When we last left our intrepid and foolhardy travelers, they were attempting to leave the land of modular furniture and $500 strollers (also known as Sweden) for the Steel City, where french fries go on everything and the verb "to be" has become obsolete (aka Pittsburgh). We had successfully managed to make it through security with minimal hassles, though as I'm watching everyone hop around on one foot while they try to put their shoes back on while standing up, I always marvel at how poorly planned out those security checkpoints are.
Having survived my thoroughly unpleasant father in law, two difficult gate agents, and, of course, the various vomiting and whining of my kids, Haakan and I congratulated ourselves on making it inside the airport with most of our sanity intact and decided that we'd all earned some breakfast, which means cinnamon rolls and a badly needed cup of coffee. And things progressed smoothly for a while from that point. Elliot stopped spitting up all over everything for a few minutes (which usually means he's hungry, so I fed him again), Oliver peacefully ate his Swedish cinnamon roll (which he'd been demanding for the past 10 minutes, since he heard the word), and Haakan and I giggled about how we'd narrowly skirted disaster with his father in the car that morning.
But then, as was bound to happen, our luck changed. Oliver was growing increasingly more and more restless since we finished or cinnamon rolls, and by the time we made it through security checkpoint number 2 (or 3, I've lost count), he'd begun a chorus of "Want to ride on an airplane? Want to ride on an airplane? Want to ride on an airplane?" that barely paused for breath between question marks. Our various other suggestions, "Do you want to read a story? Do you want to play with cars? Would you like some bunny crackers?" where all met with screams and near sobbing, then the eerily calm question "Want to ride on an airplane?" As this is going on, Oliver's been let off of Haakan's back and he proceeds to tear around the lounge where we're all trapped like proverbial lambs, tripping over everyone's feet and knocking down carry on bags. And oh so slowly, Haakan and I begin to lose our composure, which Oliver also senses and begins to also lose his. As I pry him off of the heating element under the window for the fifteenth time, I can see the looks of pity on people's faces, as if they are saying "Look at that poor frazzled woman. I hope I'm not sitting anywhere near them!"
As Oliver begins to really freak out and scream "WANT TO RIDE ON AN AIRPLANE!" as he sobs, Haakan picks him up and tries to comfort him. By this point Elliot had finally fallen asleep in the wrap, after much whining and settling of himself. And then, in a movement so quick there was nothing we could do to stop it, Oliver nearly threw himself from Haakan's arms and managed to head-butt Elliot with an audible thud. In a move that we pure reflex, my hand flew up and I pinged Oliver on the top of the head, saying "Don't you EVER do that again!" This got the attention of not just Oliver, who stopped crying for a few moments and looked at me very surprised, but also of everyone standing near us. I could almost hear their shock that they had seen me lose it and smack my two year old on the top of the head. People shuffled away from us slightly, as if fearing that they would be next to feel my wrath. A woman with her own toddler wandered over and pointed at the planes outside for her very contented child, perhaps hoping that I'd observe her excellent example of good parenting and repent for my evil ways. Or maybe it was just in my head as I fought back my own tears and appologized again and again to Oliver for having lost my temper so badly.
At about this same moment, one of the gate agents announces that the plane was late coming in from Philadelphia and is going to be late leaving, so it'll be at least another 20 minutes before we board. At the mention of the plane, Oliver goes into another chorus of "want to ride on an airplane!", but at least this time we're able to distract him with his toy airplanes and the promise that we'll ride on the airplane SOON.
A half hour later, we finally make our tired way onto the plane. By this point Elliot had woken up, but hadn't yet barfed on me since his last feeding, Oliver was in better spirits, and Haakan and I looked as if we were about to collapse into little puddles of poor parenting. And once seated, the flight attendant informs us that the audio visual stuff isn't working in our part of the plane, but she gives us free headphones anyway (for what, I'm not sure, since the only radio stations we had were muzak and the radio equalivant of the Home Shopping Network). The sneaky guy sitting diagonally behind us quickly leaped from his seat and immediately fell asleep across the empty row of seats behind us (vacated by a family who wisely decided that they really did need to be in a section of the plane that had a movie). And just as we took off, Elliot threw up on me not once, but twice, managing to absolutely saturate my sweater.
