My Level of Awareness

It’s all a matter of perspective

I just got home last night from a business trip. The trip out was uneventful, and everything at the site went smoothly, leaving me with a few hours to kill before my flight home. The earlier flights were all booked up, so I settled in with the Nintendo to while away the time, trying not to think of the fact that I could be home, tickling my son and cooking him dinner.

The first leg of the flight home went smoothly. One of those weird side-effects of our airline-hub methods of flight routing means that sometimes I have to fly through Dallas to go from Knoxville to Little Rock.  Look at a map to fully appreciate how counter-intuitive this is. I can practically look down and wave at my house while I go by, and I am less than halfway home by airline standards.

Then, in Dallas, my routine luck (or lack thereof) with air travel started to kick in.

First, the flight was delayed. This, I should be used to. This is something that I should learn to pretty much build into my travel plans. On-time flights form are not the norm of my flight experience. They fall somewhere behind “Delayed” and above “Canceled” on the travel continuum. On the last leg of a flight, it’s not really much more than an annoyance - it lacks the urgency of a delayed first leg, where there are connections to be missed, and forced overnight stays in bland airport hotels.  Nevertheless, it all keeps me away from my kid, it’s only a matter of degree.

And that, is the crux of it. Delays. Keep. Me. From. Home.

I don’t mind travel. I am a good traveler.  I am reserved and polite to service personnel. I am flexible and (mostly) reasonable and patient. I like solitude, and I amuse myself easily. I pack sparingly and prepare for contingency.

But, at heart, I like to be at home.

In my own space.

With my loved ones.

My son is growing up so quickly, and the great downside of my job is the separation from him that makes me miss some of the funny little moments that make up his days. I genuinely LIKE my child. I like his company, this little man that is so very like and yet unlike me. He is sweet and sharing and funny and inquisitive, and I like being around him.

While I intuitively know that I would rather arrive home alive and intact and late than not arrive at all, even the most necessary of delays makes me impatient and grumpy.

I want to go home.

The equipment (that cute euphemism for PLANE) was delayed in arriving in Dallas for my flight home, which forced a half-hour delay in boarding.  And then the weather required air traffic control to reroute our flight plan to Dallas, which resulted in another 45 minute delay while we sat on the tarmac, like a toy plane in a rubber band gun, waiting for a “GO!”

For those of you who do not fly, you have to realize that planes, when NOT flying, aren’t really temperature controlled to any great extent.  When you cram that much humanity, arm-to-arm and leg-to-leg,  in a metal tube with scant ventilation, it gets a bit warm.  Warm and fragrant.

So now I am late.  AND hot.  AND stinky.

We finally did take off, and within minutes I realized that air traffic control must have been faced with a choice of greater and lesser evils when planning our route, because that weather I mentioned?  We didn’t really AVOID it.  We just avoided MOST of it.  The part we didn’t avoid threw us around the sky like dandelion fluff.  I would have hated to fly through the most of it we did miss.

So now, I am late, hot, stinky AND queasy.

As we were circling our approach into Little Rock,  the lady in the seat next to me woke up (from, as it turned out, her Dramamine induced stupor), and she chatted amicably with me as we coasted down for a landing.  Normally I avoid this kind of pleasantry, but I had finished my book, and was too motion-sick to want to start another, and her accent was very distinctive.  It turned out that she was a really delightful lady, on her way from Auckland, New Zealand to see her daughter graduate Summa Cum Laude from an American university.  In fact from my alma mater.

She had been on planes for 40 hours and hadn’t seen her daughter for six months.

I bow to her.

She wins.

Sometimes, even talking is overrated

I loved it when my son started to talk.  He is not normally a whiny “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy” kind of kid, so talking meant that I got to hear what was going on in his little head (endlessly fascinating), and figure out the causes of the few attacks of frustration that he does have (most helpful).  Walking is pretty overrated.  Climbing is DEFINITELY overrated, but, as milestones go, talking didn’t really have a downside.

Well, except for the fact that the talking and social filters don’t really develop at the same time.

I started out yesterday morning with a catastrophic clothing failure.  And by now the entire world knows.

My son is a very safety-minded little boy.  He will NOT allow the car to move unless he is properly strapped in his carseat.  And he will let you know this.

