52 Cents

I spent a fair amount of time today, in airports and on airplanes and in line and in traffic, composing a post.

It was going to contain some of my ideas about travel; some of the things I try to do that make the trip easier or less disaster-prone. Things like:

• Take a photograph of each child in the morning, so that if the worst possible thing happens and your child is lost and your brain shuts down, you have a recent photograph with their last-seen-wearing outfit.
• Rehearse, with each child, their name, destination, airline, and whatever other data they can handle, depending on age and focus. Practice this. Also practice the routine of, “Who do you ask for help, if you get lost?” (Answer: almost anyone in uniform, and point out what that means when you arrive.)
• Pack sunscreen and cold medicines. Especially the second; those are always hard to find and way overpriced when traveling, and usually necessary anyway.

It was going to be a helpful and reference-worthy bit of literature.

Then we spent 12 hours getting here, including delays and long lines and traffic. And dinner out at which I could have a margarita, or I could have two margaritas, and I chose the latter. And now I’m all warm and fuzzy and incapable of maintaining an appropriate train of thought. Willem is sad that he didn’t carry the video camera down the hotel hallway after dinner, because apparently me and straight lines aren’t doing so well right now. And I can’t begin to estimate how many times I’ve hit backspace in this post alone.

So much for pithy and useful.

Oh, but I did think of another one:

• Bring spare change to not-quite-child-friendly restaurants. The one we ended up at, the one with all the margaritas, it didn’t have coloring books or crayons. But it did have tables, which was convenient on many levels, and by giving each child a handful of change – 52 cents, because I had $1.02 in evenly-dividable money (Husband Edit: you mean $1.04 – just adding my 2 cents) we had entertainment and fine-motor skills long enough for the bread to be delivered to the table.

Moral of the story: we arrived safely, the kids are good little travelers, and it’s off to Walt Disney World in the morning. I did remember to pack Advil, in case I suffer from the wrath of grapes (or whatever’s in tequila) tomorrow.