Traffic Nightmare...

Panic. 

Absolutely panic is flooding me right now.

And you would be feeling the exact same things if you were experiencing now. The throbbing of my heart travels through my body and my blood courses through my veins rapidly. Racing to my palms and feeling me with even more dread. 

I’m feeling very sick.

Oh my gosh, how is this possible? I prepare for anything and everything, and yet this is one of those unpredictable things that cannot be helped. Even in my agony I know this is not the worst possible position to be in. I mean in this chess game, there are worse positions to be in.

For miles ahead of me on I-40, there are cars and cars and cars ahead of me. And all of them are at a complete stop. We are not moving 15mph, we are moving perhaps 1mph, if you can deem that with the verb moving. I mean seriously. This is my absolute worst nightmare. Traffic jams...

Traffic jams on the day that you are supposed to catch an international flight are even worse. 

Yes, those traffic jams cut deeper and make you even sicker.

It’s 4:00 and I need to be at the airport by 5:10 to catch my 6:10 flight to Newark, New Jersey. Thankfully, there is an hour cutoff point for domestic flights. If this were my international flight, I would be turning around and going straight home. There would be no point in going. I have one hour before I absolutely must be at the airport, but I have a 20 minute drive with no traffic and right now there is miles of traffic. This is my official worse nightmare. 

If I miss this flight, I miss Rosh Hashanah - the entire reason I’m going to Israel. I’m flying there with my brother to celebrate the Jewish New Year with our Israeli friends. We have celebrated here in the US and we’ve wanted to celebrate in Israel, but have never had the chance. Now, is our chance, and I can see it slipping, I can see the holiday slipping from my tiny fingers...

You see, our flight to Newark is the last one leaving today from our local airport, and so if we miss it, we miss the flight that is leaving at 11pm tonight to Tel Aviv. We could take the flight to Tel Aviv tomorrow, but then we wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday afternoon.  Wednesday is Rosh Hashanah and we need to be in a Kibbutz in the very north of Israel by then celebrating, eating apples, drinking red wine and telling everyone how excited we are about the New Year not trying to argue out way through security...

But I do believe that is what is going to happen...oh my goodness.

Traffic. Traffic is standing in the way of my Middle Eastern dream.