Vacation

Things that later turned out to be untrue, as told on holiday:

• "Pain au chocolat? For Rip?" "Oh, don't worry, that piece of pain au chocolat totally doesn't have any chocolate."
• "Jolly, if you go to sleep, you won't throw up." "Yeah, it's totally not possible to throw up and sleep at the same time."
• "Tell me again we have plenty of time to make it to the airport?" "We TOTALLY have plenty of time to make it to the airport, Guinevere." (Referring to our 5.5 hr drive to Paris before our flight.)

The latter two both refer to a really exciting time getting home. It is a measure of how incredibly awesome our vacation was that it was worth the incredible ordeal of the return voyage. It is good to be home, though, and we're all enjoying settling back into our usual routine.

(And our cats are delighted to have us back, too, though they have a better long term memory than Rip does. Every breastfeeding attempt now goes like this, at least if I take the liberties of inserting dialogue for the non-verbal members of the exchange:

Priscilla: Hello, Rip, it is I, Priscilla, your extra-fancy nursing hat! *assumes her usual position perched on Rip's head*
Rip: You're a KITTY!!!!!1!!eleventy-one!
Guinevere: Hello, Rip...boob?
Rip: Kitty! KITTY! Eeeee!!
Priscilla: But, but, we have a deal where I sit on your head and snuggle with you and your mummy, remember?
Rip: KITTY!! Whack!
Guinevere: Boob?
Rip: KITTY!!!

Unfortunately, relocating the cat has not eased the boobstrike, either... I think we're on our way to cutting back greatly on the nursing, if not weaning altogether.)

Anyway, we started out our voyage at 2:30 am, after getting as much sleep as possible given the village festival happening that night, loaded up the car, and left the house by 3:10 am, which seems like it should be reasonable, right?

We lost half an hour early on because we ended up going south (AWAY from Paris) rather than east, and then had a hard time turning around because the nature preserve didn't have exits with an underpass, but we got on track and I had the speedometer cheerily pegged at a bit over 140 km/hr, which, as I bother to convert to mph, turns out to be freaking NINETY, guys, NINETY!) so we thought it would be okay.

Jolly cheerfully ate a pain au chocolat, went to sleep, and then threw up in his sleep, but he was sleeping, and Rip soon went to sleep after a lot of happy cooing and rattling, so we were having a good time. When Jolly awoke, we stopped at a rest area to feed Rip, pee, and mop up a bit of the vomit soaking everything in the backseat, but all in all, we continued to soldier onwards in good spirits, discovering that I know enough cheesy Europop to be able to belt out song lyrics as Ephiny is surfing the radio. We see a rainbow. We see lots and lots of trucks.

We got gas at the very last gas station on the main highway, fulfilling our rental company's mandate to return the car filled up the car with diesel (which is seriously amazing in terms of mileage!), and were doing great... until we hit the vicinity of Paris, when traffic slowed to an incredible crawl and frequently just a stop. Lots of people having their "sexy ennui" faces as they were driving, but we were a bit more on the starting to be uneasy side as the minutes ticked by with little forward progress.

That uneasy expression turned into a "in pain because my boob is FULLER THAN OUR GAS TANK" expression, so we made the decision to go ahead and pump. As I was the driver of the rental car (I was registered to do so, plus I am comfortable with driving a standard, as Ephiny is not, especially not in the horror of Parisian traffic, which is every bit as bad as it's rumored to be), this meant that Ephiny clasped a horn to my right overachiever side, which incidentally is also my shifting arm, and I lamented once again that Medela's stupid pump bottles are a mere 6 oz. But, we successfully navigated our way to the airport while lactating, thus not losing any additional time. This is perhaps a high point of my pumping career - while driving in the worst traffic I've ever encountered in my life.

While pumping, we make it to the airport a bit later than we'd planned on, but still nearly 2 hrs before our flight. We look for signs guiding us to the right terminal.

There are none.

We went to terminal 1 as it is where we GOT our rental car. We are routed through a very long and complicated parking garage until we finally get to the place where we are meant to return our rental car. We packed things from the car into our bags, changed our vomit-covered child, I tried to feed Rip, who had started getting cranky on the very last leg. Try being the operative word... even though I was trying on the underachiever side which wasn't that full, we mostly ended up spewing the rental car with huge quantities of breastmilk. Like, the windshield was a mess, the steering wheel dripping, etc. (And of course, the backseat was drenched in vomit from our earlier misapprehension that sleeping and upchucking were mutually exclusive.) The people at Europcar TOTALLY DESERVE this by the way because they were super-rude to us as we got the car, AND, when we went to the office to return the key at long last, the office was closed, and they directed us to a different building to return the keys. This ate up more precious time, again, since nothing was marked clearly, and then, with a baggage cart and a toddler who hasn't eaten and an infant strapped to Ephiny's chest and a massive carseat, we are left to try to figure out how to get to our check in area, which, as it turns out after asking, is at a different terminal. The furthest away one, naturally. More battling a total lack of signage to find the airport train to take us from terminal to terminal. This was really, really hard, seriously. It was very counter-intuitive and very far away, thus, losing more time with lots of meandering trying to find it and getting directions, and by the time we made it through every parking area ever with lots of stops to the CORRECT terminal, and I run ahead with Jolly to the check in gate, it is 10:05. Our flight leaves at 11.

The lady at the gate says, snottily, "Check in is closed. You cannot get on this flight." I implore. She says, "You need to talk to ticketing to see what the next flight is."

I feed Jolly food from our bag, and we all stand in line at the ticketing counter, crestfallen. Finally we get a nice, friendly man at Delta, who sighs and then gets on the phone and makes some frantic phonecalls with the word "Familie!" and "Bebe!" and "Enfant!" prominently featured. He walks us to the check-in area and then makes the same unhelpful lady from earlier check us in anyway. He then recommends that we hurry as fast as we can to our gate. This man's kindness will be forever emblazoned in a very special place upon my heart.

We HURRY. We run to security, where we are forced to take off the baby carrier to get through the metal detector and our carry-on bags have to be unpacked. We make a tactical error in not taking the time to put the carrier back on me instead, and I carry Rip to the strain of "LAST CALL! FINAL CALL FOR DELTA TO SEATTLE!" while Ephiny rushes ahead. Of course, that's when Jolly finally loses it and has a meltdown - he is tired and terrified. I carry him and Rip and the diaper bag and the breast pump bag. Jolly loses it so hard he can't hold on anymore. I find a baggage cart, shove him on it, put the diaper bag next to him, and run as fast as I can to the gate while telling him that I'm so sorry. This is the moment Rip picks to be interested in the boob, which he is now facing, and in frustation, he also pulls his trademark "flinging back as hard as he can" move repeatedly, which is awesome, because although he's being a stinker I don't actually want to drop him on the airport floor. I want to make it to our freaking gate, visible in the distance at the very furthest away location it could possibly be.

We make it to the gate. We get on the plane, and discover we've been relocated to Economy Comfort as our seats have long been given away. Our seats aren't together, but after seeing the melting down infant and toddler, a man agrees in a hurry to switch seats to a seat (any seat) NOT sitting next to us. We are united.

I feed Rip, Jolly eats several packets of baby food to slacken his thirst, and the plane is additionally held for a few transfers, and then is just plain late as they await a slot in the runway queue. We enjoy the CRAP out of that flight, as there is no way we should possibly have gotten on it, but somehow, we did.

And the best part is that thanks to making it onto this flight, we even got to meet Fabio the next day.

The End.