Wanted: Cat With an Effective Mother

This is what I'm going for. 

Not this.

Last night I was just finishing dinner—chicken pot pie, salad, and apple slices—when I heard scratching and gnawing inside one of my cupboards. The cupboard I keep my Starbucks coffee and Wildflower iced tea in.

Now they’re trying to screw with my caffeine intake. Bastards.

Listening to the little scratchy-scratchy sounds gave me a stomach ache  and I didn't want to open the cupboard to inspect it, lest a mice might dive bomb me right at face level, and you all know what that would do to me.

Put me right in the asylum. Just hand me my straight jacket now.

I tried to call my husband who was supposedly on his way home, but he didn’t answer. Twice. I finally called my neighbor to come check it out since I couldn’t take the anxiety anymore. He did some inspecting and the long and the short of it is, found no mice. But they are still alive and well in my kitchen walls somewhere, probably with a paw full of poo to throw at me given the opportunity.

I can’t tell you how many people have suggested we get a cat. Just today my mother even brought it up.

“Well, what you need is a cat,” she said.

“I’ve considered that, but how do I know I’m going to get a mouser and not just a cat who likes to tinker around with them like stuffed toys?” I replied.

“You know, cats learn those things from their mother. If the mother cat teaches the kittens how to do it, then they’ll chase the mice,” she added helpfully. It always comes back to the mother doesn't it?

Fabulous. So she’s saying I need to scour the alleys looking for a street cat with street smarts, whose mother showed them the finer points of catching and killing rodents? Do you think the people at the MSPCA have the vitaes for the strays in their shelter, filed by personality habits and specialized skills? I’m pretty sure that most cats these days are from the genetic line of the washing-mittens-and-eating-pie type. Meow meow meow.

Perhaps I should just purchase a mouse at the pet store and secretly release it in various cat cages and see what the felines do. A little like an interview or performance evaluation. Chases mouse? Check. Catches mouse? Check. Kills mouse? Nope. Just bats it with paw and licks it. Move on to cat option #2. It’s times like these when it would be helpful if animals could talk, or if those space-age dog collars from the movie UP! were a reality. Then assessing whether a cat was up to the job would simply be a matter of questions.

“So, Tom, tell me about your past work experience.”

Tom: “Well, I used to work down on the west side of town,” he drawls with thick Italian accent, “right behind Jim’s Big Barbeque. To date I’ve captured, killed and disposed of (glances at slash marks on his furry forearm) 253 rodents of all sizes.”

I’d hire him on the spot, that Tom. Even if he was a chain smoker and had a penchant for licking himself.

But you can’t know until you’ve taken the cat home, got the darned thing acclimated to your home, and seen him in action. It’s a huge risk. That, and my husband and I are in a pretty good place. We get along well. We're jovial (mostly). We even have conversations. That this coincides with the death of my other cat two years ago is pure coincidence I'm sure. But I'm a little worried that bringing a new cat into the home would turn our topics of conversation towards, "Did you notice it smells like cat piss downstairs?" or "When's the last time you changed that litter box?" or "There's cat hair all over my workshirts." Am I ready to potentially sacrifice my spousal relationship to appease my germ-a-phobic, controlling, type-A nature?

If I find a new piece of mouse poo I am.

If anyone out there knows of a cat whose mother did her due diligence to the breed and taught the thing how to be a mouser, feel free to contact me. If I like the cat and it works out, I promise to reward you with a special treat: probably something I baked in my kitchen.

Mouse Tales Part Deux

 [If you’re just tuning in, I highly recommend reading the blog below first. (The Clock Struck One.) You don’t have to, but the story is funnier from the beginning. Just sayin’.]

I wake up on day two of my Germ Nightmare, (after having spent the night dreaming that I moved into a dorm room at ASU only to find that I had to slay a Troll, kill the snake that was wrapped around my legs and in my shoes—while I was wearing them—and fight off other hideous monstrosities in order to live there…honestly I have no idea what made me dream about that…) and I gently check in the cupboard to see if there are any rodent carcasses lying about.

Nope. But the bait is gone on one of them. Dammit.

Which gives me no amount of pleasure or comfort knowing that the mice are still running through my cupboards and pilfering the bait off the traps while giving me the finger.

