So here's what happened.

I am supposed to be in Peru right now. In fact, according to my itinerary, today, the 19th of August, is supposed to be the first day of a 4-day hike over the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. A hike that I have been planning for well over six months, and dreaming about for something like fifteen years.

Why, then, am I sitting on my couch in DC (curse you, DC!), blogging instead? Oh, that's a lovely story.

In all reality, things started to go wrong on Saturday. I was here in DC by myself, just arrived from Colorado. I'd literally been on a plane, with a headache, all day Friday and I really just wanted to relax and stay in my apartment, but there were a lot of preparations to be made for our trip, and I had to do it myself as Tim was on his way home from Panama. Some time around 3:00, I scraped my butt off of the couch, put some pants on (well, it was a really cute skirt, actually, if you must know), and headed out the door.

1. Bus to the (Sexy) Safeway on L for prescriptions
2. Metro from Chinatown to Tenleytown to Hudson Trail Outfitters and purchase a metric ton of necessary gear for Inca Trail
3. Metro from Tenleytown to Columbia Heights to Target for travel-size stuff, sundries, and an hour of aimless wandering
4. Metro from Columbia Heights to Potomac Ave., walk to the 14th St. (Un)Safeway for enough food for dinner, breakfast, and high-carb and -protein snacks for the trail
5. Carry everything purchased at all of these places home, trying not to lay down under a fort made of my purchases and cry. I hate shopping alone.
   

By the time I got home, I was starving, but I was waiting to make dinner until Tim got home from the airport "at 10:30." This turned out to be a mistake because American Airlines lost all of Tim's luggage in Miami.

So. Tim comes home--no luggage--and it's not toooooo bad because there are only a few really vital things in his bags like his trail shoes; the airline is supposed to deliver them before 2:00 Sunday, and our flight leaves at 6:00.

The curtain closes on Saturday, and I'm only slightly keyed up.

Le Dimanche Arrive. La pièce de résistance.

Sunday morning I wake up with a fever. I feel achy and terrible and I can't stop thinking that I might have another staph infection (Huzzah!), and rather than travel to an underdeveloped country on the wings of a potentially deadly infection, Tim and I decide that we should find a doctor, STAT. (See how I did that? STAT!) But it's Sunday, which means all the normal doctors are closed, and there's no way I'm going to an emergency room, where everything is blown out of proportion: the cost (Oh, you didn't know we were going to charge you $65 for that bandaid? Soh-rry.), the amount of time it takes, the number of people it takes to diagnose the splinter in your finger. Uh uh. We had a flight to catch. Which means: Minute Clinic.

Voilá, a list of things that went wrong in chronological order.

• The car is dead and must be jumped.
• The Clinic's "system is down" and therefore everything is taking three times as long as normal. This means we get to watch the angry lady behind the pharmacy counter mess up 15 people's prescriptions in the space of an hour while-u-wait.
• I'm pretty sure the couple in front of us are here because they have an STD. Which is their problem more than mine. But I'm just saying. "No swimming for a week, young lady."
  
• American calls to say that the guy with Tim's bags is waiting outside our apartment (yay!) but when Tim tries to leave the clinic to let him in, the car will not start. So he has to take a taxi to our apartment, put the bags inside, and then take a cab back. He can't just leave them outside our door... because it's raining.
• I finally get in to see the doctor... who tells me he's not allowed to diagnose staph infections, "that's usually a referral situation." BUT I'm obviously in a huge hurry and I feel like crap so he writes me a scrip for an antibiotic, and then I have to write my insurance info out on a blank sheet of paper because, you know, the system is down.
• I put in my prescription. It's only $4! Yay!
• The car is still dead. And it's boxed in. By what turns out to be church parkers. Baptist Church parkers. Tim's car is an automatic and it won't budge an inch once it's turned off, so there we sit for two hours plus some because the woman with the car next to us, as her her cousin informs us, "is folding pamphlets." When she and her passengers arrive, they all get in the car, close the doors, and pop the hood without saying a word.
  
• At this point it is nearly 1:30 in the p.m. Neither of us have eaten. We are not packed. We have to leave for the airport at 3:00. And my fever is getting worse.
  

So the horrible decision is made to postpone the flight until Monday or Tuesday. Tim calls the airline as soon as we get home, and hearing him postpone the flight that we've been looking forward to for so long makes me burst into tears. Which makes my fever even worse.

