Instead of getting ready to board our flight from Toronto to Vancouver, I’m currently sitting in a dark hotel room just off the freeway in the Dublin county of Swords, waiting for 2am to arrive so I can head back to the airport.

Don’t get me wrong – our trip to Dublin has been awesome and we saw so many really cool things and experienced awesome people and I tried very hard to drink beer – but right now I’m feeling kind of petulant and sorry for myself on account of this terrible cold and the fact that I’m in this hotel room at all.

We arrived at the airport just after 6 this morning, and were greeting with a departure board telling us our flight had been cancelled. Why we weren’t notified of this earlier I’ll never know, but it turns out a nasty storm in St John’s grounded our flight and there was no plane to take us home. Since the Westjet’s Dublin/St. John’s flight is a once-a-day thing, we were screwed. Double screwed, even, because it’s not like they could just bump us to the next flight as that would then displace everyone else and it would be an endless cycle of shit with no one getting home.

Westjet shuttled us all to a hotel in the middle of nowhere, gave us some food vouchers, and told us to call the airline to see what was going to happen. Turns out it’s this: they’re bringing in a plane for us that’ll leave Dublin at 0350, getting us to St. John’s around 5am local time. We sit there for 7 hours, then leave for Toronto at which point we’ll have 45 minutes to make our connecting flight to Vancouver. On paper, we’ll get home 22.5 hours later than intended. Whee!

I do know that they’re making the best of a bad situation, but the fact that our hotel friggin’ LOST POWER an hour or so ago isn’t making things any better. My brain is fogged over and it won’t let my body sleep. I’m sitting here in the dark, tethered to my phone and burning through data, with all my batteries (both literal and figurative) draining away, trying to breathe through all the rustic Irish mucous I’ve collected, and wondering if we’ll make it home. I’m out of Diet Coke, ice cubes, Advil, and patience. And clean bras.

We’ve had an awesome time in Ireland, but thiiiiiiiis suuuuuuuuucks. It’s also expensive, as I’m petulantly shopping on Etsy to pass the time.

I miss my kitties and bed and ice machine.

oscar wilde and eduard vilde both agree that, while things could be worse, this has turned out to be a most unfortunate day.