I continue to clean the kitchen, pulling out the oven, disinfecting the sides of the stove where all the food spills, vacuuming behind the appliances checking for more mouse poop, and generally dismantling the kitchen area while trying to purge it of mouse feces. It was a beautiful day.

My husband got home later that evening, checked the traps that were in the cupboard, and we crossed our fingers and said a little prayer that the traps would work this time. (Maybe I was the only one praying come to think of it.)

Around 11:00 p.m. my SIL, BIL, and I were in the kitchen/living room talking when my BIL, who is leaning against the counter and facing the fireplace, starts pointing and shrieking at the wall behind me.

“AHHHHH!! Ahhhhhh!!!”  he yells. He’s yelling and pointing and gagging a little I think, and I’m starting to freak out because I’m not sure what he’s looking at behind me—a couple of glances didn’t reveal anything—and I’m wondering if he’s seeing an otherworldly specter, the grim reaper or maybe Jesus himself, and while he’s still yelling and pointing, I turn around long enough to see it…..

…a mouse that has popped out of a tiny hole between our mantel and the slate bricks of our fireplace and is now running along the fireplace, down onto the floor and into the floorboard heaters in the living room. I’d have rather seen Jesus.

 I’m not sure at what point I found myself sitting on the edge of my hutch with my feet ontop of the couch, but I do recall that I also started yelling for my husband, repeatedly calling his name with terror and immediacy in my voice, and I keep calling and calling and calling him, and I think “Where the hell is that husband of mine…is he outside?” because aren’t husbands supposed to come running when they hear their wife is in distress and screaming their name? Where’s my knight in cotton shorts when I need him?

But no, he isn’t outside, and he comes sauntering, sauntering I tell you, up the stairs and into the living room, like I always yell his name in fits of shock and panic and it’s no big deal that screaming wife who is sitting on the hutch with her feet on the back of the couch because she frequently has fits similar to these and why hurry.

“Did you see a mouse?” he says all casual-like; tones reminiscent of “did you get the mail,” or “pass the salt,” or “have you seen my wallet?” Like we see mice in our house every day. No. Big. Deal.

My husband is not an alarmist by the same measures that I am a germ-a-phobe, which is probably a good checks-and-balances system in our union, but I was kind of hoping that he’d locate the sucker, look for it, capture it, dispose of it, in front of me and before I decided to go to bed that night, just so I could rest peacefully and with the budding illusion that perhaps the only mouse responsible for all that crap in the cupboards was dead. But he didn’t.

He nonchalantly got another mouse trap, baited it with peanut butter, and placed it on the floor in the living room near the baseboard  heater where the thing disappeared.

“Aren’t you going to look for it any more than that?” I asked incredulously.

“Nope,” was his reply.

To say I was crestfallen is an understatement…but whatever I was feeling (a mixture of horror, anger, helplessness to name a few) one thing was certain: you can be damned sure I wasn’t going to be sleeping on the couch—where I had slept the night before because of snoring and company. I took the master bed. If my husband wasn’t going to find the mouse then he could sleep in the same room with it, a few feet away from it, and listen to the trap snap in the middle of the night all by his lonesome. Not me folks.

The next morning I awoke to whispers of good news. My SIL asked me, “Did you hear that we had caught the mouse?”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one in the cupboard,” she said. “We heard the trap go off while we were talking. I cleaned out your cupboards with bleach and everything.”

“What about the one in the living room?” I inquired.

“I think the mouse we caught in the cupboards was the same one. I think he ran down the heaters and around to the kitchen. I’m sure that’s the only one.”

Now, I think I’d like to marry my SIL. Here is a woman who knows exactly how to lie to me, what illusions to feed me, so I can carry on with living in my house and cooking in my kitchen without fear and panic. She knows that I know there is more than one mouse, and that clearly it wasn’t the one in the living room; she knows I’m no idiot, and yet, she doesn’t make me feel stupid for my phobias, she just lies to me in order to help keep the pathways in my brain moving and not frozen. That, and she cleaned the cupboards with bleach. Because using a flame thrower to get rid of dead mouse germs is just too dangerous and pure acid is simply too strong; but she understands me enough (and she is such a good housekeeper herself) to know that bleach will do the trick and make me feel better. She is a smart, smart woman. My husband could really stand to take a pointer or two from her on how to handle me. Bless her bless her bless her.

