It was a perfectly simple plan.

We would leave home around 11, stop at the bank for some cash, and drive to the Norfolk Airport. Penny would eat crackers and apple slices in the car for her lunch; we'd pick ours up at the airport after we'd gone through security. Our plane was due to leave Norfolk at about 2:35, getting us to Chicago around 3:45. We would pick up our rental car and drive to my mother-in-law's house, arriving just around dinnertime.

The best laid... and all that.

Everything went fine, actually, until we got to the airport. We left home around 11, we stopped at the bank without incident, and Penny ate apple slices (though she disdained the crackers) while we drove to the airport and encountered not much in the way of horrid traffic. We parked somewhere only about a mile from the terminal and made our slow way to the ticket counter.

"Where's the airline?" Matt asked, frowning.

"Over there," I said. "USAir."

"It's not USAir," Matt protested.

"Sure it is." I pulled out my notebook, where I'd written down all the pertinent flight details. "See? USAir."

Matt frowned, but shrugged, and we walked up to the USAir self checkin terminal. Matt swiped a credit card. Further identification necessary, the terminal told us. Please enter flight number. We did that. Futher identification necessary, the terminal told us. We cancelled out and tried again. Same result. We called over one of the assistant-people, and he looked at our flight number and said, "That's a United flight."

The United ticket counter was, of course, on the far side of the terminal. Also, of course, it had a longish line of people waiting.

We were maybe third from the head of the line when Matt said, "...I left my phone in the car. And my camera, too."

"No, I got your camera."

"Oh. Well, I left my phone."

So we checked in and got our boarding passes and then Penny and I found some chairs and waited while Matt ran back to the car to get his phone. Which, incidentally, guaranteed that he was standing in the security line sweating.

We found our gate and sat down, and Matt and I took turns going to the little bistro to get lunch. Our sandwich choices were ham and cheese, ham and cheese, or -- if you dug way to the back -- cheese and ham. I paid $10 for a sandwich, a bottle of juice, and a bag of chips.

Penny ate chips and drank juice and talked to every single person who crossed her path. Mostly, she wanted them to look out the window at the airplanes with her. It was a little annoying to have to keep dragging her away from people who were trying to talk on their phones or read, but she was mostly pretty good.

The time for us to board came. And went. Eventually a guy came out and said, "There's been some problems, but we're trying to get it all sorted out, and your plane should be getting here around 3:30." That is, mind you, an hour after we were supposed to take off. And it doesn't count the time needed to get the passengers off the plane and clean and restock it and whatnot.

We actually got on the plane around 4. They pulled us away from the gate (official departure time is when the plane leaves the gate, not when it leaves the ground) and said, "There's a hold on traffic in Chicago due to the weather; we should have some more information in about fifty minutes."

Note that's information in fifty minutes, not departure.

Just before 5 (which is 4pm Chicago time, which is when we'd been planning to be well on our way to the rental car place, mind you) they said, "We're hoping to hear something by 5:30!"

At 5:15, they said the hold had been lifted and we'd be taking off in the next 10 minutes. Which, to their credit, they did.

The takeoff scared Penny. She screamed and cried and screamed and cried and sobbed and cried and screamed. Matt, who was sitting next to her, couldn't calm her down, and she kept begging for Mommy and I couldn't even see her, because Matt had turned in his seat to try to comfort her.

Finally, they turned off the seatbelt sign, and Matt and I switched places. I held Penny on my lap for a while and managed to calm her down enough to coax out of her that what was scary was the loud noise of a running aircraft. I showed her how to put her hands over her ears to block it some, and she huddled on my lap, hands firmly over her ears, for a good half-hour.

When the drink cart came around, I managed to get her to sit next to me and uncover her ears long enough to have some juice and pretzels. (We were well into her dinnertime, here, and I asked for extra snacks in case she was hungry, but she was still too upset to be hungry.)

Finally, we landed at Chicago, and then taxied for... a long time. And then they told us that our assigned gate was occupied, and we would have some more information about it in ten or fifteen minutes.

About ten minutes in, Penny looked up at me and told me she needed a new diaper. She's not really diaper training, yet, so when she said she needs a new diaper, it doesn't mean she's made a mess. It means she's made enough of a mess to overflow the thing.

Luckily, it was a very small overflow, and I had enough wipes to clean everything up. The good thing about her being mostly in pullups is that she doesn't have to lay down to get a clean diaper.

Finally, after half an hour, they found a gate for us and we got off the plane. By the time we'd made it all the way across the airport (at the shuffling, random pace of a three-year-old), the bags were on the turntable, and we got ours in surprisingly short order.

We got on the shuttle bus and made our way to the rental car place, where Matt stood in line to talk to an Asian woman with bleached and permed hair, and -- I am not exaggerating -- orange makeup.

But she was nice. They didn't have a minivan to give us like we'd registered for, so they gave us an SUV instead, at the same price. Whatever. And she gave Penny a coloring book and some crayons while Matt took our bags out to the car and got the carseat installed.

Finally, we were on our way. It was 7:30, local time. That's 8:30, home time. Penny had not napped at all, and was half an hour past bedtime.

Halfway to Jill's, Matt turned a corner and Penny whimpered frantically. I glanced back to discover that her carseat had tipped over sideways. I unbuckeled and righted her. It happened twice more while we were driving.

There's a lot of road construction going on near Jill's neighborhood, so we missed one turn. But we managed to get ourselves back on track, and finally got to her house at nearly 9, local time. 10 according to the home clock.

I sure hope we've used up all our bad karma for this trip already.