the holiday blog!

Cut to spare the friends list. :)

Dublin Airport. 7:15am. Plane is 3.5 hours late. OMG. Not a good way to start a 22 hour trip. We are promised we’re rebooked on flights through to Fairbanks, but they can’t give us seat assignments because the next legs are more than 6 hours away. We are to check in on arrival at both Atlanta and Minneapolis.

Noon: finally on plane. We watch Kung Fu Panda 2 3 times, all without sound. Aside from wondering who voiced the peacock, have no difficulty following the storyline. One small toddler meltdown from child who has now been up like 12 hours.

4pm, Atlanta: holy *crap* and thank God the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. I’d been seriously afraid we’d get off the plane in a country whose highest court of law had decided it was perfectly all right to let people die for the sin of being poor. Yay Supreme Court!

7-9pm: Exhausted toddler finally falls over in his airplane seat and sleeps for 2 hours, after 15 hours awake.

10pm: god bless the nice lady who has put us all together in “business economy” which has more leg room and slightly larger seats. We watch Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked twice, without sound. I conclude Alvin is a complete prick. Exhausted toddler tries to have a tantrum, ends up standing on the floor, bent over to lean on the seat, then slowly lies down and takes a 90 minute nap on the floor. Exhausted Mommy and Daddy grab 90 really uncomfortable winks.

12:30am: they’ve lost one of our suitcases. Fortunately, not the one with clothes in it. We are desperately grateful that Nana and Papa are here and we don’t have to drive.

2am, elapsed time, 28 hours: everybody collapses into bed.

7am: confused toddler awakens. We are all bewildered by it being only Friday. Spend a pleasant quiet day trying really hard to stay awake. Toddler goes down for a nap and is nearly impossible, but charming, to awaken. Everybody collapses into bed by 9:30pm.

2am: *very* confused toddler awakens, sees light coming in through the bit of window we didn’t cover with black paper, says, “Mama? Sunshine? Sunshine? Mommy? Daddy? Sunshine?” At 3am, we bow to the inevitable. Ted gets up with him, I stay in bed 2 hours, then get up and trade off. We watch the excrutiatingly bad Nicholas Cage film “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, then the somewhat less bad “Happy Feet 2”. Twice.

In news nearly as earth-shattering as the Supreme Court verdict, we learn Katie Holmes has filed for divorce from Tom Cruise. I feel sad for all of them. (Really.)

11am: still-confused toddler goes down for a nap. Mommy and Daddy go to collect luggage and to have hot fudge sundaes for lunch. Verdict: Hot Licks dark chocolate “Prudhoe” ice cream with raspberry sauce and hot fudge, all on top of a brownie, with whipped cream, cherries, nuts is still the best fricking ice cream sundae ever. Now I will never eat again.

Popped off to B&N, where I threw myself on the mercy of a nice young woman at the information desk several times: “Help me find Ursula Vernon’s DRAGONBREATH books! Help me find Alethea Kontis’s ENCHANTED! Also can I borrow a pen?”

The latter was for the bemused young woman to whom I said, “I can get the author to sign that for you,” as she stood there reading the first chapter of URBAN SHAMAN. “Really?” she said, and I said, “Yeah, I wrote it,” and she got quite flustered and said a friend of hers had been raving about it and she herself had only read the first few pages but she was drawn in, so she bought it and I signed it. :)

We left B&N with 6 books, all by people we knew: Liz Williams’ WORLDSOUL, Lee’s ENCHANTED, Michael Carroll’s SUPERHUMAN, 2 Dragonbreath books (with a third on order, which, when it arrives, will no doubt cause me to also buy 4-6, which they had in), and Carol Berg’s … SPIRIT of somethingish that I can’t remember the title of right now. Ted had given me my birthday money from his mom which he’d been carrying around, but when we got to the counter he we BOTH had sets of books we were buying, so I said “This must be our anniversary money we’re spending!” and he said “but YOU have four books and *I* only have two!” and I said “Or do we both have three?” and then the cashier put the US magazine I was buying into the bag too and Ted and I both said “Oh but *I’m* buying the MAGAZINE,” and the poor cashier girl was clearly uncertain as to whether she should be laughing or pretending none of this was going on, but *we* were certainly enjoying ourselves. :)

Came home to grandparents who had not been foolish enough to risk waking an exhausted toddler out of an extremely sound sleep (they tried, but he wouldn’t awaken!), so got to be Cruel Mama Who Wakes Sleeping Babies, but it went fine and he awakened happy and all. Honestly, it’s been a lovely holiday so far. :)