Tuesday April 14, 2020

Today did not start out very well for me. I need to buy a ticket to fly home by the end of the month or I’ll be banned from the country.  I want to come back here in August, so I am trying to do what I must do.

I didn’t sleep until 4am and when I got up  (around 7am) I decided to buy my ticket home.

I turned on the laptop and navigated to Qatar Airways. I decided to travel on April 28. The flight goes to Doha and then Dallas. Simple enough.

 I filled out the information required  to purchase my ticket and when I was prompted to pay for the ticket the credit card company needed to send me an OTP (one-time PIN). The only option for me to receive the OTP was for it to be sent to my cell phone so of course, I chose that option. When the page with my cell number came up I saw a series of hashtags with four numbers at the end of said hashtags. Those four numbers  WERE NOT the ending four numbers of my cell phone. As a matter of fact, I didn’t recognize those four numbers. Whose numbers were on my credit card information and more importantly, how did they get there? But let’s be serious, if someone tried to charge anything on my credit card they’d be declined. So yeah, that’s a point for me.

I tried several times to execute the ticket buying process because I figured I had done something wrong. I even had my friend try. The results were the same. This strange number belonged to someone unbeknownst to me. I tried to get in touch with the company but could not. Mainly because I don’t know how to call 1-800 numbers from Kuwait.

That one incident began a day full of mishaps for me. Nothing went right. And I mean nothing.

I jumped in the shower and in the middle of my luxurious shower, someone began knocking on my door insistently and nonstop.  I had to jump out the shower, dry off and run to the door. Does anyone know how incomplete you feel when you must stop showering, rinse off the soap, and dry off in 1.2 seconds? You’re never entirely dry or soap-free. I daresay you may find some sticky spots later in the day from the unrinsed soap. And you don’t want to jump back in the shower because the moment is gone. Just ruined. 

I knew Jeff (I’ll tell you about him later) was coming because he comes every day to borrow my computer cord. I wasn’t expecting him at that time because I had just sent the text:  TEXT ME BEFORE YOU COME HERE BECAUSE I’M JUPING IN THE SHOWER. I still don’t know why I thought that text would be read when I sent it.  Who reads a text when it’s sent?  Not Jeff.

After my interrupted shower, I tried several more times to purchase my ticket only to have my last attempt end on a webpage with an error message that read: “Page not found”. How does one lose an entire page of Qatar Airways?

I took a break from trying to buy my ticket and decided to get rid of papers that needed to be shredded. I don’t have a shredder, so I cut the papers into tiny strips one way and crosscut them another way. It’s a simple process and it usually works great. Not today, I found my home address on the papers I had shredded. I could READ the address. How in the world does one crosscut paper and the address can still be seen on the shredded papers? Do you know how annoying it is to cut up already cut-up shreds of paper 

After the shredding attempt, I decided to pack some boxes for the impending move this summer.

My job is moving us to brand new apartments and since I won’t be here when they move us, So I must pack up my contents in the apartment and label the boxes. I packed, labeled and taped up some of the boxes I needed to move to the new apartment. Not even 30 minutes later I had to cut the tape and go through some boxes because I needed some things from them. After the second or third time of cutting open the boxes I just left them untapped and open.

The internet decided it was on a break when I needed to make a call to my bestie so I couldn’t talk to her. And although I don’t think you can butt dial someone on a smartphone, I did. And it was a video call. They answered before I could hang up.

I couldn’t talk or think about anything without crying. And you know me, I’m not a quitter, so when I started crying, I didn’t stop until 40 minutes after I started. 

I needed to get on yahoo.com to check my email and after waiting for about five minutes the page loaded - in Arabic. I can’t read Arabic. I turned on my VPN to get the page in English. It took about five minutes to load and when the page came up it wasn’t yahoo. I don’t know what that page was and at this point didn’t care. I turned off the computer.

I ate half a small cake and barely did any exercise. It’s been a hard day.

This was an emotional day but I don’t feel sad or depressed. I don’t feel sorry for myself and I even came up with a tag line for my online dating profile. After writing a list of goals this evening I found my original list of goals I wrote when I got here in August of last year. I have so much to be grateful and thankful for, I have a wonderful set of friends who care about and check up on me.

Tomorrow is another day and maybe it will go better than today. I’m thankful to The Almighty because even though it’s been an emotional day, it’s been a day that I’m still mighty thankful and grateful to be on the path The Almighty has for me. 

UPDATE: Today (Wednesday, April 15, 2020) was a good day. I purchased my ticket and got my more boxes packed and learned how to call a 1-800 number.