Now the story you’ve all been waiting for: my trip home from Nashville (the morning BEFORE a-hole Morgan whatshisfuck threw a mantrum and a chair at a Nashville bar, thank you very much Mike Ingram for Everyone).
I snapped the cute little picture of my splayed luggage at the ticket counter with the intention of posting something like, “Not me, having to repack me entire bag because it was SEVENTEEN pounds over the weight limit from all the free swag I got!” Hahahaha, jokes on me.
I grabbed a free tote out of my bag and started unloading anything free/heavy that I didn’t arrive in Nashville with. Yay me for getting all the things at this conference. The Southwest employee helping me was super kind and even let me get away with a 56 lb bag because I told him my arms may actually fall off carrying all this shit through the airport. He slapped a “heavy load” or whatever sticker on that puppy and sent it down the chute.
As I walked away, I reached for my phone to make my cute lil’ haha post, only I didnt HAVE my phone. I pinged it from my watch, silence. So I rushed back to the counter to see if I’d left it sitting there. The employee saw my panicked face and asked what was wrong?? I told him that I must’ve set my phone down and now it’s gone. He quickly realized it was probably IN my checked bag, which was already on its way to the plane. This sweet man offered to chase it down, but said that it would take him 15 to 20 minutes, and I didn’t want to make his job harder. This was such a Meredith thing to do, so I figured that it was the universe telling me I needed a break from my phone for a few hours. He prints me another boarding pass because I am so scattered I can’t find the one I just got, and I rush toward security.
Fast forward to me arriving at my gate and realizing my laptop was in my bag. I open it up to check the Track My Phone thingy and see where my phone was in relation to my plane. Strangely enough, my phone was not close at all, but 6.6 miles AWAY and moving further and further from the airport. It’s at this point that I realize, holy fuck, someone has my phone.
I call my husband from my watch and tell him what is going on, in a total panic and almost crying. At this point, everyone around me at the gate is listening to my story (watch = speaker phone) and they are invested. Some people are telling me how to do an iCloud back up, some people are offering to drive to the address that my phone is showing, everyone is offering to help and so kind. I quickly learned to report my phone as lost and ping it with a message asking the person who finds it to call me. No more than a minute later, my phone goes off-line. I’m 100% sure that someone stole my phone at baggage check and has turned it off so that it can’t be tracked. 
When we board the plane, I try to ping my phone once more and it is still out of range. Now the map tells me it’s 8+ miles away. I’m fucked. I spend the next three hours wanting to throw up. It’s not even the stupid expensive phone, which IS insured, but an entire weekend of connections and work stored IN MY PHONE. I don’t utilize the cloud like I should (well NOW I do) so the last automatic backup had been the first morning of my conference.
Toward the end of my flight, I try to ping my bag once again to see, if by some miracle, it’s within range and actually on this damn plane with me. The phone pings. Of course I can’t hear a thing but my brain starts to spin. Is my phone in my bag and sitting 10 feet below me??
When we land in Denver, I’m literally running to baggage claim to find my bag and open it. It’s the third one down the chute and I’m AGGRESSIVE in my baggage retrieval. I set the bag down, press my ear to it, and ping my phone. “Ding ding ding da da ding ding ding!” The second picture is me absolutely crying when I open my bag and find my phone under a pile of shit, along with my boarding pass.
Phew, what a stupid, wild ride.
