Coming home from Orlando

So, everyone has their "pet peeves", or things that just are more than a simple annoyance. I have very bad sleep issues, and when I do sleep I am a SUPER light sleeper, so snoring to me may win the title as the most annoying, grating, unbearable sound that I cannot deal with. When I hear someone snore I literally want to...well, I'll keep that one to myself as its not very nice. So a couple meetings ago I had a roommate (yes, we are grown ups and still have roommates at meetings...which is an entirely different complaint) who snored pretty badly. I would wake her up throughout the night and ask her to roll over, do whatever to make it stop. It didnt. One night I took a pillow and threw it as hard as I could (and I can throw pretty darn hard after years of sports) and socked it at her. She woke up startled and goes "What? What'd I do?" and I said "PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP SNORING". Needless to say I got no sleep that week.

So this past week I went to Orlando for my meeting and met my roommate (yup, we have roommates and the are also RANDOMLY chosen for us), and as we were both getting ready for bed she said "now I should let you know, I do snore". The chills that went up my spine were as if she just told me she sleep walks, and there was a chance she may end up in my bed trying to spoon me (I also do not sleep in the bed with people...again, a whole different topic). I couldn't even give a polite reply like "oh, its ok", I just sat there silent, thinking to myself "How in the world do this many people snore??" My ex snored so loud I could hear him sleeping one flight of stairs above me. My ex in college slept during every movie we ever saw and snored horribly. The list goes on and on. Anyway, luckily she wore her breathe right strips, and I was so exhausted by the end of the day, I never heard a sound, and she was as sweet as she could be. (Side note: I did have a roommate once at a work meeting that stayed in the room while we all went out and finished every bottle in the mini bar. When I got in after being out in South Beach, the lights were out so I hopped in bed. After about 5 minutes she thought I was asleep, and got up and pulled the sheets/blanket up on MY bed up to my chin and literally tucked me in. I pretended I was asleep as I had no idea what to do...I felt like we were in a scene of Single White Female, and one false move and my life was over. So I let her pull the sheets up while I pretended to be asleep and she got back in her bed and went to sleep. At least she didnt snore, I guess. To this day, my team refers to her as "The Tucker In'er" as none of us remember her name, myself included.) The stories I could tell of roommates at work trips...nuts.

ANYWAY, I digress. Back to my topic of snoring. So I get on my fight to come home and I am sitting in the middle seat. At close to 6' tall, already, I'm not a happy camper. I usually sit in the aisles to put my legs in the aisle when the flight attendants aren't using them. The guy on my right is not just taking up the entire arm rest, but his arm is dangling over into my lap. The guy on my left...well, here we go. We are still in the boarding process and he is snoring louder than I have ever heard or thought possible. I look around as if someone is playing a joke on me (as all my team members were on the flight and know that I pretty much have a meltdown over the sound of snoring) and see nope, he's really doing this on his own. So I figure its just through the boarding process and he'll wake up when the pilot comes on or we start to taxi. Nope. The pilot came on and at that point Mr Sawing Logs over here just puts his window shade down and his chair back. He literally made that god awful sound with each breathe, and on about 5 occassions snored SO loud and hard he CHOKED himself awake and would wake up and look around startled. The first time I loudly said "that can't be healthy" to the guy next to me that was awake and WAY to amused at my predicament. The second time he choked himself awake I looked at the snoring guy and he looked at me like he was confused and I said "Seriously, this has got to stop. I cannot handle it". What does he do? Lays his pretty little head up against the window and back he goes to sleepy land. The next time he does it, I said "Oh my god, if someone doesn't put me out of my misery, I am about to put him out of my misery". The guy on my right (guy in his mid 60's) just busts out laughing, and I am far from seeing the humor in this situation. So this goes on and on the rest of the flight. They make the announcement we are preparing to land and the flight attendant comes through and says "Sir. Sir. Sir" No response. She looks at me and says "can you nudge him to put his chair up?" Um, can I nudge him? I'll do you one better than that....and I took the liberty of smacking his arm as hard as I could and said "put your chair up, we are landing". Again, chuckles coming from the other man in our row, who was about to get his own smack for getting so much enjoyment out of the misery I was in.

The flight was only 1 hour and 15 minutes, which is why it doesn't qualify as the worst flight ever. Had it been longer, it definitely would have. That title still goes to my flight home from Sydney, Australia. More to come on that at another time.

P.S. I got hit on by a married man on this trip. Two, actually. For those new to the blog, see several blogs below to understand that comment.