Would you like a little whine with that?

 

 

It’s been a long day and truth be told it hasn’t even been that long. I’ve been awake for a while, slept for a while and all in all it seems like we should be farther along than we are, but we’re not. It’s like a bad joke when I look at the clock. But let’s recap, shall we, at least up to this point.

 

Woke up this morning fairly painlessly, considering it was

3:30 a.m.

Everyone was dressed and ready to go at

4:30

. All went very smoothly getting the rental filled up, turned in and then the fun really began! The check in line. First time I’ve ever actually witnessed WHY they tell you to arrive so early at the airport. Get in one line, realize it’s the wrong line. Get in another one, the right one this time and get myself checked in. It only makes sense that it would happen this way when you know that I booked my kids on this trip without me back in Feb. when I set up this trip. So my ticket/itinerary is completely separate. Well, I’m standing at the kiosk realizing that I don’t have a ticket number or itinerary number for the boys, so therefore I cannot check them in at the self checkout. Oh well, what can I do? I neglected to put together the all-important folder that

Wayne

had told me I should have. This is like some sort of backwards joke being played on me right? So I haul myself and my kids and our luggage to the line to check in with a person. Stand there, let’s say oh about 5 minutes and think I should call

Wayne

and ask him to look up our itinerary number online. I do this and he does. Of course I get the question-about-the-all-important-folder and why I don’t have it. Meanwhile we go back to the self check-in line which has grown since I last saw it. Get all those numbers punched in and it’s looking good until it says I need an attendant and the self check-in kiosk cannot help me. I’m no stranger to this, it happened in

Honolulu

when we started this trip. So back out of line and this is where I get a look at good and evil. See, we have two attendants at the counters waiting to help people. One is good, one is evil. Oh, I didn’t just arbitrarily assign these labels to these people. They EARNED them. Who do you think I’m hoping to get? Who do you think I actually got? Uh-huh, yeah. Evil. It was fun. She talked to me like I was 5 until I matched her tone for tone and attitude for attitude and then Evil became “quiet evil”. But we’re on our way. To security.

 

More lines, although this one moves. I instruct the kids who have shoes that tie, to take them off. We move through the line and put our stuff on the conveyer belt. Oh, but the laptop. We didn’t take it out of the bag. So somehow Seth gets sent back to do that. Well he has no idea what to do, so I take my shoes back off and start to go back and help him. This totally alarms the security person charged with looking to see if I beep when I walk through the thing. She’s like “no, take your shoes back off, come back. He can’t come back through without his boarding pass. So I reach over to hand his boarding pass to him. More alarms go off in her mind. Finally I do whatever she wants me to do with my shoes so I can cross back to the other side. Send Seth on his way. Take the laptop out of its case, send it through, take my shoes back off, walk back through…of course I’m shaking my head this whole time. I’m sure there are reasons for all these procedures and I know they’re in there for good reasons, but sometimes the minutia gets in the way of common sense. At least we’re through, we all have our shoes and we’re on our way again.

 

First plane was pretty painless. Flight was something like 35 minutes. That’s my kind of flight. Barely up long enough to think about how long the trip is before you are back on the ground.

 

Sometime after we disembark is where Rhett undergoes a personality morph. He becomes the most wound up, uncontrollable little child. Did somebody slip him a sugar pill? He tries to climb on the table while I’m eating my chicken pita sandwich. He can’t seem to see the trash can right next to us, so he goes to throw something away so far away that I’m having a hard time keeping my eye on him with all the people passing back and forth and stopping in my line of sight.

Wayne

talks to him for a minute and I guess this is where I should realize that the time that

Wayne

talks to him is directly proportionate to how long he will behave. (Oh, good, Rhett has just flagged down the flight attendant for water. Do I even need to be here?) So one or maybe two minutes later Rhett is back to his out of control self. He thinks everything is hilarious and must be said in the loudest possible voice.

 

Well, we get on the plain and I stare at our row of seats in disbelief. I’ve flown a reasonable number of times and I know what an average row of seats looks like. I’m thinking somebody measured wrong when they put these seats in. The two chairs in front of us are in the bulkhead, so these two people scored. Plenty of legroom for them, for us, we were not expected to actually HAVE legs I suppose. These two in front of us are blissfully comfortable and laughing, meanwhile I am in shock at how we’re supposed to maneuver this situation. Plus I think they have their seats laid back to ensure their maximum comfort. I’m wondering if I should just offer a scalp massage to the lady in front of me. It might help her enjoy her flight a little bit more. Maybe take my mind off of the fact that I can’t even open my laptop screen up to a 90 degree position.

 

So this flight is supposed to be 8 and a half hours or something like that. It would be at about this point right here that we’d could be landing in

L.A.

and walking to another gate to get on another plane. Allowing us a little bit of a diversion. (OMG, Rhett is flagging down the flight attendant again, like he’s hailing a taxi, to pick up his water cup. Seriously, who drugged my kid?) Well, at first we sleep for a little bit. Then miraculously it’s lunchtime. I figure we must have slept 3 hours or so, why else would lunch be so soon? Nope, it’s been about an hour. I’m sort of wishing we hadn’t been woken up for this. 5 minutes later, I’m really wishing it. Because as soon as the food is passed out, tray tables are in position, Rhett looks at me all pitifully and says he had an accident. A joke? Nope! All I can do is dig out his pajama shorts from last night and let him change into those. But first! First I must get us to the bathroom. So I’m standing up at an approximately 45 degree angle (thank the people in front of us), holding two stacked lunches because I have no place to put them. Waiting for the flight attendant to finish pouring cokes and water for the people in front of the bathroom. Of course we need to have the one person who needs to determine the merits and value of white wine versus beer to go with his chicken and rice lunch. Do I sound happy right now? Probably not, because a person is not supposed to stand with her knees pressed into a seat/floatation device at a 45 degree angle for nearly 10 minutes waiting for a cart to clear out of the way so she can take her wet child to the 2x2 foot square “bathroom” so he can change into his Thomas the Tank Engine pajama shorts! The fun has stopped. The only thing I can say that’s been stellar about this day is that I managed to NOT leave my ATM card in the ATM machine in

Atlanta

. Because if I’d done that it would have just been the cherry on top, don’t you think?

 

So now, I have about 3 ½ hours left of this plane ride back home. And most people really would be happy to be flying to

Honolulu

. I’m sure this plane is just filled with some of those people. I’ve picked one out for sure. She’s all smiles and looks pretty in her magenta maxidress. Clearly this must be a vacation trip for her. I’m not sure what it is for me. The return trip home, yeah. But I can’t feel too excited. As many nice things as I could list about

Hawaii

, it’s just not home. Sure, it is for now. And I know we surely have good times there ahead of us. Mostly I just think that I’m glad I don’t have to deal with Winter when everybody else does. I’m thankful that flip flops are the state shoe and can and should be worn year round there. But I miss my familiar turf even if it’s not quite as familiar as it once was. I know in my mind that we’ll be back, but it’s just not soon enough I guess. So I’m just gonna wrap this up from somewhere over the middle of the Pacific and look for the good things about all this. I can promise you though, that the person in front of me, is not on my list of good things! I’ll never understand how some people can be so oblivious to what’s around them! I think I need a mai tai! ;)