Apparently, in my haste to get him and all my lunch/briefcase/purse stuff into the car, I looped the straps over his shoulders, but forgot to properly snap and buckle them.  We made it to the end of the street before his rapidly escalating alarm got my attention.

“Mommy, stop…”

“MOMMY stop…”

“MOMMY STOP THE CAR.  I NEED TO BE STRAPPED IN.   AAAAAAAHHHHH!”

I pulled over and jumped out and fixed his distress and told him what a good boy he was to be sure he was being safe.

As I jumped back into the car, a loud tearing sound and a suddenly drafty and loose feeling in the vicinity of my right thigh alerted me that I had experienced a clothing failure of a monumental nature.

Now.  Let me pause here to emphasize something.

I do NOT.  DO NOT.  Wear. Tight. Jeans.

I positively despise anything constricting on my body.

I want that point to be very, very clear to you when I describe the fact that my brand new, worn-only-twice, pair of dove gray Old Navy jeans had split from mid-thigh all the way to the bottom of the front zipper.  It wasn’t something that could be easily hidden just by staying behind a desk all day.  One trip to the restroom and my entire office would know the color and nature of my lingerie.  (And to those living life vicariously - NO I will not tell you what that was.)

So I got back in the car and pointed it back to the driveway.

“Mommy, are we going home?”

“Yes honey, Mommy needs to get a new pair of pants.  These ones are torn.”

“Mommy, did you split your pants?”

“Yes, baby.  I am going to put new ones on.”

“Mommy, did you split your pants WIDE OPEN?”

“Yes, baby.”

When we returned to the car, and were properly buckeled and on our way again, the morning conversation pretty much picked up where it had left off.

“Mommy, do you have on NEW pants?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Because you split your old ones WIDE OPEN?”

Sigh.

I am sure that by now, Harry’s entire preschool knows about the fate of my pants.

I just hope they don’t know the color of my underwear.

Some flowers for you

Hard to tell which is sweeter - the girl or the flowers.

The beautiful girl is Harry’s cousin - my sister Jennifer’s daughter - amongst the lilacs at the Highland Park Lilac Festival in my hometown; over 500 varieties of fragrant spring goodness.

The smell of lilacs always makes me a tiny bit homesick for New York in the spring.

I am stupidly excited about this

As an adult, this is horribly embarrassing, but I am almost beside myself with impatience. I am taking a little weekend trip in September, and I can’t wait.

I bought my son tickets for a ride on Thomas the Tank Engine.

Nashville is the closest place that he will be coming, so September 6 was the earliest Saturday I could get tickets. Nashville also has the side benefit of letting us visit with our friends Steph and Carson, whom we don’t see nearly as often as we used to.

I bought the tickets before I read Amalah or Jodi’s experiences with A Day Out with Thomas.

And now, well…

…I am STILL excited.

I don’t precisely know why, but despite my adult tendencies toward entertainment of the classical music/winetasting/museum variety, I cannot escape the fact that I grew up staunchly lower-middle-working-class. I never attended a single event requiring tickets that was not a Disney movie. I don’t know if it is my desire to willfully recapture a shortened childhood that makes me an easy person to amuse, but ask anyone who knows me best and they will tell you that I get ridiculously excited about the smallest of things.

This also makes me a HORRIBLY easy mark when it comes to my kid. I don’t know what flavor of overcompensation it is - only child/older mother, deprived childhood history, you take your pick - but the net result is that I get stupidly disproportionate joy from indulging my son. In my favor - I am pretty firm in other areas, like courtesy and personal hygiene. I am not so good at teaching that deprivation and disappointment are pretty much facts of life.

Those lessons he can learn somewhere else.

We’re going to ride with Thomas.

I’ll take a side dish of Culture, please

One thing I am proud of, in one of those stupid “look at what a good mommy I am” ways, is that I do make a concerted effort to expose Harry to a bit of culture at a level somewhere above Thomas the Tank Engine videos on the tube. Okay, so I will admit that this is unfortunately balanced out by my unabashed use of said videos to garner myself 30 minutes of peace to do little things, like, um, make dinner. Or tend to personal hygiene. You know, luxuries like that.

