Blythe Spirit

Sugar Cookies and Cilantro

I really meant to take a photo of the Valentine cookies I baked, but I took most of them to my book group and took some to a playdate yesterday and then I ate the last one for breakfast this morning. People love iced sugar cookies and since no one besides the Thriftway bakery seems to make them any more, they’re always well-received gifts. Usually the recipient says something like, “Oh, I haven’t had these in years, they are just SO SWEET I don’t usually eat stuff like this,” before inhaling the cookie and its accompanying icing in three bites.

It’s a good thing they’re gone because we’re leaving town tonight and I didn’t want to be burdened with them anymore since I already have to clear out the contents of our fridge before dinnertime. I plan on eating three packages of lunchmeat, apple juice, cranberry juice, and some leftover spaghetti sauce (with meatballs) for lunch. Then maybe I’ll have the three tubs of plain yogurt and four tortills as a mid-afternoon snack, and pack the raw zucchini and cilantro hanging out in the crisper drawer to take on the plane.

Not that I plan on eating anything during the flight. Because accepting delivery of an in-flight meal also means keeping the tray and the food and the tempting (if you are a baby) sticky, foil-covered entree container and plastic cups and cutlery for over an hour on my lap, which will all inevitably end up in the lap of the person next to me (hopefully Jeff, though if he’s smart he has called ahead to arrange for a seat five rows away) and the hair of the person in front of me. The kind flight attendants who bring Theo extra pretzels always look at me sympathetically as if to say, “Sorry, Lady, your tray won’t fit in the overhead compartment, you’re just going to have to wait until we come around with the cart. Would you like a glass of port? Or some duty-free jewelry?”

Fortunately, it’s really hot and humid in Bangkok, so when I arrive in a cilantro and duty-free-chocolate-covered shirt, I can just take it off and walk around in my sports bra. I’m sure that will attract a cab.

Tuk-Tuk Goose

I ordered The Lonely Planet’s Bangkok book over two weeks ago, and it finally arrived today. Maybe I should thank amazon.co.uk for preparing my butt for spring, as I doubled my daily trips up and down the stairs, hoping upon hope that the Amazon box would appear in my mailbox. I eventually was forced to send a curt email to their customer service department and, lo, the book appeared this morning, and I could barely wait until Theo’s naptime to crack it open and start reading.

We are going to Thailand next week, by the way. It was a somewhat last-minute decision involving an already-planned business trip and someone in the family whining and wondering why some other person didn’t just MOVE to Asia since he was spending half his time there, thereby cleverly wrangling an invitation to the tropics. We are all choosing to ignore the upcoming ten-hour plane ride with our almost-walking child, and the possibility that jetlag will mean we spend most of our days trying to catch up on sleep and our nights strolling the streets with our wide-awake son. Fortunately, I’ve heard there is plenty of after-dark entertainment in Bangkok.

My vision of the flight involves mainly anticipation of the delicious chocolate I’m sure to be served since we are flying Swiss Air and gratitude that we are not flying through Frankfurt. I could be a member of the Partridge family based on the amount of time I’ve spent on a bus in that place. BUILD SOME NEW TERMINALS, PEOPLE, or at least rig up a train. You are a country of engineers who created the world’s most complicated yet efficient Christmas tree stand. Why can’t you figure this one out?

However my daydreams always end upon arrival because I am a travel guidebook addict and must read the book from cover to cover before arrival. MUST. And must think in advance about where we will eat and which days we will shop (must shop at the beginning of the trip because will be energetic and enthusiastic but must leave time for shopping at the end because will understand the market/prices better at that point), and exactly how to get to and from the airport, and where we can buy pasteurized milk. And then I usually highlight the relevant passages and write things down in my specially-assigned travel notebook.

I’ll bet you really wish you could travel with me because I’m so much fun.