I approach the living room couch, where my husband is curled up in blankets, and glance over at the trap that was set on the floor—and there lies dead mouse #2. Feet straight up in the air and still. That’s just how I like my mice….four legs in the air and on their backs. PETA people best stand back, because I’ll argue this with you till my death.

A check of the traps in the garage reveal another dead rodent—to bring the death total to three. And a few days ago, another trap in the garage caught mouse #4. Four dead within four days. There is still a baited trap in the cupboard which hasn’t seen any more action since its first body, but we’re leaving it there (along with a few more in the garage) to make sure we’ve caught all the pooping culprits before boarding up the cupboards and sealing holes. Nothing’s worse than mouse carcass in the walls I’ve been told. I’m happy to take their word for it.

And now? Well, the kitchen is really, really clean. During this event I purged many cupboard items I didn’t need, didn’t use, and simply served to collect rodent crap. I’ve cleaned behind my stove as well as the sides of the stove. I’ve vacuumed above my oven, and next to my fridge. Oh, and I get to buy a new toaster. Whoop Whoop. I may never store my cookie sheets and baking pans under the stove again (you can’t properly seal up a stove drawer) and there is a good chance that the plastic bin that currently houses those objects will become our newest piece of kitchen furniture. I’m okay with that. All I know is that the next mouse I see better be dead, or on TV being chased by an idiot cat.

The Clock Struck One...

Isn't he cute?

I’m curious why in our folkloric past we fondly sing of rodents. Three blind mice, Three blind mice…Hickory Dickory Dock, The mouse ran up the clock… And who can forget the adorable Jerry, constantly trying to escape that idiot cat Tom? Why he’s so cute it makes every child yearn for pet mouse, one that can slam doors and throw frying pans. More recently, Disney Pixar comes out with a fabulous animated flick of a rat trying to make a living in the fancy kitchens of France. (I think.) Rats are just mice on steroids, and you’ll forgive me for lumping them together. A rodent is a rodent is a rodent, especially one in the kitchen. I honestly can’t say I’ve seen Ratatouille start to finish because I can’t get past the idea that there is a warm blooded, hairy beast in a kitchen, who sits inside some nerd’s sweaty chef hat yanking on his hair. All I’m thinking is that it must really smell in that hat, that gross greasy head smell, and that now there’s rat poop all on top that guy's head, because honestly that rat is up there cooking up “specialties” for hours. We all know that rodents poop as often and profusely as their whiskers twitch, and well, while Pixar is nice enough to leave out these realistic tidbits, my mind won’t let them go. I’m a realist and a germaphobe. You can’t fool me. I will not be deceived.

But there’s nothing cute about rodents in the kitchen, nothing funny about it whatsoever and I can tell you how I know.

Last Thursday night, my family, my in-laws, my sister-in law, my brother in-law, (yes that’s all of them) and my son’s friend, arrived home at 9:30 p.m. after five days at a cabin in Maine. We were all exhausted, the house was filled with suitcases, bins of kitchen items, dirty beach towels, wet water toys,…you name it, it was littering all rooms of the house and down the hallway. A few of the adults were in the kitchen, emptying the clean dishwasher, when my BIL pulls down a canning jar that I keep in my lower cabinets next to the toaster.

It had a tiny piece of mouse poop on it.

He shows it to me and my husband, and we go, “Hmmm. That’s interesting. I wonder how that got there.”

And then my BIL pulls out more canning jars. And we find more poop. And now I’m not going, “Hmmm,” but “WTH?....”

And then he pulls out the toaster.

(You may want to put down any food you may be eating right now.)

And we look inside the toaster. And the bottom of the toaster is covered in mouse poop.

Covered. Like twenty five mice sat inside my toaster and had a pooping contest, seeing how much excrement they could push out and high fiving each other while doing the deed. And now I’m thinking:

“When’s the last time I made toast?”

