Vacation, had to get away!

A couple of months ago, I signed up for weekly newsletters from BabyCenter.com. They often provide helpful quick tips targeted for moms with babies exactly Jack's age. Just yesterday, in fact, I learned that eight-month-olds like to play tug of war, and it turns out they are right! Since that is not a game I would have thought to play, I have to hand it to BabyCenter.com.

Nevertheless, sometimes BabyCenter.com thinks I am a complete moron. For example, at the start of the summer travel season, there was an article on "Seven secrets to successful travel with a young child." Seeing as how The Husband and I were planning a trip to Maine, I clicked on the link to learn these seven mysterious secrets that would make my life easier. Except as it turned out, they weren't particularly mysterious after all. Take secret number 2: "Pick a family-friendly destination." Really? A family-friendly destination? Not a couples' resort? Not a hike through the rain forest? You don't say.

The final "secret" was to take practice trips; that is to say, start out with a short one or two night trip to see how your kid travels before you head across the country for three weeks. Once again, this seemed obvious to me, and is actually what we were already planning. My sister had invited us up to her family beach cottage in Maine, and we went for one night. This past Sunday night, in fact. We had been slightly anxious about how Jack would do sleeping in a strange place, but we needed to get the heck out of our house for a while, and a beach house complete with free babysitters in the form of cousins seemed perfect to us.

Our plan was to drive up during Jack's morning nap, but of course we couldn't pack everything he needed until Sunday morning because he was still using a lot of it on Saturday night. This meant that we had to use Jack's two hours between his getting up and his going down for his first nap to feed him, dress him, pack all his stuff, and get all the stuff to the car. Oh, and The Husband also had to go to Home Depot to buy brackets or some such for the new porch railings we had to put in on the downstairs apartment. (These railings need to be painted, by the by. Someone kill me.)

Do you realize how much stuff babies need? Even for one night? The Husband and I had one suitcase between us; Jack had a suitcase of clothes and diapers, a suitcase of blankets, toys, and books, a Pack 'n' Play, a booster seat, and a bag of groceries. And we still managed to forget some stuff.

Happily, the trip was fun. Not as relaxing as a trip without a baby, but Jack napped just fine in the afternoon and went to bed without complaint. He did wake up again when The Husband and I went to bed four hours later and he naturally had a leak. That was when we discovered that we forgot to bring extra overnight stuffers for our diapers and we that had only brought one pair of pj's. But eventually he went back to sleep and we did well until morning.

Unhappily, Jack woke up at 5:00, the worst possible time for a baby to wake up. At 5:00, the baby has had lots of sleep, so he is less tired and takes longer to go back to sleep, if he ever does. You know what doesn't help matters? Moronic parents. Because a travel tip that BabyCenter.com left out was that if your normally contented baby is crying and fussing after 6 hours in the same diaper, his diaper just might need to be changed. I tried to get Jack back to sleep for an hour, and The Husband and simply I could not understand what could be wrong! "What is the matter, Jack?" we kept saying. "Just go to sleep! Why won't you go to sleep? We can see you are tired! What could possibly be making you uncomfortable? WHAT COULD IT BE?" Eventually, The Husband got up to take Jack away somewhere and give me another twenty minutes or so, and lo and behold, he had leaked through again. And was also poopy.

But still, Jack - and therefore we - had a great time. The weather cleared for an hour or two on Monday, allowing us to go to the beach. Although we put Jack in his retro bathing suit for the sheer adorableness of it, neither The Husband nor I wore our bathing suits. This is because the water in Maine is cold. Very very cold. Bone-chillingly, painfully cold, and we are getting older. Besides, we figured we would only be able to stay at the beach for an hour or so before Jack got hungry for lunch.

Of course, I neglected to consider that Jack would try to eat sand for lunch. And then, after tasting it the first time, try to keep eating it. In fact, we spent a lot of time this weekend fishing foreign items out of Jack's mouth. One in particular that he was loathe to relinquish turned out to be a mysterious black slimy thing that we didn't even want to think about until someone realized it must have been a piece of Oreo dropped by his two-year-old niece. Hey, I would also be mad if someone held me down and took the Oreo out of my mouth.

