Week 1

So, here's a bit on what things have looked like since we headed out a couple of weeks ago. First, packing for this summer was challenging. Prior to this, I have never left town for the whole summer with the exception of working at Camp Ozark the summer between my junior and senior year of college. But I was single then, so packing for that summer was incredibly simple compared to packing for 5 people.


This time around, I had to keep a master list that I constantly tweaked and added to during the months leading up to leaving. But even with the list, when it finally came down to actually doing it, the week before we left was stressful anyway. So, I was practically exhilarated that Monday as we pulled out of town mainly due to the fact that I was done with all the packing. Our car was ridiculously full. So full that I could hardly see the kids behind me, let alone reach them. Thankfully though, that overly full car ride only lasted 3 hours until we pulled into my parents' house. Ross took off the next morning with all our stuff and drove to Nashville by himself while we stayed in Arlington to relax.


We swam a lot, walked to the library, and drove to Austin for my nephew Cash's 5th birthday. I caught up on some much needed rest since the week prior I slept very little. My mom treated me to a massage and a pedicure. So loved and pampered.


Then, last Monday, the 24th, we got up and drove to the airport. We got there on time and things were going very smoothly. They even gave my mom a temporary pass to go through the security gate so that she could help me and stay until our flight took off. We had one of those airport play areas right by our gate and things seemed like they were going to be fairly simple which was good since me flying to Nashville by myself with all three kids could possibly be anything but simple.


Then as we're sitting in the airport waiting, the sky starts to turn black and I get a text on my phone telling me our flight was delayed. Ok, no big deal. We can wait, we have the play area. But 5 minutes later I got another text telling me my flight was cancelled. Cancelled. Not delayed, cancelled. The next thing I know I am standing in a line with 50 other people trying to get booked on another flight. I get put on the 9:25 PM flight. It's 11:00AM. And then I get told to wait around until the 2:30 flight because we're on the standby list. Standby with 3 children. Yikes. I was not too thrilled with this development, but my mom was awesome. She was positive, helpful, and stayed with us all day at the airport. We went and had lunch at the airport Chili's and waited around until the 2:30 flight which then became delayed to the 3:30 flight.


I have only flown standby a few times, but I know lots of people do it all the time. I couldn't do it. It practically gave me an ulcer. Standing there, hoping they call your name down to the very last minute. Just waiting and hoping. For some reason, I felt so anxious. And competitive. Like every person around me was a threat. You could tell everyone felt that way. They would call a name and that person would practically jump up and down with joy while everyone else stood there loathing that person for possibly taking the very last seat. It was awful. And for me, it wasn't just one seat, it was 4. It's not like I could separate our party. We just stood there and stood there as they called name after name and I was sure we were not going to get on. Then suddenly she called my name, handed me new tickets and we were off, kissing my mom good-bye and practically running down the jet way since the plane was already delayed. Now everyone else was loathing my party of 4 while I jump up and down with joy.


Then as I got on the plane, I realized our seats weren't together. It's me and the kids. It's not like they can sit alone. So I asked the flight attendant to help me ask people to trade seats. I've flown enough to know that people love them some aisle seat, hate the middle seat, hate the window seat a little bit less, and hate people with kids the absolute most. So, here I am, a mom with 3 kids, on stand-by (we're the ones who are making this flight take off an hour late), and I need at least 2 people to switch seats with me. The flight attendant wouldn't help me. She just told me to ask people to trade. Sure. Right. So simple. By this time, the kids are exhausted. The plane is practically full so everyone is watching us bump our way down the insanely narrow aisle. Naomi won't walk so I am holding her, and hitting every single person I pass with my computer bag, saying “sorry, sorry, sorry.” The boys are walking in front of me and don’t know where to go. I finally get to our first row of seats and it looks like there are 2 together on that row and 2 together on another row. That might work if Jude wasn't 4 years old and well, Jude. So I ask the man in a jokingly-passive way, "how much do you like your aisle seat?" thinking he'd say, "Oh, I can see you have 3 kids with you, so you can have it." Instead he says, "Well I kind of like it" and then looks away. I am very taken aback so I tell the boys that they will have to sit behind me by themselves, knowing they are not going to feel comfortable with this, nor are they really old enough to handle that. Then after hearing me say that, he gets up and says, "Ok, I'll move. I wouldn't want them to have to sit all by themselves” very sarcastically. I am so flustered and pissed at this point, especially because everyone around me is watching this take place and no one, I repeat NO ONE has offered to switch seats with me so that I can sit with my 2, 4, and 7 year old children. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? Are you kidding me? Is your seat really that important?