But amazingly, we did indeed make it home in one piece with most of our sanity intact (as well as our carseats - which, despite my best effords, were NOT gate checked and ended up thrown on the conveyers along with everything else) and hopefully, it will be a long long LONG time before we have to attempt another transatlantic flight with the kids. I'm thinking we'll just mail ourselves parcel post the next time.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
I got the books...
... now all I need is a few good ideas. I've been wanting for a while to begin designing my own sweaters and such, since I can never seem to find quite the pattern I'm looking for, but being a big wuss, I've always been afraid of screwing up. Well, armed with a couple of books about sweater design (in addition to the ones I've already had), I'm about ready to start out. But first I need to get myself one of those Vogue Stitchionaries, the one for cables specifically.
My basic knitting philosophy is this - the froufrou novelty yarn just doesn't do it for me. Give me cables, fair isles, lace... the more complicated, the better. And I think this is going to be my basic problem - that I'll want to create things so complicated that they'll be practically unwearable. It's a fine line between something that's complex and cool and something your grandmother would wear or that would be better off used as a table cloth!
My basic knitting philosophy is this - the froufrou novelty yarn just doesn't do it for me. Give me cables, fair isles, lace... the more complicated, the better. And I think this is going to be my basic problem - that I'll want to create things so complicated that they'll be practically unwearable. It's a fine line between something that's complex and cool and something your grandmother would wear or that would be better off used as a table cloth!
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Escape from Stockholm
We have returned, sanity mostly intact, from 10 days in Stockholm visiting the hubby's family. These trips are stressful for a number of reasons, but I think our trip to the airport and flight home sum it up pretty well.
Perhaps it was my bravado that did me in. I was cocky enough to think that since we'd made it the entire 10 days without a major blowup from my father in law that we'd manage to chalk the trip up as a success in that regard and that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't think I'm quite the evil harpie that he seemed to. But alas, as I emerged into my brother in law's hallway, running late and lugging ALL of our bags, my quick smile in his direction was obviously not enough.
"No good morning, Gen?" he said, and I swear, if it was actually possible for one's veins to actually freeze into ice water, mine would have. I stammered and tried to cover myself with a hurried (and I hoped sincere) "I'm sorry, I'm just so rushed trying to get everything together and all..." but the damage was done. He stood in the doorway and muttered to himself about how I was "unbelievable" and had "no character" while I turned thirteen shades of red and tried to will myself into invisibility. After an ulcer-inducing ride to the airport, during with I tried to keep my eyes averted and not do ANYTHING that was going to earn me more of his wrath, he basically slowed down the car and we all lept out. Huzzah! We had managed to somehow, against the odds, avoid a major blow-up (and indeed, when he and the hubby spoke about a week later, there was no mention of any discomfort or ackwardness. Of course, there was also no mention of me, but that's all for the best).
So there we stand, Oliver on Haakan's back, Elliot wrapped on my front (in the wrap that he'd vomited all over about 30 seconds after I put him in it), hauling all of our assorted crap in one of those airline carts up to the long LONG line to check it. At some point before they checked our passports to make sure we weren't trying to smuggle Swedish children into the USA, Oliver began to get antsy and we broke into the stash of toys. Finally, we got to the person who would hopefully check our bags and all, and were treated to the following.
Clerk: (riffling through our tickets) Where's the ticket for the baby?
Me: (shrugging as Elliot begins to whine) Isn't it there?
Clerk: (shuffling the tickets again) There's no ticket for the baby. WHERE'S THE TICKET FOR THE BABY?!?!
Me: (noticing that Elliot has thrown up on me) He's sitting on my lap.
Clerk: (looking at me with some disgust as I try to clean up said vomit) He still needs a ticket. You have to PAY for him to fly, you know. Why didn't passport control stop you?
Me: (wiping off me and Elliot with the burp cloth that Oliver had been flinging around like a flag) No idea. If this is such a big deal, how did we GET HERE?
Clerk: (eyeing me as if the little mini-me attached to my front was a baby I was trying to smuggle out of the country) You have to go over to that agent over there (points to someone WAAAAAAY on the other side of the airport) and sort this out. YOU (he points at me) stay here.
Haakan and Oliver (who has begun to thrash around on Haakan's back and chant "Want to get down? Want to get down noooooowwwwww?") head over to the other agent while I stand at the counter and steam over how ridiculous this all is.