Seriously,  how many of you look inside the toaster each time you plunk bread in it? You just take it for granted that the toaster is clean. I know I did. But I'm staring at what seems like four tablespoons of crap and I'm wondering: Is all this poop the result of days or months of rodent activity, or did the mice know we were on vacation in Maine and suddenly run through my cupboards with wild abandon? Is it possible for mice to poop that much in five days? I sure as hell hope it is. Because if it isn’t, my whole family has been eating Ego waffles and bagels smoked with fecal matter.

(Hang on a minute…my mouth is salivating and I think I may lose it…)

Well, needless to say the next hour or so was spent emptying out cupboards and searching for small, black, rodent droppings. Yep, found in three cupboards. Above the stove. In the stove drawer. No doubt behind the stove and in the lazy susan I refuse to use, and now for good reason.

I’m tired. At this point in my day I’m barely keeping it together, lest I cry and sob right in front of all my inlaws. Not that they’d be shocked or anything, it’s just not a very adult thing to do. I put on my victim hat and wondered why these things always happen to me. Because these events do nothing to assuage my psychological germ-baggage and instead fuel them like lighter fluid on a barbeque. You thought I was crazy before? Honey, I’ll never toast another piece of bread anywhere without inspecting the insides of the device I’m using. You were embarrassed of me ordering at a restaurant previously? Wait till I ask them if there is mice defecation inside their toaster. These episodes continue to make living with me a brand new experience every day.

So what did we do? We laid traps of course. Little cheap, wooden mice traps in my kitchen cupboards and in the stove. Did we catch anything?

Well. Yes and no. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the rest of the story. It gets better. Trust me.

No, I haven't been arrested.

I know you're missing me. I'm missing you quite frankly. I've been lazy you see, and I can't keep the kids quiet long enough to even create a pathway in my brain for logical thought, let alone to try and be funny. There just isn't room right now. This is what is currently taking up space in my grey matter:
-the mice that are living in my kitchen cupboards (yes, you know you'll be reading the details very soon)
-the trip to Maine I still haven't recovered from
-two school supplies still MIA because all the stores were raped bare by everyone else but me
-laundrylaundrylaundrylaundrylaundrylaundrylaundry
-school is starting in two days for two of my children. I vacillate between weeping for joy and weeping because I'm so damned tired of getting them ready for school. Notice I am not weeping because I will miss them.
-billsbillsbillsbillsbillsbillsbillsbills
-working on my website/business cards/etc. so I can feel like I have a real job. Sorta.
-spending as much time as possible by my neighbor's pool drinking beer. After 10 a.m. of course.
-sleeping in. Especially since my son will now have to be at the bus by 6:40 in the morning. This may prove very difficult for both of us. How young can you start kids on coffee?
-haircuts. Everyone needs one. As usual I have made no appointments and so my children will attend the first day of school looking like backwoods hicks.

So. You can see my mind has been a little busy. I'm coming back, don't you worry. My apologies for my lack of blogging. I'm hoping your summer was fabulous and you'll be tuning in for the prime time season of Musings.

R.M.A.O? I Don’t Think So.

Imagine running with two of these; one of which is leaking. 

While in AZ this summer, I had the great opportunity to have lunch with the fine folks of School Webmasters (SWM), the company I freelance for on a regular basis. I’m proud to say that I ate some fine Italian food with the CEO, the Art Director, the Lead Copy Editor, and the Office/Project Manager. And then there was me. The freelancer. Notice how I didn’t capitalize that. I don't make enough money for a capital letter yet, but I'm working on it.

It’s an amazingly powerful group of women, considering they established, run and operate a pretty large business, and employ freelancers who can work from home and thereby stay close to their kids. Which also allows them to keep their office pretty small and local with not a lot of pesky overhead. Nicely planned.

There are many things I love about working for SWM, the biggest one being that these ladies are really funny. They also read my blog (perhaps to be supportive but more likely to make sure I’m not leaking company secrets) and find that funny too. I suggested that if they found me so hilarious I probably should get a raise, to which the Art Director responded, “Well, you’re not that funny. You’re just LOL funny. Probably not LMAO funny, and definetly not LMFAO funny. Nope. You’re LOL funny and I’m pretty sure that’s just about where your pay is at.” Well, needless to say, I LMAO at that one. Touche.

One of the things I do not like about these women however, is that they exercise. They talk about exercising. They even run, ride bikes, join races where you run for miles and miles in a Godforsaken desert, and try odd diets like taking GPS…no, wait, HGTV…sorry wrong again…hCG? I think that may be it. Weird. But they do like to run.

