When I asked for my vacation time, from May 21-June 1, I knew I took Friday, May 21 off from work for a reason. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. I was booked on a flight leaving at 11:57pm, so there was no reason for me to take an extra day off from work. So I worked on Friday.

That Friday night, Mister and I went out to dinner with my co-worker and her husband before they drove us to the airport. When we got to the check in gate to check our bag, I presented our boarding passes. I had printed them out the day before, because I got the “check in” email from JetBlue. I thought it was a bit weird that I was checking in so far ahead of time, but figured that they sent me the email, so it had to be ok.

It wasn’t. Apparently, our flight was for Thursday at 11:57pm, arriving in Boston on Friday. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head that we were leaving Friday night, so I based all our plans around that. The ticket agent put us 1st and 2nd in line for standby, which we had to go to the gate for to see if they actually had any seats, and it turns out that there was only 1 seat left. Mister told me to take it and he’d try to get the next flight out in the morning. We also called to change the hotel and car reservations. The whole time I was wondering why in the heck Mister was staying so calm and not totally blowing up and killing me for this kind of mistake.

As the plane was taking off, I started to panic, because I could have sworn that after we went through security I saw Mister throw his keys in the carryon that was by this point stowed away in the overhead bins. Great. Now I have not only screwed up our vacation, and I’m taking off with all Mister’s clothes, toiletries, and everything else he needs, but he can’t even get into the house. I usually sleep just on airplanes, but not this time. I couldn’t wait to land to check the bag and call him.

Once I got off the plane, I stopped at the first available chair to check the luggage. I did not see his keys anywhere, so Mister must have had them. Phew! I also checked email on my phone and saw that there was an email from JetBlue that Mister could check in for his flight on Saturday night at 11:57pm. So I knew he was confirmed on that flight. I spent the flight thinking that since the next flight out of Vegas was to JFK, he’d likely get on that flight but not be able to get a flight to Boston, so I would have to drive to NYC to pick him up (I would have, too. I also would have called my uncle in New Haven and confessed my sins so he’d accompany me from New Haven to JFK and let us stay at his house the night.)

I called Mister. He was at home, asleep. He said he paid $100 for an upgrade to get a confirmed seat on the 11:57 flight, and that he already had his boarding pass. My breathing slowly returned to normal, the room stopped spinning and I started to feel like a person again. We chatted a bit more, then I let him go promising to call if I had any trouble with the car or hotel. I was able to pick the car up just fine, and checked into the hotel just fine. Good thing I carry a credit card at all times for emergencies! I was starving by the time I go to the hotel, but I fell asleep instead.

I did set my alarm because I didn’t want to sleep all day. got up around lunchtime, went to visit my Dad, and let him have a good laugh. I also called my coworker to see if she could drive Mister to the airport. She was confused until I told her I lost my head, then she laughed, promised to tell her husband and everyone at work, and said she’d pick him up, and I was set to pick him up at the airport in Boston on Sunday morning.

Mister is getting a lot of mileage out of this one. He made sure I told everyone what I did, which surprised pretty much everyone I know because I’m supposed to be the organized one. Does this mean I’m getting old? I did turn 36 while on vacation. Is losing your mind the first sign of old age? I’m not quite sure, though, because no one older than me has made such a colossal mistake (that I’m aware of).

You’ll be happy to know that I did get to the airport on the correct date and time for our return flight – which happened to be delayed about 2 hours.