No, really, I can be fun. As long as I know I have to be fun in advance, so that I can PREPARE for the fun, and have the right clothes. And you can see why it so pained me to have to wait for my book. But it’s here now, so I’m able to step away from TripAdvisor.com for a few minutes every evening.

Also, speaking of clothes, I think I might try having some made while I’m there. I’ve heard the horror stories about ripoffs and cheap fabric, and mean tailors and renegade tuk-tuk drivers, but I also got some helpful, encouraging information from Holly, who incidentally just posted a handsome photo of her boyfriend in an equally handsome (well, almost, he’s pretty handsome) jacket she had made for him in Vietnam. So I have hope. And, yes, I realize Vietnam is not Thailand. However I am terribly embarrassed to admit that I’m not sure I could have picked either one out on a map until we started planning this trip. In fact, maybe until this morning when MY BOOK (with map) FINALLY ARRIVED.

You can see why the book is so important.

P.S.
Thank you for your nice comments on the previous post. Now look at the kind of rambling post you’re getting. Are you sure you really want (to quote my eloquent friend Geoff) the whole ass?

What I Learned on My Winter Vacation

1. The upside to jetlag: rising early and arriving at Target just as they open their doors, and shopping in peace even on the Saturday before Christmas.

2. Bing was right, there really is nothing like a white Christmas.

3. It is possible to fit 22.5 family members into the JCPenney photo studio. It feels a little like that time you and your four friends managed to smash all your faces in the frame at the automatic photo booth, but everybody does eventually get into the picture.

4. The most challenging aspect of completing a Master’s degree thesis is not successfully defending it before a faculty committee; it’s getting the freaking format to comply with the graduate office’s VERY SPECIFIC rules.

5. Trim your child’s fingernails before embarking on a trans-Atlantic journey, or you’ll arrive looking like you spent the trip in the cargo hold with a bunch of cats who have escaped their carriers.

6. Three weeks with the grandparents mean Baby is v.v. clean, has gained weight, and Mommy isn’t used to dealing with all the interruptions to her internet surfing anymore. Why didn’t they teach him to change his own diaper while they were at it?

Hosted

Twenty years ago I lost my wallet during the overnight bus ride from London to Glasgow, Scotland. I stumbled off the bus into my host father’s arms and before introducing myself announced that I had no money, no travelers checks, and no passport. He took me home and sent me gently to bed and spent the rest of the day at his (very busy and important) job phoning around to see if he could locate my identification. He had no luck.

While our rocky start did not cast a pall over my entire year with them, it did warn all of us that the times ahead were not to be comfortable and smooth. I was sixteen years old and away from my very small hometown and my very small family for the first time. My Scottish family was in the midst of a rocky year – health crises, work uncertainties, and what else I’ll probably never know. I could tell my host mother wasn’t so sure about me. They took me to plays and concerts and toured me around the country. Sometimes I was rapt. Sometimes I slept through the sightseeing.

When I left at the end of the year, I didn’t cry, and they didn’t promise to visit me. I felt slightly cheated out of the second family I’d been promised. I wondered if I would hear from them at Christmas.

Over the passing years, none of us has changed too much. But somehow we’ve kept in touch, just like a family does, even when we weren’t in the mood. I took my mom to visit them when she came to see me on my London college semester. They showed up at my wedding, despite my host mother’s broken leg (she dyed her hair purple for the occasion). I still felt the awkwardness sometimes, the inkling that we never quite belonged to each other, but still I sent them a picture of Theo when he was born. And still I wanted to visit them before life takes us far apart again.

Our weekend in Scotland was charmed in many ways (see photos below for proof) – warm weather, no wind, Hugh Grant at the golf course, delicious Argentinian wine, and the celebration of my host father’s seventieth birthday. I met another of their exchange student daughters, a Japanese woman who had lived with them five years before I did. They shared updates from their other students too — two from Mexico, another American girl, a Chinese teacher, an Indonesian college student. Their “waifs and strays,” we’re called. We sat together, like a family does, with our shoes off and the baby playing on the rug. There are many conversations we’ll never have, and plenty of ways we’ll never understand each other, but in this particular family that’s how it works. And, finally, I’ve stopped trying to imagine what a better host family might be like and, twenty years later, started enjoying mine.