Clerk: I don't know how you got through passport control. I just don't understand, they should have stopped you. This just isn't allowed. I just don't understand it.
Me: (wiping my vomited-on hand on the back of my pants because Haakan has taken the burp cloth with him) Why don't you ask passport control? How am I supposed to know what the problem is? This really isn't MY problem, now, is it? This is YOUR problem! But no, here I stand with my TWO little kids, while YOU figure out what the problem is and while we probably are charged AGAIN for the privledge of me sitting with my 3 month old on my lap, which I haven't even BEGUN to address!
Clerk: (looking at me with terror in his eyes, as if he thinks my head is about to spin around) Why don't you go and wait with your husband. Here, I'll walk you over.
The scene pretty much repeats with the second agent, but instead of cleaning up vomit, I pass Elliot to Haakan and take Oliver for a walk, because he has begun his chorus of "want to ride on an airplane?" and my head is already about to explode from having heard it for the fiftieth time in the preceeding five minutes.
So fine, after nearly reducing gate agent number two to tears with my rant about how stupid it is that we have to PAY for Elliot to sit on my lap, we go back to work out the luggage situation.
Clerk: (motioning to our giant bulky wheeled bag with our carseats) You have to check that.
Me: We're going to gate check it.
Clerk: You can't, the union doesn't have insurance to cover anyone to carry anything that heavy down from the jetway. You have to take it to "special check in" over there (and he points around the corner to a crappy x-ray machine where the checker-inner guy is drinking a cup of coffee and looking exactly like he's just going to go on the other side of the machine and drop kick all those "special" items onto the same conveyer belt that all the other stuff has already gone on.
In case anyone is wondering why we didn't just check the carseats, it's because the stupid airlines assume no responsibility for broken carseats. Meaning they could run over them with the damn cart, if they break them, they just say "Whoops! My bad" and that's about it. So, being that being stuck at the airport back in Pittsburgh with two (by that point) exhausted and beyond whiney children why my husband drove to Toys r Us and purchased two NEW carseats because the stupid airline had trashed ours was not my idea of a scenario that was good for my mental health, we were trying to gate check the carseats.
So fine, ok, round 1 goes to the airlines, who now have our money AND our carseats. We get in line for security, where Oliver proceeds to play the "how far can I get from mommy and daddy before mommy loses it and freaks out in front of everyone" game until I hissed at Haakan that I was going to grab him and stuff him into someone's carry on unless he was contained again. So back onto Haakan's back he goes, because, hey, punitive babywearing is STILL babywearing, right? Unfortunately, this does nothing to silence Oliver, who spends the next 10 minutes in the security line saying "Want to ride on a airplane now? WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!" and throwing himself back and forth on Haakan's back.
And that, gentle readers, brings us to a natural pause. Will we make it home from Stockholm in one piece? Well, yeah, I guess I didn't build the suspense very well on that one. But I'll continue this little tale of dysfunctional woe in part two.
Perhaps it was my bravado that did me in. I was cocky enough to think that since we'd made it the entire 10 days without a major blowup from my father in law that we'd manage to chalk the trip up as a success in that regard and that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't think I'm quite the evil harpie that he seemed to. But alas, as I emerged into my brother in law's hallway, running late and lugging ALL of our bags, my quick smile in his direction was obviously not enough.
"No good morning, Gen?" he said, and I swear, if it was actually possible for one's veins to actually freeze into ice water, mine would have. I stammered and tried to cover myself with a hurried (and I hoped sincere) "I'm sorry, I'm just so rushed trying to get everything together and all..." but the damage was done. He stood in the doorway and muttered to himself about how I was "unbelievable" and had "no character" while I turned thirteen shades of red and tried to will myself into invisibility. After an ulcer-inducing ride to the airport, during with I tried to keep my eyes averted and not do ANYTHING that was going to earn me more of his wrath, he basically slowed down the car and we all lept out. Huzzah! We had managed to somehow, against the odds, avoid a major blow-up (and indeed, when he and the hubby spoke about a week later, there was no mention of any discomfort or ackwardness. Of course, there was also no mention of me, but that's all for the best).
