Amy: On Stress

I think yesterday was about the most stressful day I’ve ever lived through!

Wednesday, our neighbors reported that our llamas had escaped but that 2 really good Samaritans had gotten them back in our fence. When Tim got home, he walked around the property and never found them, but that’s not really unusual. However, what WAS strange was that he put out food for them that was still untouched the next morning and they didn’t come to the car for their cookies on our way down the driveway to work.

So I called the Sheriff’s office to open a “missing llama report” and was a bit bothered that they didn’t ask for a description. If they saw them, how would they know if they were ours? When I mentioned this to Tim, he said “just how many llamas do you think are wandering loose around Bandera County?” Okay. Good point.

At 2:00 Thursday afternoon, the sheriff called to say our run-aways had been found and were confined on our neighbor Edwina’s property. On the way home from work, we stopped and got sunflower seeds to use as lures and then Tim and I set off gamely to wrangle them home.

By 6:30, Tim and I were running up and down our street chasing after the 2 fugitive llamas who were faster than we were and really seemed to be enjoying their time on the lam. We had 2 close calls with a pair of bloodhounds that stopped all progress and sent the llamas running for a mile, undoing all the progress we had made. And then an extremely close shave with a UPS truck. That would have solved all of our problems if it had hit only the llamas, but we were also this | | close to death as it came barreling down the street.

Finally, Tim was able to get Angela in a headlock, and put a leash around her neck and walk/drag/plead/cry/run/strangle her all the way down Bear Springs road. Pepper followed and we got them home. All in all, it took us almost 2 hours to move them 1 block down our street, up our driveway and into their pen.

Tim and I were barely speaking to each other when it was over and to top it all off, we still don’t know how they escaped in the first place. But we made a real impression on some neighbors we’ve never met. I don’t think their children had ever heard words like that before.

Once we got them pinned up and we collapsed into our LaZboy chairs, I got on the internet. Yesterday was my drop-dead date to purchase airfare for our trip to Rome in 5 weeks (yeah…cutting it a little close!) I’ve been searching myself blind for over a month trying to find tickets that:
a) weren’t on American (since they are cancelling flights willy-nilly)
b) didn’t go thru London/Heathrow (since they charge almost $500 “airport fees” on top of the ticket price, even if you are just passing thru)
c) didn’t go thru Paris/deGaulle (since they are having baggage processing problems)
d) didn’t include any flights on Alitalia – Italy’s largest airline (since they are filing for bankruptcy next month)
e) didn’t cost a million dollars (since we have to build a new llama fence)

So last night, the gods of travel smiled on me (or maybe they were still laughing over the whole llama-chasing thing) and I found the perfect tickets! Yay! Tim looks over my shoulder and says “May 16th? I can’t go on May 16th.”

Did I mention that I’ve been working on this for over a month? And suddenly, he announces the dates don’t work for him. You would have been very proud of me, I only said 1 (or 2) bad words. But the gods of travel were still smiling and once we adjusted our dates, found even better flights than before. So, we have tickets. But we don’t have lodging. And we leave in 3 weeks. But we have tickets. I’m starting to thrive on stress.

-Amy