I hate riding bikes.

I hate running even more.

And generally, I look at people who do run with a mix of fascination, jealousy, and disdain.

Oh, I’ve tried to run, don’t get me wrong. I even trained with my father for a half marathon a few years back. I did the half marathon, but I’m pretty sure that my father could have lapped me twice at the rate I plodded and bounced down the street like a hard boiled egg all off balance and out of whack. He stuck with me to be supportive and chalked it up to QT with his eldest daughter while my middle sister ran past us, completing the full marathon. She’s run two of them. I felt a little betrayed by the fact that she never hinted at her closet running personality growing up—instead shocking us all with the ability to run and run and run like Forest Gump once the leg braces were removed. And even though I made fun of her style—her legs tend to splay out a bit when running—I’m really just jealous. Who am I to mock her when she can do it and I can’t? Run, sister, run!!

I’ve come to accept the fact that there are significant factors that hold me back in the running department. One of them is my arse.

Yes, as my grandmother used to like to say to me, “Rachie, you have yourself an onion butt, but don’t worry, guys like onion butts.” Not to be outdone of course by the other comment she made while I was in college as she was measuring my posterior for some clothes, “Welp, Rachie. You’re not a young woman any more.” Which is to say, that my pearl onion butt had morphed into large Vidalia onion butt, which currently looks like rotting onion butt, with pockets of soft tissue hidden beneath flaky scaling skin. Layers and layers of 37 year-old onion deliciousness. Yum.

The problem with having an onion butt (besides fighting men off with a stick all those years) is that it makes running a tad uncomfortable for me. When I run my arse jiggles like two sagging water balloons are attached to my lower back and I’m always a little embarrassed that the residual effects will leave me bruised. Wearing a sports bra helps keep the chest jiggle to a minimum (honestly, it’s already pretty minimum) but I’ve yet to find a pair of sports underwear that will keep by arse in check. Duct tape doesn’t seem very functional. Wrapping it with an ace bandage seems moot. I suppose I could wear some Spanx under my running gear, but I’m worried it would be too hot.

Even if I did solve the ass-jiggle conundrum, there’s also not much I can do about the fact that running isn’t very good for my bladder or uterus. According to the anatomy books I’ve read and all the illustrated cross-sections of women I’ve seen, the bladder and uterus are supposed to remain inside the woman’s body—a location I can’t guarantee if I were to run on a regular basis. With each pound-pound-pound of my feet running on the sidewalk, I envision my uterus slip-slip-slipping out of place. Not to mention the drip-drip-dripping of my bladder with each step. I’m not in a hurry to be on a first-name basis with my uterus or bladder, obliged to say hello to them when I use the restroom. While genetics may force this “meeting of the organs” on me in the future, for now I’m happy having them reside safely and quietly in my internal darkness. I’m starting to suspect that when God was making me He ran out of Liquid Nails and patched me together using Scotch tape. A great substitution for construction paper, doilies, and maybe even Popsicle sticks, but certainly not for a bladder and a uterus. Those suckers are slippery. Clear tape just isn’t going to cut it.

But I have to do something because I’m realizing I’m starting to feel creaky. Achy. I’m not huffing up the five steps in my house, but I’m probably not far away from that moment. The last two mornings I walked with a couple friends on the street. I actually dragged my sorry-onion-ass out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and walked for an hour each day. It’s a step in the right direction I suppose, even if my shins feel like Tanya Harding’s ex-boyfriend took a bat to them. But thankfully, neither woman is running yet, although there was brief talk about it. I’ll walk fast. I’ll even sway my hips and pump my arms in speed-walking fashion just to keep up if it means I can keep my panties dry and my organs where they belong. Don’t get me wrong. There a few instances where running is absolutely necessary: like from a burning building. Or to protect my kids from a wayward vehicle or a busy street. Or if someone fell into the pool and hit their head. Those are running times and while I’d miss my bladder and uterus, I’d live without them because it’s the right thing to do. But certainly not just to exercise. Not for my heart. Not for no damned marathon. And absolutely not for the fun of it. As if.

