Daily Chai

Northwest's shortage of gate agents + elimination of milk in flight does not a happy child make. Nor a happy parent, nor other happy passengers on board, for that matter!

I started blogging once before about my horrible experiences with this one airline that bumped me over the Christmas holidays, even though I had had been one of the first people to check in, and was suffering from a horrible cold to boot. But I never published that entry because I came to realize that flying is just pretty darn horrendous across the board these days, and there's no point in singling out any one airline.

But my recent experiences flying with Susie Q. on Northwest were really unacceptable, even considering today's all around crappy service. Northwest has, in the interest of saving some money, stopped serving milk on all its flights. Notice I did not say it has stopped providing milk for free, because I assure you, I would have been much more understanding about that, more than happy to fork over $5 for a small carton if it meant sparing my one-year-old the sweet airline apple juice on our recent flight from Detroit to San Francisco. 

But you can just bring the milk with you, you say. Or, you can just buy it in the airport. That would be no, and no again. Yes, you can get one small bottle of milk past security, but that is usually only enough for the first hour or two of flying. Our flight originated that day in Bangor, Maine, and even though it was quite late taking off, we still had to wait so long to get off the plane in Detroit while the gate agents made their way to our gate, that I had to run with baby, through the odd nightclub themed undergroun corridors at the Detroit airport, to make my connection, and had no time to do any shopping in the airport. So the two of us are beyond frazzled and after we navigate our way to the one remaining seat in the back of the plane, buckle up, take off, and wait aixiously for the drink cart, I am shocked to learn there is no milk on board.

Like many parents of one-year-old babies, I had not yet even introduced milk to Susie Q. so this was not as simple as swapping Coke for Pepsi. It took her a long time acclimate to this new taste and drink any at all, and on this hot August day (did I mention that they left us waiting for a half hour in Bangor with all the air vents turned off??), I started to worry she'd get dehydrated.

So yes, even though air travel sucks plain and simple, I've flown recently on several other airlines that have provided milk, and provided it for free. If Northwest wants to impose such seriously inconvenient cuts, they ought to warn passengers ahead of time, or at least make sure they have enough gate agents to get connecting passengers off the plane in time that they can buy provisions for their baby in the airport. 

 

More on the disastrous Yosemite trip and how pictures, especially pictures of hotel rooms, can lie.

Which hotel would you rather stay in?

If you're like me, you pick hotel number two, hands down. It looks woodsy and cabin-y and cozy, where the other one looks like a place where someone might get murdered (especially since there were a couple of murders outside of Yosemite ten years back). Certainly not the sort of place you'd want to take your 70-something mother and one-year-old daughter.

Well, that just goes to show you how pictures can lie, even when it comes to pictures that hotels themselves who should know better, offer as their own marketing material. Hotel number one pictured above is actually a lovely place to stay and the place where my family moved at the last minute when I made an executive decision that hot summer weather + no air conditioning + incomprehensibly, no screens on the windows that opened out to brazen squirrel and bear and who knows what other wild animals territory did not equal a fun or even particularly safe outing for said family.

Now, I can appreciate that Yosemite has a policy of no air conditioning in hotel rooms within the park. I personally don't even mind hot weather, as long as it is not of the humid, east coast variety. And I like to rough it as much as the next person. But there is a reason for family-style lodging: different members of the "family" (think very old and very young) have different standards of comfort. I can't for the life of me understand that a hotel that charges a not-cheap $230 per night can get by not offering screens on its screen doors, that you essentially have to keep open to prevent suffocation. They warn you not to keep food in your cars because of the bears, then they let you pay to sleep in wide open rooms that provide less protection from the elements than a tent!

Some other things that the room at the dreadful Yosemite Lodge at the Falls did not offer:

-- any adequate lighting. I'm thinking there were two 25-watt bulbs in the whole room.

--housekeeping. This room was filthy.

--a view of the falls. Not even close.

(And, don't believe the pictures in that link. They are LIES!

I would have just stuck it out for the one night we were there, had I not been very worried about my mom, who apparently likes humid heat better than dry heat. I made an executive decision to leave that night, even if it meant that we had to drive all the way back to San Francisco. But after a very snarly desk clerk gave us a hard time when we asked for a refund ("we've been in business xx years and no one else has complained..." yeah, right) he referred us to his super-nice manager who somehow got us into a very lovely room in the very lovely (very dingy photo notwithstanding) Yosemite View Lodge.  

It's not lovely in a five-star-hotel kind of way, but is just what you want when you've been driving all day with a carload of kids or other family members and need a clean, comfortable, cool place to unload everyone. There's a swimming pool here, and because it's outside of the park limits, the rooms are air conditioned. It's also quite a nice layout that the above photo does not at all capture. Not one building but a series of buildings, almost like a little village, where you can walk around, meet other folks and not feel confided to your room. Somehow, for the same $230, we got a two bedroom suite with TVs in all three rooms. No, I don't ordinarily go to Yosemite to watch TV, but let me tell you, it had been quite a day by that time.