But all in all, it was a successful "practice trip." We now know that Jack will sleep in the Pack 'n' Play in a strange house and that we should always bring extra pajamas. We know that sand and Oreos are equally delicious and that it is not possible to stay clean at the beach with a mobile infant.

Oh, and we know that sometimes, he needs his diaper changed.

Guys' guys and girls' girls

The Husband and I just got back from a mini-vacation in Florida. It was very nice, aside from the search for dinner on Sunday night and the near-fruitless hunt for ice cream. How can it possibly be so difficult to find ice cream in South Florida? We live in the wintery north, and there are no less than four superb ice cream shops within two miles of our house, but in Ft. Lauderdale we were forced to resort to Denny’s. Denny’s! For ice cream!

Anyway, aside from that, we had a great time. And I am particularly proud of The Husband for successfully going with the flow and not minding our lack of concrete plans of any kind. And, as an added bonus, Hertz gave us a free upgrade from our boring mid-size sedan to a Mustang hard top. And it was red!

Seeing our interest in the Mustang, the Hertz lady told us about the special Shelby Mustang that Hertz rents for a mere $400 per day. $400. Per day. Apparently, it’s some sort of exclusive arrangement that Ford has with Hertz wherein Ford made about 600 of these cars and sold them to Hertz, and you are only allowed to rent them if you are truly from out of town, and the engine is somehow locked to the car. But $400 a day? When he heard that Hertz had a Shelby Mustang on hand, The Husband’s eyes lit up and his jaw dropped in awe. Apparently, this particular Mustang has so much power that it can peel out from traveling at 60 mph. Me, I had never heard of it. In fact, for this entry, I had to ask The Husband to remind me of the name “Shelby” because I couldn’t remember it, even though it’s the name of Big Sister #1’s dog.

But what I found interesting is that, although The Husband is not what I would call a “car guy,” he nevertheless knew all about the Shelby Mustang. He’s the one who told me it can peel out while already traveling at 60 mph. So my theory is that there are particles of “guy” information and particles of “girl” information that somehow permeate our brains, and is the same way that I know what Prada and a Birkin bag are. Admittedly, the brain in question must have at least a passing interest in the information to which the particles pertain; ie, I am interested in the Birkin bag even though I am not a fashionista, but I know plenty of women who have never heard of it. (I must add a disclaimer lest you think less of me: Although I know what a Birkin bag is, I have no desire for one at all and find them fascinating only as a commentary on just how stupid people can be. I mean, my Lord.)

Needless to say, we chose not upgrade to the Shelby Mustang. We wouldn’t have had any money left over for fine Italian shoes.

German theory

In response to Banalities comment on this post, I am inspired to tell a story about when I worked in Germany for a summer. See, I don't speak German (although I did learn to say "Excuse me," "I'm sorry," "I don't understand," "I don't speak German," and "Where is the bathroom," among other key phrases), but there was a sign in the lab where I worked that I was able to translate. I glance at it, and then chuckled to myself. The Germans, surprised, said, "You understand that?"

"Sure," I said. And I read, "In this lab we have both theory and practice. Nothing works, and no one knows why!"

It wasn't really that amazing of a feat, though, because I had learned the words for "know," and "work," and the German words for "theory" and "practice" are something like "theorin" and "praktica." (I'm just making those up, so don't jump down my throat if they are wrong, which they are.) But the point is, I could guess from context at the meaning.

Being in Germany was interesting. I found out what it was like to be illiterate. It's not fun. Sure, I could tell that the box in the grocery store was soap, but was it bath soap? Dish soap? Laundry soap? Who knew? And I knew the sign with a picture of a bike on it was telling me that something was verboten, but I couldn't tell if I was not allowed to walk on the bike path or if I was forbidden from riding my bike on the pedestrian path. Critical distinction, there.

It was a fun experience, all in all. And by spending three weeks in Germany made me much less afraid to try speaking French when I went to Paris for a long weekend. Sure, my accent was horrible and my grammar was faulty, but at least I had a shot.

Naiveté, thy name is Mo (and The Husband)

A few years ago, The Husband and I went to Cancun for a vacation. While we were there, we decided to rent a car and take a day trip to Tulum. I highly recommend doing this if you are planning a trip, because Tulum is just gorgeous. We spent a few hours wandering around the ruins and then took an incredibly refreshing dip in the ocean. Well, I took a dip. The Husband just waded because he had a broken hand. Still, it was a great day.