St. Andrews, Scotland

A Wee Holiday

We were in Scotland all weekend and now I’m talking like Sean Connery. I took virtually no photos and Theo barely slept. He was so delighted to get back home yesterday that we walked in the door and he almost wiggled right out of my arms with delight. We had a great time but now I need to go take a nap.

Jetlag

Traveling with Theo was not so bad. That’s probably because I expected it to be terrible, and it was better than that. He was a champ on the airplane, sitting up in his little bassinet, smiling at our fellow passengers and sleeping periodically so that we even got to watch Blades of Glory on the way there.

The worst part was coming home, as it is most of the time with vacations. I have always hated jetlag and the hating is at its peak right about 2:54 a.m. when I can’t get to sleep. It is at its second worst at 9:38 a.m. when I have to get up but feel like my limbs are dragged down by Wile E. Coyote anvils.

I thought that having a baby would make the jetlag so much worse, since my frustration level when Theo can’t sleep rises quickly even in the best of times. But, like so much about parenthood, I was surprised by the way a baby can make the worst stuff bearable just by shifting my focus from myself to him. Our first night home, Theo was terribly confused. He woke up every hour or so making creaky mewing noises and squinting his puffy little eyes. He just wanted to be held and bounced and rocked and sung to as he clung to the front of my pajamas. I would think he had fallen asleep but as soon as I even approached his crib to lay him down his pathetic sobs would begin anew. After an hour or so of the bouncing and clinging, Jeff would come into the room and I would hand over my little warm bundle, return to bed, and try to get some sleep before taking the next shift. At one point, I could hear Theo crying even though my head was underneath my pillow. I considered getting up to see if I could help calm him down, but instead I decided to give Jeff the privilege instead.

Now, when I say “privilege,” I am being just a tiny bit sarcastic, because I was really laying there thinking about how it was Jeff’s turn anyway, since I’d already been in there for an hour (and I’m sure Jeff thought the same thing when he heard me stumbling around an hour earlier). But after Theo quieted and I drifted off to sleep and Jeff crawled into bed beside me having successfully transferred our bundle of joy into his crib just as the sky got light, I realized that staying in bed was the right thing to do at the time.

I don’t have much advice to share about parenting a newborn, but here is one of the best things I’ve learned so far, and it’s something that I think women have a particularly hard time accomplishing. Let the other parent do the hard parts too. That goes especially for the middle-of-the-night stuff. Chances are, he wants to take his turn. He loves that screeching little angel as much as you do. Pump a bottle or hand over the baby monitor or take a long walk or do whatever you have to do to allow the daddy to roll out of bed at 1:27 a.m. and bounce the crying baby in his arms, even if he has to get up and go to work in the morning and you don’t, even if you are nursing and it’s just less trouble to do it yourself.

Because Saturday night, if I would have gotten up and taken over and let Jeff get some sleep, he wouldn’t have felt Theo’s warm legs against his torso or seen how Theo’s confused face relaxed when he recognized his daddy’s voice, or done a silent little cheer when he managed finally to lay Theo down without waking him (something I hadn’t managed to do anyway). And the two of couldn’t have reminisced together on Sunday morning about how last night was so much like those first few weeks when we were both joyful, terrified zombies because we were up together in the dark, caring for our son.

Summertime

God Bless America, Part 6

Feeling overwhelmed by the level of customer service at the mall this morning. So many people are interested in my needs, all of whom also apparently use Crest White Strips. It almost makes me feel nostalgic for the cranky unkempt saleswoman who glares at me when I order bread at my local bakery. But not quite.

God Bless America, "Just Say NO" edition

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Page one of the coloring book given to my two-year-old niece as her family cleared customs at the airport last week. Click through to see the rest of the pages.