babble now, for today.

Two last things though: for anyone interested, lovely Gemma has written a post about what it feels like to have IVs, which I thought might clear up any queries about why something that is supposed to make me feel better always means me complaining about feeling crap! Take a look here...

And a quick shout-out to Tori, who is still doing amazingly after her Tx, and continues to dazzle me with her strength.

XX