On the way back, we realized we were out of cash. We figured we’d stop at an ATM before dropping the car off. Unfortunately, just a few short miles from town, we got pulled over for speeding. “Aw, man!” I said, as the cop approached the car. “I don’t even think you were driving that fast!”

“I wasn’t the fastest car on the road, that’s for sure,” The Husband replied, rolling down the window.

“Hola,” said the cop.

“Hola,” we replied. Then we spent a few minutes struggling to communicate. Although the cop’s English was weak, it was better than our nonexistent Spanish, and we eventually understood that he was telling us that we were speeding, and we would have to go down to city hall to pay a 300 peso fine. But, if we had the cash, we could just pay him 150 pesos right there and save a trip.

“That’s weird,” The Husband and I thought. “I guess things work differently in Mexico.” But, unfortunately, we were completely out of money. We tried to tell the cop this, and get him to just give us the ticket so we could move on with our lives. He, however, was very insistent that we should just pay him the 150 pesos. He didn’t seem to believe us when we said we had no money.

Finally, The Husband opened up his wallet and showed the gaping emptiness to the cop. The cop heaved a huge sigh, rolled his eyes, and gave up on us. “Just go ahead,” he said. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist.

“Really?” said The Husband. “What about the ticket?” But the cop just waved us on and went back to his motorcycle, shaking his head.

The Husband and I were thrilled. “Wow!” we said to each other. “That was really weird! I wonder why he just let us go!”

Because, you see, we still didn’t get it. In fact, we didn’t get it until at least a year later when we were sharing this anecdote with some friends of ours.

“He was asking for a bribe,” our friend said.

The light dawned. “Oh my word, he was totally asking for a bribe,” I said.

“We’re complete idiots,” said The Husband.

But hey, we didn’t have to pay anything! So I guess ignorance is bliss.

Yo no habla espanol

I was in Buenos Aires last week, and when I asked the hotel desk clerk where the nearest church was, I may have inadvertently asked him where the nearest Iglesias was. Either he understood what I meant, or Julio can be found about 2 blocks south of the hotel.

And with that...

I will be away next week, and after that I'm moving, so I may not be posting very much for a few weeks. I know, big difference. But I think I may have a few regular readers out there who don't know me in real life, and I'd like to keep them. Hi, people I don't know! I'm still writing the blog, so don't go away! Check back in two weeks!

California dreaming

When The Doktah and I were in San Francisco for the conference, we spent a lot of time on the bus thanks to the location of our hotel relative to the Moscone Center. This turned out not to be such a bad thing, because we got to see a lot of the city on our daily commute back and forth. Every morning, for example, we saw twenty or thirty middle-aged people gathered to do deep knee bends in the park. I have nothing against group exercise, but there is something inherently amusing about seeing so many people doing deep knee bends at the same time. We rode by them every day, and all we ever saw them doing were deep knee bends. If those people had signed up for a tai chi class, they were getting ripped off.

But riding the bus also introduced us to some sights we wanted to see, like Ghiradelli Square and Fisherman’s Wharf. So we decided to take an afternoon off and tour the city a little bit. Since we were so familiar with the bus system by that point, we hopped on the Muni line down towards the water.

The bay looked lovely, and I found myself taking a lot of pictures of the water. I took pictures of the water from Coit’s tower, from Lombard St., and from Fisherman’s Wharf. So without realizing it, I took about twenty pictures of Alcatraz as seen from various points in San Francisco. We ended up taking a tour of Alcatraz, so I took about ten more pictures of it from the boat, and a couple more of the grounds. A narrative of my pictures from that trip would go something like this:

ME: That’s a picture of Alcatraz, and that’s Alcatraz from Coit’s Tower. This one is a picture of the seals, but Alcatraz is here in the background. And this one is of Alcatraz from the boat, and this is the entrance to Alcatraz itself. Oh, and here’s a picture of San Francisco’s skyline.

VIEWER OF PHOTOS: Oh! Where’d you take that one from?

ME: Alcatraz.