To recap: I don’t like to run because I jiggle, fall apart, and pee myself. Hey, if you can run and not leave body parts behind you while you do it, bully for you. Keep it up. Stuff the ear plugs in your ears and turn up "Eye of the Tiger" to 45 decibels and run like Stallone. The women at SWM can do it. My sister can do it. I’m pretty sure my neighbor friends can do it. Not me. I’d rather LMAO than RMAO any day and twice on Sunday. 

One of Those Days

Finally home. Monday’s trip was…an emotion suck of vast proportions which was pretty much in keeping with my 26 days in Arizona. Par for the course, as they say.

I’d like to publicly thank the gentleman at the Southwest curbside check in, who made it so easy and painless to check four large, heavy suitcases and a carseat onto our flight, and who not only took care of my luggage, but also printed out the family’s boarding passes while we waited. In times like these I’m more than happy to tip way more than humanly necessary just to easy a little of my travel burden. And he did it without rolling his eyes at the weight of all my suitcases or asking me if I was moving.

We arrived at the airport at 5:30 am AZ time, and proceeded to the first Paradise Bakery I found to load everyone up on carbs and caffeine. (Well, the caffeine was for me.) The first flight was booked solid, and while I was in the B boarding group for Southwest, it proved not very helpful. They board the families with small children between the A and B boarding groups which is usually just fine because I always seem to be one of the few idiotic mothers who travels alone with three children, allowing me a queen like status as I waltz past the other ‘normal’ travelers with my children, backpacks, food bags, and a stroller following along behind me like Pig Pen’s cloud. It’s a proud moment.

Monday’s flight to Baltimore however was loaded down with so many families that it looked strangely reminiscent of a Little People’s Convention, the little people here being children under the age of 10 and not people of short stature. I was so caught off guard at not being the only mom with kids that I didn’t get in line when I should have and ended up at the very back of the proliferating-adults-accompanied-by-fruits-of-their-womb line.

A quick glance around the plane as we boarded confirmed what I feared; all the families before me scored the connecting seats, while every other ‘normal’ traveler coveted the isle seats, leaving me bits and pieces to choose from on where to place my kids. I did consider sprinkling them throughout the plane in the center seats just to be pissy and sit alone at the back of the plane where I might possibly be able to shut my eyes for a second, or throw back a nip or two of Dewars scotch, but I felt that people might complain. I kindly said to the male Southwest flight attendant:

“Excuse me, Could you please help me find a row together so I can sit with my kids?”

At which he replied without looking at me:

“All the seats together are in the back,” and then dismissed me. It doesn’t take a degree in engineering to notice that there were no empty rows, having all been dotted with isle-seat sitters and a few window grabbers, leaving me slim pickins. Now I’m slightly agitated, which is unfortunate for the two gentlemen I spoke to next.

I spotted two rows where the window and middle seats were open, whilst two isle-squatting gentlemen sat trying to avoid my gaze.

“Excuse me gentlemen,” I voiced loudly, which forced them to acknowledge me. “Are those seats taken?”

They each shook their heads as fear and terror crept into their eyes as they realized what I was going to do.

“Thank you! Kid #1 and Kid #2, you sit here. Sit now. Put your backpacks under your seat. Buckle up. Do it. Do it now. Thank you.” I command while shoving them into a row next to one man. The baby and I slid past the other guy right behind my older two, situated ourselves and prepared for the flight.

This seating arrangement unnerved my middle daughter who feels anxious sitting next to “strangers” and who whispered between the seats to me the whole flight, “Please mom. Please can I come sit with you?” I assured her she was fine and to take up any anger she may have with the male flight attendant who refused to help us.