In my son’s short life, he has been to an assortment of cultural enrichment expeditions ranging from the Eastman Museum of Photography to a performance of Handel’s Messiah, to an Anuna concert in a gothic revival church. This weekend my son attended his first opera. Okay, technically he attended his first operetta, since it was a performance of Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus”, but it’s close enough to the real deal for an almost-three-year-old. It has the advantages of being light and fluffy, with lots of color and movement. It’s kind of a nice, kid-friendly prelude to the heavier fare. I think Wagner is a little intense for anyone under, say, forty.

It was just short of a disaster.

It started out well enough. We arrived early and Harry and I sat in the lobby of the Rep, sipping soda and eating peanuts. The pre-opera refreshments consumed, and with curtain call imminent, we found our seats which were on the first row of the Mezzanine with a beautiful unimpeded view of the stage.

We were not on the aisle. We were on the interior wall of the box. Just a tip for any of you who are contemplating the inculturation of your toddlers - pick an aisle seat. It becomes very important later.

Another tip for your piece of mind - if you are on the front row of the Mezzanine with your toddler, confiscate all small toys that may become projectiles at one point during the performance. While this is not as important later, it will result in a significant reduction in the stress from the constant vigilance that arises when you imagine some poor old gentlemen suffering the surgical removal of a Thomas the Tank Engine from his bald skull.

The first act went remarkably well. Harry was mesmerized. He stood with his nose pressed up against the guard rail of the opera box. His running commentary on the stage action was even quiet and polite; “Mommy, why is that lady crying? Mommy, why is that man hiding? Who is that man with the white hair?”

The first intermission came and went, filled with trips to the potty, more soda and peanuts, and the confiscation of the earlier mentioned Thomas. We settled into our seats for the second act.

And this, lovely guests, is the point in which I remembered, rather belatedly, that the line between fantasy and reality in a toddler’s world is blurred to the point of near non-existence. Which is not normally a problem. Except when their father is actually IN the opera.

Kris had a minor role in the opera as Ivan the Major-Domo. He didn’t have many lines, but he was a major sight-gag throughout the second act and was only person on stage at the beginning of the act - a fact which did not escape the audience present because it was announced VERY LOUDLY during the VERY QUIET beginning of the act.

“THERE’S MY DADDY!”

“Shhh, baby, that is Daddy. Let’s be quiet and watch.”

“WHAT IS DADDY DOING WITH THOSE GLASSES?”

“Shhh, baby, he is giving champagne to the people at the party.”

“DADDY IS AT THE PARTY? I WANT TO GO TO THE PARTY!”

“Yes baby, but it’s a pretend party, we will meet Daddy after the party.”

“NO. DADDY IS DONE NOW! I WANT DADDY TO GET OUR STUFF!”

At this point, my son commenced a display of his very Irish temper and proceeded to scream with rage - a scream cut short by my hand clamped over his mouth. When it became obvious that this was no mistake on his part, and any further cultural exposure would have to be made by forcibly gagging and binding him to keep him from leaping over the Mezzanine to the stage below, I decided that he had his dose of opera for the day, and it was probably best to beat a retreat.

Remember. Always pick an aisle seat.

Because if you have to haul a 30-lb. three year old through a dark theater, with your hand over his mouth and his feet dangling, tripping over the overstuffed purses of a row of blue haired old ladies, and guaranteeing that you will land in their laps, you WILL NOT be popular.

Sometimes it’s best just to leave the theater so they don’t recognize your face later when law enforcement is accessible.

I consoled myself with the Container Store and Starbucks for the rest of the afternoon until the opera has safely ended and we could slink back into the empty theater to pick up Kris. Of course, Harry was delighted to find that they had not cleaned up the released balloons from the end of the ill-fated party scene, and managed to steal off a car full before they swept them off for disposal.

Nevertheless, it made an impression.

As Kris buckeled him into his carseat and sat down behind the wheel to drive home. Harry called up:

“Daddy! Daddy, we had FUN at the OPERA!”

But for me, I think I will take my culture a little more on the side from now on.

A sweeter little boy

Yesterday my son discovered the sweetener packets on the restaurant table in IHOP.

“I want a blue one!”

“No, honey, the blue one is not good for little boys.  You can have a white one.”

Three minutes, two white packets, and one sticky, sparkly, granulated toddler finger later…

“Mommy, these, THESE ARE GOOD for little boys.”

A Date with Harry

I have a date with Harry this weekend.

Not that Harry.