 

One year ago today

...my beautiful daughter was born. I find all the things that one usually says on this sort of occasion completely fail to express the depth and intensity of my love. Adoptive parents often stress how they could not love their child more if he/she was a biological child. I never say that because it seems to go without saying. I understand of course, why other people say this though, and sometimes I think I should, just in case anyone was wondering.

This picture was taken the morning after what turned to be a pretty disastrous trip with my mother and daughter to Yosemite, which I'll write more about later. Suffice it to say here that the trip was marked by a longer than expected drive, hotter than expected weather, a more uncomfortable than I imagined Mom, and a hotel room that was much dingier than it looked on the Yosemite Web site.

And then it all turned happily to our favor when we were able to swap our stuffy room for a lovely air conditioned, four-room suite with two separate bedrooms, king-sized beds and TVs in both rooms ... and air conditioning. I don't always indulge in such consumerist ways, especially while trying to have a simple vacation in a national park, but after the stress of traveling with a young'un and a rather old one and fearing that I'd let them both down, let me tell you, it was just what the doctor ordered!

Susie Q was a total sport the whole time, getting in and out of the car seat many many times and we took driving breaks and then swapped accomodations. And then when we finally got settled into our deluxe hotel room which was all carpeted and had the kind natural baby proofing that comes with neatness, she made it her own, crawled all around the place and opened all the kitchen cabinets.

Here she is the morning before we left trying to get a sip out of my empty coffee cup.   

A trip, ahem hike, to the beach, with some pit stops.

Last Saturday there was heat wave weather in San Francisco and I had the not so original idea to take Susie Q. out to Stinson beach. I got my good friend Peggy to go with us, but because Peggy is childless and still enjoys her Friday nights we had to wait for her to wake up. That was delay number one. I should have just swung by and picked Peggy up around 12:30, when she was ready to go and we had been up for about seven hours, but on the way to her house, I had to go to the bathroom and thought S.Q. might like to see Peggy's cat. Peggy fixed herself breakfast while the baby crawled around a bit, tried to pet the cat but wound up grabbing his hair not very gently. Finally, after Peggy's very healthy breakfast including a homemade green drink, we headed out and before getting into the car Peggy ran to the corner to grab a Diet Pepsi (one of her few remaining vices after a lot of cleansing) and asked if I wanted anything. I couldn't think of what I wanted so I told her to get me a Diet Pepsi too, although I really don't know why. I drink them about once a year.

Once in the car the baby started whimpering but I knew this drill. I promised Peggy she'd be asleep long before we got to the Golden Gate Bridge. But this time, instead of fading out, the whimpering intensified. I told Peggy it was curious, that it usually didn't work that way and that I couldn't stop now because we would just have to start all over again when we got back in the car. But the crying got worse and worse. It soon became clear that my darling little brat was not crying to get attention or just to whine. She was genuinely upset, about what, I don't know. Now Peggy is a very good, let it all hang out sort of friend. Still, it is tough trying to keep it all together and have a pleasant conversation when there is some shrill crying going on in the background. It sort of reminded me of the beating heart in Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. It was consuming me. And after it still didn't stop when Peggy crawled in the back seat and offered the bottle, we gave in and stopped.

I aimed for one of the quiet leafy streets of the Presidio and even though we were close by, I missed the entrance and had to drive into a deadend on a residential street. I parked illegally and got the baby out of the car, tried to sooth her from this mysterious monster that was upsetting her so, and set her down on the sidewalk where she fingered some fallen leaves (yes it was a hot June day and we were headed to the beach but seasons can blur together that way in San Francisco). Ever vigilant to make sure that Susie Q. would not indulge her oral habit, I plucked everything out of her hand before it could get anywhere close to her mouth. And yet, Paige noticed there was something in her mouth. I immediately reached in with my pinkie in that bold move that separates mothers from aunts when it comes to picking noses, or removing foreign objects from mouths, and quickly found this odd object that looked like a chewed up piece of plastic if not a lead paint. I tasted it and confirmed it was not edible. "Didn't come from my apartment," Peggy said. And though I knew it probably hadn't, I had to sort of laugh, since Paige has all sorts of stuff lying all around her place and I would really be surprised if she'd done an inventory of random plastic parts.

By this time, S.Q. was calm but I had to go to the bathroom again (notice a theme here) so we drove into the Presidio and found a visitors center and since we were too fearful to park the car and unload the baby, Peggy took the wheel and circled around the driveway while I went in and I did the same for her. We finally got across the bridge and decided to press on to the beach even though we were seriously delayed by that time. It was a beautiful drive, one of those "I live so close, why don't I come here more often" sort of drives, the baby was quiet, and Peggy relayed the story of a trip she'd taken with her dad years ago, when her hippie dad took some trips of his own and left little Peggy and her sister for several days with nothing to eat except a gigantic bag of cherries.

