The bottom fell out of my world when I heard the news. “I’m sorry, but they’ve closed your resort. Your trip has been cancelled.”

What?

Apparently, Secrets Excellence Resorts had some minor damage from Hurricane Jeanne, which we knew. Stephen had called a week and a half ago, and they said they’d be reopening on Monday. Like, last Monday. Not this Monday.

The travel agent (whom I’m very miffed with now) started pushing Cancun on me like it was the only place in the world I should have considered in the first place. She knew I hated Cancun, and I reiterated that to her, but she kept pushing it. I’m sitting there in a state of shock, with a client sitting in the lobby waiting for an appointment, and she’s telling me that my only choices for a honeymoon are Cancun or Puerto Rico (which was completely devastated by a different hurricane).

The shock wouldn’t wear off, so I got her doomsday self off the phone and called Stephen. He was surprised to hear the news, but luckily more steady than I was. I just told him to call me back and went forward with the meeting with my client.

Dissociation is good for something, I might add. Otherwise I’d never have made it through the appointment like I did.

It was so strange, though. I’d been driving through downtown today (after my fiftieth dress fitting) and thinking about what we’d do if we had to stay in St. Louis for our honeymoon. I think the fact that the Arch was looming ahead of me was the main contributor to this line of thinking, but… And then here’s this awful phone call.

It’s no wonder I have gray hair at 33. And two cold sores. And two pimples. (Not just the regular sort, either. The painful, red, ugly sort.)

By 6:30p, Stephen had things mostly settled down. I think. The travel agent didn’t bother to tell us that the resort wasn’t closed “indefinitely” as she’d led me to believe. (I’d asked, when will it reopen? She’d answered, oh, I don’t know, in a dreadfully ominous voice.) Instead of leaving on Sunday, we’re going to leave on Monday. We’ll still get our full six days in, but they’ll just be different days.

Remind me the next time I drive by Jan’s Travel to kill Sandy, would you? This stress is going to kill me.

Kickstart my heart,
michelle