Stuck stuck stuck like a duck in the muck

So my bags are packed, I have said my goodbyes, Bee is prepped for her airplane adventure, and, well, a volcano erupted in Iceland and there are literally no flights going anywhere in Europe because of a slow moving cloud of dangerous ash.

It's annoying: The governments of almost every country in Europe are closing their airports and airspace in 12 hour increments. Right before they are set to reopen, they call up the weather service for confirmation that "yep, the dangerous invisible ash cloud is still there" and then they close for another 12 hours. They don't know what to do. I guess there is nothing else they can do.

Airlines in the United States have canceled nearly all of their transatlantic flights. They are not coping well with this disaster either--but I wouldn't expect anything else from them. United Airlines finally officially canceled my flight Sunday afternoon. We called to rebook. Unknown to us, we were accidentally routed to domestic bookings. We spent about 20 minutes on hold before a surly representative transferred us to the international department where we spent two hours on hold before Skype disconnected our call. Whoops. We called every European reservations line for United Airlines with no success. We couldn't reach anyone, not even in Finland. We called back to the US and heard the following, "Your estimated wait time to speak with a customer service representative is 180 minutes."

*&*#%!*&#!!!

Then we were disconnected again.

However, on our third try with US reservations, a small miracle occurred--we were immediately connected to an agent who was able to change our flight. And she was nice. But we were exhausted and overwrought from an afternoon spent on the phone. My flight home today was moved to Thursday.

I really hope that something will be figured out by Thursday. Most countries in the region are facing a near-revolt from their airlines. Lufthansa has been angrily repositioning its planes around Germany. KLM and Air France have sent up test flights. These have all returned safely. This would point to the Europeans perhaps being a bit overcautious, but, at the same time, safety is paramount.