So there we stand, Oliver on Haakan's back, Elliot wrapped on my front (in the wrap that he'd vomited all over about 30 seconds after I put him in it), hauling all of our assorted crap in one of those airline carts up to the long LONG line to check it. At some point before they checked our passports to make sure we weren't trying to smuggle Swedish children into the USA, Oliver began to get antsy and we broke into the stash of toys. Finally, we got to the person who would hopefully check our bags and all, and were treated to the following.
Clerk: (riffling through our tickets) Where's the ticket for the baby?
Me: (shrugging as Elliot begins to whine) Isn't it there?
Clerk: (shuffling the tickets again) There's no ticket for the baby. WHERE'S THE TICKET FOR THE BABY?!?!
Me: (noticing that Elliot has thrown up on me) He's sitting on my lap.
Clerk: (looking at me with some disgust as I try to clean up said vomit) He still needs a ticket. You have to PAY for him to fly, you know. Why didn't passport control stop you?
Me: (wiping off me and Elliot with the burp cloth that Oliver had been flinging around like a flag) No idea. If this is such a big deal, how did we GET HERE?
Clerk: (eyeing me as if the little mini-me attached to my front was a baby I was trying to smuggle out of the country) You have to go over to that agent over there (points to someone WAAAAAAY on the other side of the airport) and sort this out. YOU (he points at me) stay here.
Haakan and Oliver (who has begun to thrash around on Haakan's back and chant "Want to get down? Want to get down noooooowwwwww?") head over to the other agent while I stand at the counter and steam over how ridiculous this all is.
Clerk: I don't know how you got through passport control. I just don't understand, they should have stopped you. This just isn't allowed. I just don't understand it.
Me: (wiping my vomited-on hand on the back of my pants because Haakan has taken the burp cloth with him) Why don't you ask passport control? How am I supposed to know what the problem is? This really isn't MY problem, now, is it? This is YOUR problem! But no, here I stand with my TWO little kids, while YOU figure out what the problem is and while we probably are charged AGAIN for the privledge of me sitting with my 3 month old on my lap, which I haven't even BEGUN to address!
Clerk: (looking at me with terror in his eyes, as if he thinks my head is about to spin around) Why don't you go and wait with your husband. Here, I'll walk you over.
The scene pretty much repeats with the second agent, but instead of cleaning up vomit, I pass Elliot to Haakan and take Oliver for a walk, because he has begun his chorus of "want to ride on an airplane?" and my head is already about to explode from having heard it for the fiftieth time in the preceeding five minutes.
So fine, after nearly reducing gate agent number two to tears with my rant about how stupid it is that we have to PAY for Elliot to sit on my lap, we go back to work out the luggage situation.
Clerk: (motioning to our giant bulky wheeled bag with our carseats) You have to check that.
Me: We're going to gate check it.
Clerk: You can't, the union doesn't have insurance to cover anyone to carry anything that heavy down from the jetway. You have to take it to "special check in" over there (and he points around the corner to a crappy x-ray machine where the checker-inner guy is drinking a cup of coffee and looking exactly like he's just going to go on the other side of the machine and drop kick all those "special" items onto the same conveyer belt that all the other stuff has already gone on.
In case anyone is wondering why we didn't just check the carseats, it's because the stupid airlines assume no responsibility for broken carseats. Meaning they could run over them with the damn cart, if they break them, they just say "Whoops! My bad" and that's about it. So, being that being stuck at the airport back in Pittsburgh with two (by that point) exhausted and beyond whiney children why my husband drove to Toys r Us and purchased two NEW carseats because the stupid airline had trashed ours was not my idea of a scenario that was good for my mental health, we were trying to gate check the carseats.
So fine, ok, round 1 goes to the airlines, who now have our money AND our carseats. We get in line for security, where Oliver proceeds to play the "how far can I get from mommy and daddy before mommy loses it and freaks out in front of everyone" game until I hissed at Haakan that I was going to grab him and stuff him into someone's carry on unless he was contained again. So back onto Haakan's back he goes, because, hey, punitive babywearing is STILL babywearing, right? Unfortunately, this does nothing to silence Oliver, who spends the next 10 minutes in the security line saying "Want to ride on a airplane now? WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!" and throwing himself back and forth on Haakan's back.
And that, gentle readers, brings us to a natural pause. Will we make it home from Stockholm in one piece? Well, yeah, I guess I didn't build the suspense very well on that one. But I'll continue this little tale of dysfunctional woe in part two.
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