Friday morning we leave for Chicago. On a plane. I have flown a lot. I am not a good flyer. Visions of planes crashing fill my days and nights before a trip is complete. I will make my best good flyer faces and exercise my deep breathing abilities so as not to scare Mad or alert the TSA (who am I kidding? I am always selected for additional screening... once, while wearing very short sleeves, my arms were double wanded... "Uh, yeah, they are not any more flammable than my ass. Can we move on, please?"). In trying to find the upside of flying, the most commonly recurring thought is (and I'm not kidding about this), at least if we crash, we'll all die together. But how will we be sitting. Will I be able to reach Corey and Madelyn and Tom in those final moments? I do not want to die and I don't want my family to die.
So I try to put my neurosis aside (and maybe that stupid heartburn will ease up if I can), and think about the trip, which is to witness one of my quite nice brothers-in-law getting married to a lovely woman.
I have mixed feelings about this trip. I'm excited to see Tom's family; they are a fabulous bunch. It's extra cool that his parents have chosen to get a room at the same hotel where we're staying (as opposed to staying at their house 45 minutes away). They are thinkers, those two. All of the activities sound fun, exciting, joyful and pleasant.
Except that they are scheduled for Mad's naptime, Mad's dinnertime or Mad's bedtime.
Now some of those dinnertime events are, in fact, dinners. But knowing the family, it's highly unlikely we'll be eating then. In the past few days it has occurred to me that I will be seeing a lot of the inside of our hotel room. This will probably be preferable to seeing what that fancy restaurant is like. I've never been to a place that doesn't have highchairs somewhere. With Mad on my lap I will likely only see what she's just gotten hold of, where the knives are located (to move them away, thereby probably signaling waiters that I'm done before we start), the bathroom and the exit.
Continuing to look for the positives, I say to myself that it's better to see the inside of a hotel than the outside of an airplane.
2 comments:
Have a wonderful time. I remember those days, just being exhausted at trying to keep the child under control....
Chicago has a lot of fun and cool places to visit. I highly recommend the Museum of Science and Industry and the aquarium.
It's a shame that flying is such a pain although it is safe.
Enjoy Chicago!
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