Curly's future as a smuggler, & ear-won't-pop Hell

I think I mentioned that I hoped like Hell that the airline didn’t lose the two checked bags where I had stashed enough food to sustain the girls and I for three days.  Who does that?  Me.  Enough said.  

People asked me while I was plotting out my menu creation/storage/packing how I planned to sneak food into a foreign country.  My response:  ‘Freeze it, pack it, check it.’  Secretly I wondered if the airline would have an issue with it, but it is food.  You know what it is NOT:  food vaporized and stored in an aerosol can, stuffed carelessly in my bag, threatening to explode and jeopardizing everyone’s safely.  It is also NOT:  soup, or some liquid disguised as soup, in larger than 4 oz containers stowed in my carry-on.  

People eat in other countries, right?  I was traveling to Canada, and I did not believe any of the food I was packing was on a do-not-enter-our-country list.  But I was too busy grocery buying, cooking, baking, reorganizing the food in my freezer, and sweating my ass off in the kitchen to google it.  What did we do before google?  Anyone old enough to remember?  

We landed in Vancouver.  Mini's ear would not pop.  She may be 15, but apparently if her ear hurts she is going to become a retro 4 year old.  She REPEATEDLY pointed out to me that her hear hurt.  I told her that I understood.  I suggested she yawn.  Beyond that, I had nothing.  I was travelling with 2 kids and I had lots to attend to.  We needed to get currency.  Go through customs.  Get our bags.  

The ear was not anything I could fix.  

Customs:  we walked up to a computer station thing and followed the directions.  It took our photo.  Curly and Mini read prompts over my shoulder.  Had I brought raw eggs into the country?  Curly almost swooned in a 'Holy-Hell,-the- are-watching-us. -They-know-about-the-food' eleven year old moment.  I was focused on getting through this step but I assured her the eggs I brought in were hard boiled, not raw. 

I had to laugh when I
found this little love
note from the TSA saying they had
checked my bag.  I was sure
 to show it to Curly:
 'See, they dug around in my bag and
 there was nothing naughty
 in there, so they left it alone.'

We collected our bags.  Well, most of them.  One of our large food bags did not show up.  All the other peeps collected their bags and wandered away.  There was maybe one other family still staring at the empty conveyor belt.  Airport workers explained to us that a few bags fell out of the plane when being unloaded.  Encouraging.  The employees were just now returning for them.  Swell.  

Curly can NEVER be a smuggler.  She almost wet her pants insisting that the real reason our big-ass bag of food was not showing itself down the conveyor belt was because it had been confiscated for 'food.'  I kid you not, she would not relax and trust me.  On my other elbow I had ear-pain girl.  Pleasant.

It took about 45 additional minutes for our abandoned-on-the-tarmac-to-be-run-over-by-another-airplane bag to show up.  We got in a cab and headed to the hotel.  For the entire motion-sickness cab ride, I stared straight ahead trying to calm my stomach and felt Mini's face staring at my profile 2 inches away repeating:  'It won't pop.  It hurts so much.'  OVER AND OVER.