FYI: I have never canceled a flight for sickness in my life. Stephen King says that people get sick before flights because it is our bodies telling us the plane is going to crash. I spent a good amount of time scouring the news to see if ours did, but it did not. It is really, really bad, when the only thing that can cheer you up, is the news of a plane crash.

And then Tim starts going through his luggage.

Because his passport isn't here.

And his passport isn't here...

Because it's in Panama.

And if Tim's passport is in Panama,

Then we're not going anywhere.

At all.

You see, for his job, Tim travels on a diplomatic passport. It's illegal for travel on a diplomatic passport just for shits and giggles because diplomats have special privileges. And if you abuse them, you can get fired, and I'm not sure, but I think you can go to jail. At least I kind of hope you do, because if I have to wait in this horrible line you should have to too. And even if he was allowed to travel on the DP, our itinerary expressly states "We have booked this tour with the passport information you provided us, so if you change your passports, you must bring both, the old and the new one, in order to be able to take this tour." So even if he could get into Peru... he couldn't go to Machu Picchu.

This is stated right above the place where it says: "This tour is non-refundable."

That's right folks. We can hold the cost of the flight. We can keep or return all of the gear if we want to. But all of the money we paid for the tour, which, in case you're wondering is a nice fat $1600, is gone. The tour company said that they would let us know in 5-6 days if some of the balance could be applied forward since Tim and I still want to go, later in the year, but it's a big if, and a big some.

So. In the space of a few short hours, the potential for Peru went like this:

9:00 a.m. 100% (we're going today! YES! Best day ehvar!)
12:00 p.m. 85% (we'll go tomorrow when I feel better! Ok.)
1:30 p.m. 75% (We'll go Tuesday, when I'm SURE I feel better.)
4:00 p.m. 60% (We'll go Wednesday when someone in Panama overnights the passport)
4:30 p.m. 40% (No one in Panama can hear my screams. No one in Peru is answering our calls.)
12:00 p.m. 0% (This is the worst day of my life. Period.)

How much more excitement can you handle? Gauge your answer carefully before proceeding, Dear Reader.

At 1:30 in the morning, I had been crying and feverish for fully 12 hours. I was laying in bed, thinking about--I wish I could say, "eating a whole box of popcicles"--thinking about maybe just dying. Tim came and laid in the bed with me, and put his arm around me and I turned to him and said,

"Will you marry me? For real?"

And he said,

"No. Shut up." And he ran into the other room.

Which really helped the situation.

So I rolled over and put a pillow over my head, and wondered if our plane had crashed some more.

But Tim came back with his State Department cuff link box, and in it was a very cheap and crappy little ring, which nonetheless has great symbolism and took Tim a very long time to pick out, because he'd been thinking about it much longer than I had (and it takes him a long time to pick out everything).

And he said, "will YOU marry ME?" and something else that was very, insanely romantic, but I can't remember, because I was laughing at the ring, and I was a little punch drunk from not eating and being on a lot of medication.

As it turns out, he was going to propose at Machu Picchu. But since everything got ruined, and then there was an earthquake, and then demons had a barbecue on top of the rubble, and after all that I didn't kick him out of the house, I think he figured he should get me while my guard was down. Which is almost as sneaky as getting someone while their brain is deprived of oxygen on top of a mountain.

It's possible that this sounds crazy, but I'm almost relieved that the stars aligned this way. That he proposed during the trial-by-fire (btw--our car needs a new alternator, $450 worth of work, thanksverymuch), instead of when everything is cute, and happy, and covered with whipped cream and double rainbows. It's really easy to like someone when everything is going well. How easy is it to like them when they've left their passport in a cupboard in a locked apartment in Central America, the day before you're supposed to go on vacation? For that matter, when they're feverish and sniffling and talking nonsense and they're wearing a "Pineapple Express" t-shirt that's two sizes too large?

If you ask Tim, he will say hands down that he proposed to me. He had a plan (albeit one that did not involve this level of catastrophe). That I have asked him that a 100 times and I'm usually drunk, and anyway, I didn't have a ring. The Gender Studies Minor in me wants to say, "what does that matter?" But the other 80% of me is relieved. I'm more in love with him than ever (how cheesy is that?) and I'm glad we want to marry each other.

And I'm so glad we never do anything normal.