Friday - One of Those Days

Our friend was due into the Rome airport about 5:30pm. The best-laid plan was for me to leave the house at noon, go to Nathan's workplace and wait until he could get out of the office, drive to our Agriturismo near the small town of Tivoli to meet their check-in time, then get to the airport (late) for our friend. One thing after another delayed me at home. We'd bathed Scully the night before and sprayed on his new, special detangling lotion (from the pharmacy of the former monastery in Florence). Apparently I used too much. I awoke on Friday to a very shiny and very greasy dog. Apparently, one squirt of the stuff would have been enough. Since we all need to look our best for guests, back into the shower he went. And yes, as I was bathing him for the second day in a row, I did see the utter ridiculousness in having special hair products for my dog.
Then a bird flew into our house and began pooping everywhere, including on the sofa, in between bouts of flying underneath our armoir. Once that was dealt with, I still had a load of laundry to do and our lockdown procedures. While sleeping, my subconscious came up with some new safety ideas to use. We have yet to have a problem, and I'd like to keep it that way. We personally know two families who have been burglared, and have heard of several more, so I'm always wanting to ensure we are doing our best to make ourselves a difficult target. My new plan involved lots of chain, heavy duty bike locks, etc. It took me half an hour to implement. After loading the car, I finally escaped Fort Knox, only to realize as the garage door shut that I'd forgotten something. Getting back in was incredibly difficult, which was the point in our new plan for when we're out of town, but not great when I'm on a schedule.
Finally arriving at Nathan's work, I found that he'd been waiting on me for over half an hour. But at least that meant we could just leave rather than a further delay. We made the short, two hour drive to the town of our agriturismo...and couldn't find the place. An hour of driving around, using a GPS and two different mapping programs on the iPhone, and multiple calls to the Italian-speaking only caretaker, and we finally found it. We both had shot nerves at this time, and headed off to the Rome airport.
We arrived just as our friend's flight did, so I was pretty excited...until she didn't come out of the customs area. An hour passed, another half hour. I'd asked the information office for help, the counter of her airline was shut down, there was no one to help. After two hours and a second flight coming in from her departure city, I called her husband who was able to call the airline and find out she'd not made one of her two connections and would be on a later flight. That flight landed...and she didn't come out. As it turns out, her bags had made the earlier flight and she didn't, so while she stood in front of the baggage carousel to the bitter end, her luggage was stored in a room nearby. She'd also sent an email to me regarding her delay that I didn't get - that email is still lost in the netsphere somewhere. We'd all missed a decent dinner, but the small airport food counter sold chocolate bars and bottles of wine. After her 30 hours of traveling and our day full of setbacks, all we really needed was chocolate and wine. Day saved.