While waiting for the bus to take us back to the conference, The Doktah and I found ourselves once again discussing the benches in the bus shelters. The benches at the bus stops in San Francisco have four seats each, and the seats are hinged so that they swing to a vertical position if no one is sitting on them. We had an ongoing argument about their design.

"It's so no one can sleep on them!" I said, yet again. "You can't lie down on them because your weight would be distributed wrong, and they would tip you right off." Although The Doktah agreed that that was the reasoning behind the design, she insisted that a person could lie down on the bench if motivated. “No way,” I insisted. “You can’t balance with your feet off the ground.”

The Doktah is not one to refuse a challenge, and we had some time to kill while we waited for the bus. “I will prove it,” she said, and she handed me her bag to hold. The Doktah sat down on the middle seat, stretched out one leg, and carefully lay down. She lifted up her other leg to rest along side the first leg, and very triumphantly shouted, “H-!” She only said “H-!” because that’s as far as she got before the seats turned and the bench tipped her right off onto the sidewalk. She didn’t have time to get out the full “Hah!”

Buses, taxis, and witches

Speaking of Eccentric Postdoc, she spent the better part of two years believing that The Doktah and I were witches. Let me explain.

The three of us and The P.I. were attending a conference in San Francisco. Because we flew out the day the conference began, we went straight from the airport to the conference center. At the end of the day, The P.I. headed off to his parents’ house where he was staying for the duration of the conference. Eccentric Postdoc, The Doktah and I, however, had reservations at a local hotel.

I had made these reservations, and, in the interest of saving money, I had tried to find a cheaper hotel than the ones right in the conference center area. Because I didn’t want to be too far away, I called the hotels I was considering to ask them how close they were to the Moscone Center. One place was pretty inexpensive, and the person on the phone told me they were only a ten-minute walk from the conference center. “Great!” I said, and booked a room.

So the three of us picked up our bags from the coat check at the conference and went outside into the dark San Francisco night to try to figure out how to get to the hotel. None of us had ever been to San Francisco before; this combined with our jet lag and fatigue from attending lectures all day made for three rather groggy, confused people. Three groggy, confused people longing to take showers, actually. So The Doktah and I were all for hailing a cab to get us to the hotel. We could figure out a cheaper way to and from in the morning, but at that moment, we just wanted to get there.

Have you ever tried to hail a cab on a Saturday night in front of the Moscone Center just as a conference is ending? It’s not so easy. But we had no idea where the hotel was in relation to the center, and we had no idea what buses might go by the hotel, so we were pretty much stuck trying to hail a cab. The Eccentric Postdoc, however, did not agree.

“We should walk, I think,” she said, in her usual slow style of speech. “There is no taxi.”

“But we don’t know how to get there,” I told her patiently. I knew that English was her second language, and I tried to be patient. “We can’t walk, because we don’t know where the hotel is.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied with this explanation. But thirty seconds later she said, “I think we should just walk.”

I swallowed a sigh of aggravation, and said, “We can’t walk. We don’t know where the hotel is. We have no map.”

“But I think we will not get a taxi,” she persisted. “So I think it is better if we just walk.”

Bear in mind that this was the end of a very long day of plane travel followed by hours of seminars. So it is not unreasonable that I got annoyed pretty quickly. “We cannot walk there,” I explained, very testily. “We have no idea where it is. We don’t even know what direction to walk in. We can’t walk.”

Pause.

“But I think we should walk,” she began again.

I lost all semblance of patience. “We don’t know where it is!” I shouted. “If you want to walk, fine! We’ll meet you there!”

Fortunately, at this point The Doktah succeeded in finally hailing a cab, and we climbed in gratefully. The cab then took us on a confusing circuitous route through the city, and I began to have suspicions about the “ten minute walk” from the hotel to the Moscone Center. When we got to the hotel, we asked at the front desk if there was a bus, and they gave us a schedule. It turned out that the Moscone Center was not so much a ten-minute walk from the hotel as it was a 45-minute bus ride. But, you know, same difference.

The hotel room was basically fine, although it smelled a bit wonky. But there was a shower and beds, so we were pretty happy with it, all in all. There was also a TV, so The Doktah and I were able to indulge our Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel habits while at the conference. Poor Eccentric Postdoc just had to deal with it. She must have been hugely relieved the one night we stayed out sort of late and she got to shut out the lights and go to slep early.