Flight was going along swimmingly, until we hit a patch of turbulence. It’s important to note that among my many idiosyncrasies and neuroses is a fear of turbulence- something that I’m always sure will result in a wing breaking off sending the plane plummeting to the ground and I’ll have exactly 2.5 minutes of ensuing horror while I wait for darkness to come and for my guardian angel to reveal him or herself. I pray mightily for no turbulence and generally when we fly the flights are smooth and I’m relatively peaceful, but the second that first bump comes, I’m white knuckle gripping the seat in front of me and saying a rosary. It’s a fear so intense that I’m trying to make deals with God and myself, like, “I’ll lick a toilet seat. I’ll eat my food off the floor. I’ll overcome ALL my other fears. PLEASE PLEASE JUST LET THE TURBULENCE END!” While the plane is bump, bump, bumping along my older two are looking back at me, saying things like, “Mom! Isn’t this fun! It’s like a fair ride! Whoooooo, Wheeeeee!!” and waving their hands in the air like a roller coaster at Disneyland. Then we hit an air pocket and the plane falls a bit which means that all the passengers on the plane let out the unconscious gasp and whoo, and the guy sitting with my kids looks back at me, as if to say, “What do you want me to do about this,” and I shoot him a “good luck take care of my kids I hope you’re a nice man” look right back at him. Serves him right, that isle-squatter.

But I manage to keep it together, not cry or vomit, which is pretty good considering that I’m about ready to morph into a panic attack and there’s nobody who will hold my hand or tell me we aren’t going to die. My husband comes in handy in times like these. I think of how he’ll feel living without us. Would he keep living in Massachusetts? Move back to Arizona? Become so overwrought with grief that he drinks too much, loses his job, and starts living on the street? Imagining life without me would be devastating I’m sure of it. Oh, and the kids too of course.

We finally land in Baltimore, me praying in tongues of thanksgiving like an old Jewish woman speaking Yiddish. The Baltimore tarmac was a beautiful, beautiful sight. And the flight was even early. Yippee.

It’s 1:15 p.m. Our next flight is scheduled to take off at 3:20, which gives me almost two hours to feed my offspring, start breathing, and mentally gear up for getting on another plane. Which is when I look out the window at the runway.

The sky is grey and oddly silent, but what unnerves me a bit is the low-lying black clouds that are moving towards the window directly over the airport. I’ve seen my share of dark rain clouds, but these are spooky clouds and they’re black. In a matter of moment as we sit watching the runway, the clouds move over us, the rain begins to plummet and there’s lightning. Not high-in-the-sky lightening like someone’s flicking the light switch on and off, but bolts of lightning. Single bolts of bright lightning and they are actually striking the ground.

I’m thinking this is a bad time to be on a plane. To expedite the narrative of the next few hours, I’ll highlight the important events in bullets:

• They closed the runways. Any lightning strike within a three-mile radius automatically closes the runways and all activity outside. Trucks pull in. Baggage handlers scatter. Silently I’m breathing a little easier since I’m inside on terra firma and not stuck in a plane trying to take off.
• The aircraft for our flight is circling in the sky above the storm waiting for the green light to land.
• The storm passes briefly allowing a few planes to take off and land. Our flight is not one of them.
• The storm picks up force and there are more lightning strikes, which closes the airport again. Our flight has been circling too long and is now forced to land in Norfolk, Va. Three other flights are also diverted because they had been circling too long.
• At 5:00 p.m. our flight still hasn’t left Norfolk, VA but the airport is open and the 5:55 flight to Boston is scheduled to be on-time. I put our names on the stand-by list figuring it’s a fat chance in hell, but at least it’s an option.
• At 5:15 the Southwest gate attendant announces for stand-by passengers to come see her at the desk. While I’m waiting to talk to her, she also announces that our Providence flight has left Norfolk, and should be arriving around 6:45 and they’ll get everyone on board and shipped off as quickly as possible. What to do? Take the Boston flight that is boarding now, or wait for another hour for the Providence flight and hope nothing else goes wrong?
• I took the one bird in my hand instead of the two in the bush, and yelled at the kids to gather their belongings; we were shipping out to Boston. Even if it meant that all our luggage would still end up in Providence. I needed to be home and free of this day.
• We board the plane; me sticking my children in a row together, while I sat across the isle from them by myself. It was actually a beautiful set up.

It’s 6:10. The plane hasn’t started its taxi yet. I’m wondering what’s up when a flight attendant comes on the PA system and says,
“Hello ladies and gentlemen. Our co-pilot just got here, and well… he noticed that one of the tires on the plane is flat. So it’ll be just a minute as we jack-up the plane and change that tire. Thanks for your patience folks.”

I’m sorry. Did he just say the plane has a flat tire? And that it went unnoticed by all the ground crew? And that our co-pilot, before taxiing, noticed that it needed to be changed?

