3 Minutes.

We missed the plane by three minutes.

We thought we'd make it. Right up until the time that the woman at the gate said, "You missed the plane."  Now, since the time was seven minutes prior to take-off, I thought that she surely was joking and would soon smile and let us on.

Not so much.

The plane was still at the gate, but they stop boarding 10 minutes before.  And so that is why we missed it by three minutes.

Not that we didn't leave the house 5.5 hours early or anything. *sigh*  Had everything gone as planned we would have been at the gate with almost three hours to spare.  But no.  We got nearly halfway to the airport and realized that we'd forgotten Mozart's birth certificate.  The last time we flew we were told we would need it.  That put us a good step behind.  Then Boston traffic.  Then the shuttle from parking was delayed as it had to get gas.  Then the TSA line.  Oh Lord, the TSA lines.  Any one of those things not happening and we would have been able to catch that flight.

After begging our way past some people in the TSA line, then getting stopped by a  haughty young man who very calmly said, "Well, my plane is boarding too," finally making our way through security, and hauling A$$ through the longest terminal run I've seen, with TW pulling Mozart behind in a GoGoBabyz - hands and feet waving and singing "weeeeeeeee", and me trailing behind carrying and pulling all the bags and coats, and nearly having an asthma attack, we just didn't make it.

They did rebook us on the 6am flight the next morning.  We are very fortunate in that respect.  And we had a very lovely, albeit overpriced even at "distressed passenger rates", night at the Hilton where we got a full 3.5 hrs sleep before getting up and in a much calmer fashion got to the gate in time to board!

And we even got to Nana & Grandad's house in time for the party that was scheduled for 10am.