Beautiful as the drive into Stinson is, it is also one of those "OK, I've seen the beautiful scenery, now can we get on to our destination" sort of drives. Innumerable twists and turns, each revealing a view more beautiful than the last, but eventually disappointing when you don't want to see any more cliffside views of the beach, you only want to see the beach parking lot and get on with it. I felt we were getting closer, when we drove around one more turn and hit a wall of traffic. Yes, everyone else in northern California had had my same brilliant idea. Sometimes traffic looks bad but actually turns out to move very fast. And sometimes you see a backup and think, it can't be that bad, until you look at your odometer and realize it isn't even going zero. Guess which traffic situation we were in?

Around this time, I realized that I hadn't come prepared. One, I hadn't brought a bathing suit for me or the baby. I was thinking of the usual chilly breach weather here that is good only for walking on the beach wrapped up in a blanket, but this was real beach weather. Also, I hadn't brought a stroller or a Bjorn. Which would have been fine, except that after 15 more minutes of no movement, Peggy wisely suggested that we park the car in one of the turnoffs and hike down. And, although I had packed up three bottles, I'd left the formula at home. Oh, and once again, I needed to relieve my bladder.

"You had to offer me that Diet Pepsi, didn't you," I said to Peggy. Once again, she took the wheel while I wandered off onto a precariously steep, brush covered slope that was really more like a cliff and made what has to be the most precarious nature pee of my lifetime. I returned to the car with cuts and scratches.

As we walked down the hill to the beach, I carried the baby, hoping that the general store below at least sold formula and being thankful that I had at least brought sun screen. Baby's first sun screen, it turns out. I'd been avoiding it thus far, but the sun was strong that day, even for her skin tone.

One lesson of motherhood, a useless lesson for anyone except mothers, is that every store, even the barest general store, sells baby formula. Who knew? Once I was able to mix a new bottle, I knew the trip was not all for naught. We could relax on the beach and not have to worry about hurrying out for meal time.

And ... she loved the beach. Maybe I write this long intoduction to the main event, because it is so much easier to write about personal f-ups than universal experiences of joy. But I was a proud mother that day watching my not yet 11-month-old-beauty crawl around in the sand and attract admiring two year olds into her circle. She crawled around fearlessly, though she cried when I tried to dip her feet into the very cold water. As the three of us lounged on the beach in our sandy street clothes, we shared an apple in this way that I've learned tricks the baby into thinking she is actually eating solid food with her sole two bottom teeth. I hold it up to her and she has a suck, then take it back and have a big bite, and back and forth and back an forth until the apple is gone and she's tasted enough apple juice to belive she's eaten a whole half apple.

Why I might want to keep this blog anonymous

Because i have learned the hard way that sweet little Susie Q and those pesky old ants have the same favorite food, which happens to be egg yolks. Susie Q likes hers nice and crumbly meaning it's impossible to serve them to her without them spilling on the floor. And, you know how ants often just have a few paths into your home from which they will create long highways to the kitchen or wherever else it is that the food is lying about? Well I thought she'd be safe in the living room while I cleaned up her egg yolk debris in the kitchen, but when I went in to check on her, I found her contentedly sitting there on the floor with a block in her mouth

... and an ant on her shirt!

Oh, the horror! Now hopefully, the little scenario I've set shows how this is something like that really could happen to anyone and does not add up to neglect. I can safely say I've always intercepted my baby girl before she consumed one of the gazillions of Cherios she's deposited around the house. (The ants also like them). And just to be clear, I don't even really "have" ants in the sense that they are a constant presence in my house. They are just lurking there in the walls somewhere waiting for bad housekeeping days to emerge. And it wasn't on her skin, only the cloth that was covering her skin. And it wasn't a cockroach, or any really nasty insect.

Still, my heart broke a little when I saw her sitting there, so happy and oblivious. 

Two cliches of first time motherhood that were not true for me

1. I remember my life before baby very clearly. Yesterday, while catching up with an old friend and telling her how my weekends had changed from yoga and late nights to birthday parties and zoo visits, she asked, "Is it hard to remember what it was like before you had the baby?" And although everyone has always told me that indeed the minute you become a parent you can hardly recall what your childless life looked like, I had to respond, "No, not at all." I well remember my past life, the late nights, the time to zone out, read, wander, make last minute plans at 10 p.m. I don't always miss that life; most of the time I do not. But sometimes, when I am thinking of yet another baby-friendly activity to get me through the weekend, I do remember how planning used to be unnecessary.

2. Parenting is hard. First time parenting is particularly shocking, and I suppose single parenting is extra challenging (though I have nothing to compare it to). Still, I have to say honestly, it is not harder than I ever imagined. Hard, yes. Tiring, often. And in many ways, the challenges are different than I had anticipated. I hadn't realized how you could get so tired even when your baby slept through the night, just because the days were so intense. And I hadn't realized how, once there is a kid in the house, or even an immobile baby, somehow your house never seems to get clean. even if you clean all day long. I'm still trying to figure that one out. All that said, motherhood is not harder than I ever imagined. I still have time to talk on the phone, read, see friends. Not nearly as much as I used to, but some. Knock wood, in many ways it is not as hard as I'd feared.