The Doktah also happened to be reading a book about vampires or something on that particular trip. I think that after seeing us watch Buffy and Angel, which made no sense to her at all because of her struggling English, the book tipped the balance for Eccentric Postdoc. It seems that when we got back home, Eccentric Postdoc told The P.I. that The Doktah and I were witches. I think he just let her continue to think so.

Man, that trip must have been really bad for her.

The other NYC story

On Sunday, we had big plans. We were going to have brunch, go see the new, free art installation, go to B&H Photo Video, and go to SoHo to buy the lamp that The Husband and I found last December but thought was too expensive. Little did we know that lamps are really expensive, and usually boring. The brunch part was wonderful, but the plans began to go a bit sour on the way to the art exhibit. For although it was only 54 or so degrees outside, the wind made it feel like 20 or something. Plus, I was wearing tall boots because I had on brown pants that require heels. (The Doktah advised against getting them hemmed; she said I should just wear heels. Curse her.) These boots are actually pretty comfy as heels go due to the chunkiness of the heel, but it turns out that I should not wear them two days in a row if I'm doing a lot of walking, because chunky or no, heels are heels.

So we schlepped over to the art installation on very painful ankles (well, I was the only one with painful ankles), and it turns out the art installation was not free. We paid anyway, if only to get out of the cold, because the damn thing was right on the water and the wind was making me miserable. I was not dressed for the weather at all. But it is a temporary structure, so it wasn't much warmer inside. The exhibit consisted of a long hallway of painting after painting of Tibetan people with elephants, birds, or leopards. Each painting was individually quite beautiful, but after a hundred pictures of people with closed eyes posing with elephants, it begins to get repetitive. Plus the fact that every single person had their eyes closed really started to get on my nerves. It's like they were saying, "Oh, look at me, I'm so spiritual and communing with this elephant. Don't you wish you were as deep as I am? Look, I'll meditate right now. Meditating is like second nature to me. Ohhmmm....." At the end of the hallway was a looped film of the same images. The artists had obviously made the film, and then used it as the model for the paintings, so it was even more repetitive. And the film was run in slow motion, to really drive home the deep spirituality of the subjects, which did not add to my enjoyment. And did I mention that it was cold in there? And that it wasn't free?

OK. So we ended up having to skip B&H because things just took too long, and wound up in SoHo where, luckily, the lamp was still for sale, and for $10 less than in December! So we bought it, and asked for one in a box because we had to drive back to Massachusetts with it. It came in a really tall box, and when we hailed a cab to go back to Brooklyn, we discovered it would not fit. Since the L train to Brooklyn was not running, so we were forced to walk ten minutes more in the freezing cold on sore ankles, carrying a very cumbersome tall box, and catch the J train over the bridge and then wait and wait for the shuttle, which turned out not to be a "shuttle" so much as a bus because it stopped a lot.

The only thing motivating us was the thought of the awesome bagels we were going to buy from the best bagel store ever, 4 blocks up from Leah Lar's apartment, and then the thought of eating said bagels in the lovely, lovely warmth of the apartment. And also the bathroom.

So The Husband and D headed back to the apartment to get our stuff all packed up, and Leah Lar and I ordered the bagels. I ordered 1 toasted pumpernickel bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese, and 1 toasted sesame bagel with the same cream cheese. Leah Lar ordered 1 toasted everything bagel with plain cream cheese and 1 toasted wheat bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese. I ordered first, and several minutes later the guy who took my order said, "You wanted 1 pumpernickel and 1 sesame, right?" Right. "You wanted them toasted, right?" Right. "You wanted garlic and herb cream cheese, right?" Right.

So when we got back to the apartment, we found the following 4 bagels: 1 toasted everything with plain cream cheese, 1 untoasted wheat with plain cream cheese, and 2 untoasted sesame bagels with olive and red pepper cream cheese. I'll give you a second to go back and check what we ordered.

So D was golden, because they got his right. And Leah Lar was disappointed at the lack of toasting on her wheat bagel, but her order-taker had told her there was no more garlic and herb cream cheese, so she was prepared for that. But as for me and The Husband, I guess my guy was just toying with me with all the double checking.