THIS Harry:

I abandoned the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre a long time ago because the writing simply got bad. Plots were okay, but oh-my-god did everyone forget how to write dialogue? And, um, character development? The genre was simply suffering from Romance Novel Syndrome - it got popular enough that people would consume dreck just to fuel the addiction.

My exodus was also fueled by my discovery of mystery writing at a time when hands-down some of the most skillful writing was taking place (Deaver is the bomb). Add my love affair with Patrick O’Brian, who had the audacity to die of old age and leave me breathless and hanging in the middle of book 21 of the Master and Commander series. Patrick O’ Brian was one of the few serial authors who kept me interested past book three, but Butcher is proving to be another. He just keeps getting better and better with practice. And I hope he keeps practicing, because so very few men keep me breathless nowadays. Harry Dresden is one.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden books are at the fringe of mystery, but are firmly in the Fantasy arena, and he has enticed me back by introducing me to Harry. So this weekend I will be looking with sweet anticipation for that little brown box with Amazon smile to arrive at my doorstep.

Don’t keep me waiting.

Mystery Solved

This is a Public Service Announcement

After perusing the search terms by which many of you have arrived here,  I feel I should perform a bit of bloggy service, just for you.

“La vie dansante” translates to “the dancing life.”  It means a carefree way of living, a life of joy, “going with the flow.”

It is also a song by Jimmy Buffet.

And now I will direct you to the original blog entry by that title.

This entry just a lagniappe from the friendly staff here at My Level of Awareness.

(PS - lagniappe (LAN-yopp) - a little something extra)

Just a hypothetical…

Life has been busy here in our Level of Awareness.

Maybe a little TOO busy, and not in that conventional overworked kind of way.

If you are the parent of a toddler I want to share with you a hypothetical situation that may save you almost infinite amounts of grief later. Listen, think, and learn.

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you are working on A Big Project. A Big Project that, hypothetically, involves your embroidery machine. If you had one. Picture if you will, all your crafty thingies spread out on a craft table in your living room or den or craft room or whatever, with your toddler playing happily at your feet, intermittently watching a video. A nice, wholesome, Disney video. It’s an idyllic scene of domestic bliss.

The one ant in the picnic is that the embroidery machine is a bitchy little piece of machinery, because they must hire cut-rate third-world programmers to write software that run the things. In exasperation, you realize that you must reload, for the fiftieth time, the guidance software for the machine. So you trudge to the upstairs room where such things are kept. And, as you are, in your imaginary situation, a computer and gadget geek, there are many, many of “such things” to sort through. Thankfully, your husband, who is, hypothetically, a bigger computer and gadget geek than you are, comes in from cutting the lawn to find exactly what you have been searching for.

As he hands you the software, he mentions incidentally (and hypothetically) that your son let the dogs out into the yard, and oh-by-the-way, where IS Harry?

…

There is that long, hypothetical moment where you look at each other in blank stupidity as it dawns on your that your clever little toddler has learned to unlock the outside door locks.

Which, hypothetically, results in wild, panicked, screaming searches of the house and the back yard, with your heart in your throat, and eighty million tableaus, none of which end happily, running through your brain.

At which point, in your scenerio, you cave into the fact that your toddler, who hates being in a room without you, has indeed simply wandered off, and you, the hypothetically WORST PARENT IN THE UNIVERSE, somehow missed that fact.

Oh. But it gets MUCH better than that.

MUCH.

Because, at the point where you are starting your full-scale dogs-and-helicopters assault on the neighborhood, two, count them, TWO, hypothetical police cruisers pull up in front of your house and ask you if you are looking for a lost child.

WHO IS IN THE BACK SEAT. GRINNING.

And who does NOT understand why his mommy, the WORST MOMMY IN THE UNIVERSE, is screaming hysterically, when he had a wonderful adventure with the nice policemen. The nice policemen who brought him home and told his, hypothetical parents, that their precious little bundle was picked up two blocks away, on a street that is notoriously known for speeding cars, and in a few minutes was about to be bundled off to the DHS. The nice policemen who never thought to ASK him where he lived, which he was perfectly capable of telling them - as he later demonstrated with 100% accuracy over fifty times in the next two days. Hypothetically, anyway.

A scene of domestic bliss gone horribly, horribly wrong.

I’m not saying this happened.

But it could.

So you might want to think about it.

Hello from Monterey

Our little postcard to you.

And like all good postcards, it arrives AFTER we return.