Finding Joy in Snarkville

My day began yesterday at 1am PDT.  (because that truly sounds worse than the 4am EDT that my alarm went off.)  My day ended at 9:30pm PDT.  Yup. It was a long day and yup, I was pooped.

First off, if anyone doubted Duke’s true calling to be a world traveller, they would have screamed from the rooftops as to how wrong they were yesterday.  Yes, he’s an independent three (and a half) who wanted to put his shoes in his OWN tray.  But he confidently walked through security with the “You don’t want to check my empty milk cup” swagger.  He also was the talk of airports he was in — mostly because I’m a horrible mommy who makes him pull his own backpack, but still.

We board the first flight and I sit next to a woman who has a 1 year old.  Poor dear hasn’t taken her son on an airplane yet and thinks the best plan is this summer to take  the 15 month old, her step-son, and her husband to Eastern Canada to visit family.  So she looks as “World Traveller Duke” and says, “Wow, he’s really good.” (I should note we were on the ground and he was watching them load our luggage.) “Do you have any tips?”  It took me half a second to say “Yes, get the child his OWN seat AND drugs.”  I’m sure this will win me mommy of the year awards, but seriously, right before Duke turned two, I flew with him on the LAST flight he’d sit in my lap.  It was miserable.  He was truly too large to fit in my lap with any comfort; he finally slept — but that made both of us sweat like pigs; and I just wanted to be DONE already.  I swore then to warn any parent who was foolhardy enough to take that “free” ticket for the under 2 set.  It worked well, when Duke was LITTLE — but once mobile, it wasn’t much fun.

Second, our longest flight of the day was a little rocky.  Not because Duke wasn’t a trooper, no, he slept almost the WHOLE flight.  No, it was a rocky flight.

• Somehow I’d become invisible between the gate and my seat.  The flight crew seemed like they looked at me, but it took the woman next to me (she must have had powers to see invisible people) to get my trash picked up, get the attention of any passing flight attendant when I needed small things –like the drinks they were serving everyone else.
• There was rough air.  Like rollar coaster rough air.  Now, I’m NOT a nervous flye, never have been. My biggest concern was that Duke was going to wake up from one of the bumps and get worried.  Silly Mommy, no need to worry that my son was going to wake up in bumpy air.  He was FAR more likely to wake up from the 9 attempts to tell me that he wasn’t belted in (THEY could see him, but not ME — they could not see his belt wrapped around him or my arm holding him tight, since he was laying down in my lap and his seat.)
• I had the rare joy of having the same couple who laid in my lap during the first flight, lay down in my lap during the second flight.  They not only pushed the seat as far back as it would go, they bounced.  URGH.  Um, yes, I did take great joy in letting the awake Duke kick the back of their seat AND pushing the seat every time I needed something from my bag, which shockingly was rather often.
• My seat mate, the aisle seat person, has boney elbows.  I know this because she kept hitting me with them — URGH.

When that flight ended, I took great joys in heading to bag claim to get my bags.  Duke was ever helpful pointing to every bag and asking if that’s our bag.  He amused the crowd around him when he pointed to a leopard print bag (oh, my it was awful) and asked, “Is that my bag?”  I replied, “Oh, heavens, no.”  He declared (for all to hear), “That’s NOT my bag.”

Bags collected, we head out to the bus stop to catch a bus to home.  45 minutes I wait explaining to Duke that we will ride the bus shortly.  He was not convinced, but stuck with me until finally the bus arrived.  We boarded.  We rode.  Duke picked the very BACK seat.  As we are making our way through the city, this guy sitting near us is on his cell phone.  He has one of those headsets and is holding up a piece of paper in front of his mouth, either in hopes that it would carry the sound to the headset or that his conversation wouldn’t be overhead — he succeeded in just making himself look like a tool.  Finally, he got up and used the bathroom — WHILE on the phone…not once but twice.  Dude, no one — NO ONE, not even the Queen of Snarkville, is so important that they must be on the phone in the bus toliet.  I’m sorry, if the paper didn’t make you a tool — the toliet office move did.

We got home.  Prince walked in the door shortly behind us and I promptly fell asleep.  Duke asked to go to bed at 7pm, and I was asleep again by 9:30pm.  Somehow, when you do all your flying before noon, it takes a lot out of you.

Postscript to add:  Duke woke up this morning in an awesome mood.  He declared it was time to go to school and skipped out of here with joy.  This is good because I think Prince is putting a price on my head for failing to turn off the alarm I’d set for 4am EDT, that went off at 1am PDT (I got up and tried to turn it off in the dark); then went off again at 4am PDT (I got up and tired to take a battery out of it); then went off at 4:05am PDT (I took ALL the batteries out of it and cussed and said something like, “who bought me this thing anyway?”  Ahem, 4am is NOT my finest hour.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under On the Road Again. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.