starting with the stroller

It all started with the stroller at the security gate in the airport this morning. What should have been a simple "pull the lever up and slide the other one over" thing, turned into a nightmare of a day. We couldn't collapse the stroller to check it through security, or later on, without jamming our keys into the frame and needing both of us to finally get it folded back up. So now we have a broken stroller that takes 15 minutes and two people to collapse for travel.
Then once we arrived at the airport, piled into the shuttle to the car rental garage with our broken stroller, rented the car, and got our screaming baby settled in the backseat, we set out for a nice drive over to see the Washinton D.C. monuments. NOT. We missed the turn to get across the river, got stuck in a maze of one-way streets that don't connect how they should to take you where the map shows that they might, and ended up over-hungry, downtown with nowhere to park and THEN realized that we didn't have any cash to park even if we had found a place! We were all hungry and tired (Dylan especially) and couldn't find our way to the hotel even though we could see it, because the streets kept leading us back the opposite way.
Finally after about an hour and a half of that, we got to the hotel, got something to eat, and decided to call the nearest babies-R-us to see about exchanging our stupid stroller. To our dismay (although it seems to fit with the rest of the day) we learned that they won't take back the stroller because we don't have the original packaging & receipt with us (which clearly we wouldn't since we are traveling) AND it has been more than 90 days since we got the blasted thing! I begged the guy on the phone to help us find a way around that since we are out of town and obviously stuck with a faulty piece of baby-gear... but he insisted that he must follow their return guidelines and wished me a good night.
So that was our day in a nutshell. It started and ended with our lovely stroller, which stands uncollapsed next to me as I type this in our hotel room. However, I'm happy to report that Dylan has finally fallen asleep and I get to hear myself think again. (sigh).