I really have a problem with this kind of honesty. After my turbulence in the sky and averting the electrical storm in a big flying piece of metal, I now am wondering if when we try to take off or land a tire is going to blow, causing the plane to spin out of control and end up in a firey heap alongside the tarmac. I would have preferred a lie like, “Well ladies and gentlemen, we’re almost ready to take off, but the pilot needs to finish his last box of Suduko. He’s almost figured out where those last numbers go, and then we’ll be off towards your destination. Everything is perfectly fine. There are nooooo problems with the aircraft at all. It’s just that pilot Jim has such an attention to detail he must finish this puzzle so he can concentrate on flying the plane with the same amount of precision and focus. Thanks so much for your patience.” That’s an excuse I could embrace.

We landed in Boston around 8 p.m. safely with no additional blowing of tires. After sucking down a glass of wine on the plane I was feeling a little better. The sight of my husband after 26 days was a little bit like seeing him waiting for me at the altar; only this time not only were there tears of love, but exhaustion and anxious release as well. And the knowledge that I’m no longer the only parent for these three kids.

The good news about having all our luggage go to Providence was that we were able to head straight to the van for home. Once again, not only am I glad to be home, but I’m also glad that I don’t travel like that more than once a year. At my old age, my mediocre emotions can barely handle it. 

Good Bye Arizona. I’m sorry we stayed so damned long.

We leave for home tomorrow. It’s safe to say the kids and I are ready to be in our own beds. It’s been a good trip, don’t get me wrong. We weren’t abused in any way. We didn’t stay in a filthy, germ ridden hotel. We didn’t fall on any cactus or get stung by scorpions. We were able to see many old friends and most importantly, spend a lot of time with family. A lot. Of time.

Here are some Arizona trip statistics for you:

We stayed in Chandler for 26 days. That’s 624 hours or 37,440 minutes or 2,246,400 seconds, not that I was counting. 98% of that time we were hot. (The other 2% we were in Flagstaff just feeling warmish.) It rained a total of 5 minutes, which equates to .000133547% of the time. That’s so insignificant it’s like it didn’t really happen. Now that I think about it, maybe those drips were a figment of my very hot and tired imagination yearning for home.

We didn’t really intend to stay this long, it’s just when my husband happened to purchase the tickets. He saw the cheaper price and hit the “book now” button and realized a little late that it meant we’d be gone for almost a month. Oops. But we’ve made the best of it, even if this 26 day trip was about 16 days too long. How do I know we’ve stayed too long? Well, let me tell you:

10 Signs That You’ve Been On Vacation Too Long

10. The kids cry when you tell them there are 5 more days until you leave for home.

9. Your children start crying when you talk about Daddy and ask why he can’t come here.

8. The kid’s grandparents start conversations off with, “You know, your mother and I were thinking how nice it would be if each one of your kids came out separately for a week at a time next summer. It would really allow us to get to know them better.”

7. The kids start reminiscing about even the bad memories of home. As my middle daughter said to me, “Mom, I miss waking up at home and asking you to make chocolate chip pancakes and you saying no.” Thank God she hasn’t started waxing poetic about the yelling yet.

6. You check to see if you can change your reservations to an earlier flight home.

5. You are surprised to find that changing your tickets would only be $350.00 and it doesn’t sound like a bad price.

4. The kids cry when you tell them that you leave for home the day after tomorrow, with the youngest responding, “But I want to go home NOW.”

3. Every day the kids ask to call their friends in Massachusetts at least twice.

2. I start thinking that if I didn’t see any family or any of my children for 24 hours, it’d be the best 24 hours of my entire life.

1. Everyone starts feeling not only annoyed, but angry that every single room in the house contains a person who is doing something, leaving absolutely no place for alone time. And it’s too hot to take a walk even at 9:30 at night.

Don’t get me wrong, we did have a good time. And for the rest of July I’ll be blogging everyday about the trip, the things we did, events we witnessed, and things that made me laugh. Best of all we spent time with family; parents, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, friends, and grandparents. That part was worth it. I’m pretty sure I could see all those people in a two-week span however. That saying that fish and company both stink after three days wasn’t entirely incorrect. This stinky fish and her three loud, complaining minnows are swimming upstream toward home.

We can’t wait.