But by now he is grumpily moving to the window seat behind me so I just take his stupid seat and move Jude up next to me. I know that Sam won't be too happy to sit between 2 men that are strangers to him, but that he can probably handle it. Then a minute later, he leans forward and tells me that he really wants to sit by me. Even though there is not a seat next to me available, I tell him to get up and sit in our row on my lap until someone else will offer their seat to us. I figure at the very least, the flight attendant will have to do something when the plane is about to take off. There is an aisle seat available one row up, so he sits there while I ask the woman in the aisle seat next to me if she will switch with him. She says, “Well, I would but I don’t know whose seat that is so I can’t.” I just tell her that I will deal with whose seat it is if and when they show up on this plane. That person who shows up is just going to be happy to be on the plane at all since they were probably number 50 on the stand-by list. Then a guy does show up and Sam is in his seat. I am about to tell him that I gave his seat to my son so that we could sit together and that he can have the middle (oh no, not the middle) seat behind me when the woman next to me gets all flustered and grumpily gets up and says, “I’ll sit there” and moves to that middle seat. It was a nice thing to do, but she didn’t do it happily and she kind of made me feel like crap. But finally we were all 4 sitting together so I turned around and thanked them/apologized about 5 times. I just still can’t get over how weird people are. How is it that we live in a time when about 8 grown men and women will just stare at a woman and three kids who clearly need a little bit of help and do NOTHING. I am not kidding. No one word. Not one offer to help. Not one offer of a way to change up the seats. I had to practically beg. Do these people really want to sit with my children on the plane for 3 hours with me on the next row? And furthermore, I was pretty put off by the fact that the flight attendant wouldn’t help me with it either. But that’s enough of that rant.


Thankfully, the rest of the flight was fairly uneventful and there were no major meltdowns. But by the time I got to Nashville, I was so tense and exhausted. Ross picked us up and we were so happy to see him. We went straight to meet the Osenga’s whose house we are living in this summer. We had dinner at Baja Burrito (very yummy) and then went to the house to check things out. After that exhausting day getting to Nashville and then getting the full run down on the house we’re staying in for summer, I could hardly think. We made it to our hotel at 9:30 and I practically fell into bed.


That night, after all that, I honestly felt down and weird and really unsure of what we are doing. It’s like all the anticipation and excitement of the unknown finally wore off, leaving behind a little bit of disillusionment and uncertainty. I know that I am an idealist in so many ways, particularly when it comes to adventure and change. I don’t ever want to get to a place where I allow myself to be controlled by my fleshly desire to avoid change and so I cling to my ideals. I cling to the fact that experience tells me that I always end up feeling OK. At least I have so much experience on my side because it’s not like my life is ever mundane or the same. Regardless, I always feel uncomfortable with new things, even in the times (like in a nice hotel in Nashville) when I know that logically, nothing around me is empirically uncomfortable.


I am actually writing this one week after all that took place (with lots more to fill you in on later) and the discomfort has only worn off a little bit. I still feel strange. Like I am not sure what my purpose is right now. Being in someone else’s house and driving around a new city all the time is weird. It’s not a vacation, but it’s not my regular life either. It’s some in-between thing that I can’t draw on experience to deal with. But I know we’ll figure it out and by the time it’s over, I probably won’t be ready to leave.