YOU GUYS. It’s been a whirlwind of activity around here. We took a four day weekend to see my in-laws’ over the Thanksgiving holidays, which was great, except that I had one day after returning home to get my bearings, and then leave for Toronto. I flew out of Calgary Wednesday morning, and then flew back home Thursday morning. I got home in time to make dinner and take the kids to karate, and now today I’m trying to catch up on laundry and prepare for a party I’m hosting at my house tomorrow night for forty people. I’m completely swampled, as a friend I used to work with and I would say. (HI CARMEN).
Ten days or so ago, I mentioned my travel plans and party plans and my day-to-day work to a friend, saying I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and exhausted by it all. She said that when she feels overwhelmed by life, she thinks of Dory: Just Keep Swimming. So until everything is cleaned up Sunday afternoon, that is my motto: just keep swimming. Yesterday when I got home I was so tired that it seemed too much to fill out Mark’s swim forms for school; holding a pen seemed like an effort that I didn’t want to make, but I just kept swimming. Like a shark, if I stop, I will die. Or, to be less dramatic, not want to get up off the couch ever again.
Oh, but the trips were very very good. My in-laws are well, and I ended up taking home about forty pounds of apples, in addition to the ones my dear mother-in-law had sent to me via Greyhound bus a few weeks ago. We are apple-licious around here. I mostly have McIntosh apples because they are my favourite, and I just smiled and nodded when my mother-in-law sang praises of my beloved Macs: they are perfect for pie and applesauce, she said. Ha! Pie and applesauce my foot. I’ll be eating every one of these apples, just the way nature intended, and I won’t even have to share because no one else really likes McIntosh apples. Not to mention that apple pie is an abomination, in my humble opinion.
Apple bottom!
The trip to Toronto was great too. It just so happened that the annual Yummy Mummy Club meeting was the same day as the deciding game for the Blue Jays, and the meeting room was right beside this:
The CN Tower!
Very exciting! When the Blue Jays won, you could hear the “woo-ing” from the streets, and when our meeting/ party was finished near midnight, there were still many fans wobbling around. On my flight to Toronto, I was sitting next to a young man who was heading out for the game. He was very nice and as we chatted I mentioned how exciting it was when the Blue Jays won the World Series. It turned out that during that exciting time in baseball, he wasn’t yet born.
All that celebrating must have been something, because the next day our flight was delayed since our co-pilot had called in sick. I BET YOU’RE REALLY SICK, BUDDY. We were sitting on the plane for quite a while, waiting for the replacement to make his way through the gigantic Toronto airport.
As an aside, Calgary is a city of over 1.1 million people, and yet I felt like a complete country bumpkin as I made my way through the terminal. My sweet friend and YMC colleague Katja (HI KATJA) had very kindly offered to pick me up at the airport and drive me to the meeting with Jeni (HI JENI) the Editor-in-Chief, who is also a wonderful friend. I stopped off after deplaning, to wash up and fix my makeup and brush my teeth, assuming that I would be able to just pop outside to meet her. I ended up walking twenty minutes through the terminal, weaving in and out of the throng of people, up and down stairs. Fortunately I was not late to meet her, but I did feel silly that I didn’t realize how big the airport (that I’ve been to twice before) is. I was just happy I was wearing low heels, and counted it as my steps for the day.
Anyway, as we waited for the replacement co-pilot, I wondered how the flight was going to go. The flight was completely full and there were quite a lot of the “under two” set. The couple beside me had with them little Arlo, who was a twenty-three-month-old butterball. He was just adorable, but the wait was going on and on and I hoped – for the parents’ sake, not mine, I couldn’t care less about crying babies so long as they’re not my own – that he would be okay. Things weren’t looking promising at first, because he was HOT but he did NOT want to take his sweater off. In fact, taking his sweater off was the WORST THING EVER. But being HOT was also THE WORST THING EVER. Arlo had a snack and then slept on his mother’s chest for a while, and after that he was just fine.
Toddlers, am I right? So cute and yet so exhausting. He showed me his trains, and his Thomas lift-the-flap book, and he told me about feeding ducks and that they quacked at him, and I almost died of the cuteness. He even sat on my lap for a few minutes to look out the window. He also spent a lot of time running down the aisle with one of his parents in tow, which reminded me of how physically draining it is to have a toddler, not to mention how physically draining it is to TRAVEL with one. I’m drained enough this week!
All of which is to say I’ve got to go keep swimming, at least for another 48 hours. Wish me luck!
I managed never to fly with my kids while they were toddlers or preschoolers (we don’t fly much). Infants, fine. School-age kids, great, but not toddlers and preschoolers. That said, my sister’s going to be taking an international flight with her 2 year old soon, shortly after meeting her.
THANK YOU for being such a blessing to Arlo and his family. I wish I had had a Nicole sitting next to me when I flew with toddlers.
Also, I have been thinking of you because our new music teacher teaches the recorder in fourth grade. It starts next week.