Vacation Day Two: Fish Bones, No Bones & Billy Pilgrim

Part Three of "Thinking The Vacation." Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.


The plan for the first full day of vacation was a breakfast buffet followed by a trip to Seaworld -- because what goes together better than a belly full of breakfast food followed by fish smells and a roller coaster? Nothing, that's what.

I like to get an early start on vacation. But with Babies!, there is no such thing as an early start. Or a quick start. Or, as it turns out, sleep.

At home, the Babies! have "crib tents," which are exactly what they sound like-- tents that go over the cribs and keep the twins from jumping out of them, in the process transforming the entire crib into something that recalls a 6th grade science class bug collector, but the thing works: the Babies! stay in the cribs, no matter how much they jump, and eventually they will fall asleep. We'd come to take the immobility of the crib for granted, because Mr F and Mr Bunches never want to sleep and do everything they can not to. It seems, sometimes, that they simply don't sleep. We have a baby monitor and at times we'll wake up at 2 a.m. to hear the boys jumping in their cribs, or just talking in their mysterious twin language, with bursts of English. There will be babbling and humming and then one will say "Yeah."

Staying up all night talking enthusiastically is cute when they're safely in their room down the hall trapped in their cribs and I can sleep. It's not as cute when they are sharing a room with you in the time share and their beds are air mattresses that are great to jump on but don't hold them in at all, so that they can do what they want, which is not sleep, and if theyy're not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. Throughout the vacation, including the first night, we tried to get the Babies! to sleep in a variety of ways.

First was by letting them play until they slowed down. The flaw in that plan was that they won't slow down. Ever. They just keep bouncing and running and throwing things and grinding Oreos into the carpet and trying to climb the blinds on the window.

The second plan was sitting them on their air mattresses to watch TV and drink a bottle. While that seemed like a good idea to us, they had a better idea-- to them-- the better idea being to jump on the mattress and throw the bottle, and then go running across the room to pound on the door to the older kids' section.

The third plan was sitting them on our laps and watching one of their movies until they fell asleep; if you can hold one of them motionless for long enough, the engine stops running and they conk out. This plan is harder than it sounds, because they are strong kids. Holding Mr F and trying to make him sit still is something akin to trying to cram a bag of ferrets into a box that's too small for it. Worse, if he can't get away, he still tries to fight sleep using whatever means he can, including slapping himself on the cheek to stay awake. It's like watching a miniature truck driver try to make a deadline.

A few nights in, I tried a fourth option -- let the Babies! do whatever they want, and snooze on the couch. It would have worked brilliantly if Mr F hadn't decided to hit me to keep me from sleeping. Sweetie didn't approve of my fourth option, although I think she secretly approved of Mr F's response to it.

The result of all this is that Sweetie and I got roughly 1 hour of sleep per night, and not one solid hour; it was an hour pieced together between trying to get the Babies! to sleep and then trying to get them back to sleep, and then trying to avoid being kicked in the head when they'd wake up and crawl onto our bed and fall asleep, because they are violent sleepers: they flip and toss and kick and roll. At one point, Mr Bunches was sleeping next to me, and there were four feet of space between us and Sweetie. Mr Bunches out of nowhere inched across the bed and kicked Sweetie in the head. While still sleeping.

At least, I think he was sleeping. I was watching him the whole time and he never opened his eyes. The fact that I didn't try to stop him is probably why Sweetie later approved of Mr F's slap attack on me.

But we made it through that first night, and I got up at the crack of maybe 7. I couldn't tell because all the clocks in the time share had a different time on them. I tried to make coffee, but I couldn't figure out how to get the coffee maker to turn on, and then when I did I thought I had figured out where to put the coffee and the water, but it never made coffee. It steamed and burbled and the pot remained empty and eventually there was some gross water in the basket that I considered drinking but dumped out.

While not making coffee, I also tried to go use the bathroom. There were two in the condo, one in our bedroom where Sweetie and the Babies! were still sleeping and kicking each other, respectively, and the other in the older kids' area. Rather than wake our side, I went to use the older kids' bathroom, only to realize that they had locked me out. So I sat and watched the news of the overnight murders and sex scandals, and the weather, all without the sound on again because the TV was right outside the bedroom and I didn't want to wake anyone up. I tried to gather what the weather for the day would be, but I couldn't read lips and everything the weatherman showed on the screen looked like a hurricane. I thought maybe there was supposed to be a hurricane, but wouldn't they put a warning up about that? The weatherman wouldn't just calmly stand there telling everyone some sort of superdestructive hurricane was coming, without at least some little storm ticker, right? The expression on his face didn't say "hurricane." I've never seen what expression a weatherman would wear when he was telling people a hurricane was coming, but I'm pretty sure it would be recognizable. This guy just looked bored.

I later asked Matt whether it was hurricane season, and he said "Yes, but it'll just be a tropical storm by you," which, like the shark answer, did not reassure me. It also made me wonder, because Matt sounded bored by that, so maybe Floridians take sharks and hurricanes for granted.

The weatherman also had something I called the "Comfort Index," a graphic which showed a temperature, and a humidity reading, and a bar labeled "Comfort" with "LO" at one end and "HI" at the other. At 7 a.m., the temperature was 96 degrees. The "comfort" arrow was as far towards "LO" as it could be. It never moved the entire time we were in Florida.

Eventually everyone got up, and we began the laborious process of getting the Babies! ready to go out into the harsh Florida atmosphere, which already was so hot and humid that it approximated a trip to Venus. Getting a kid ready meant grabbing a baby and changing his diaper, then putting clothes on him, then putting sunscreen SPF 50 on him, then putting mosquito repellant on him, then changing his diaper again because that took so long to do, then washing his hands because you know what Babies! do as soon as their diaper comes off, then putting more sunscreen and mosquito repellent on because you'd just washed it all off cleaning the baby.

With the twins slathered in their protective coating of chemicals, we set out for the breakfast buffet. I love "All You Can Eat" Breakfast buffets, but I will be the first to admit that they are not for everyone. The charms of the breakfast buffet are lost on those who don't see the pleasure in having a plate-- or plates-- piled up with pancakes, french toast, sausage, pineapple, gravy, watermelon, biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies. The one we went to also had soft-serve ice cream cones and sundaes available. I washed it all down with a diet Pepsi. It's important not to overdo things.

I was a little slowed down at the buffet because Mr Bunches decided that he wanted to stick close to me and not sit in his high chair, so I had to eat with him on my lap, and go through the line carrying him or holding his hand, and carrying my plate in the other. Each option - -carrying or walking him-- posed problems. If I carried him, he tried to grab stuff off my plate and throw it and tried to stick his hands in the various entrees and soft-serve ice cream in front of him. A breakfast buffet is not the most sanitary of restaurant options in the first place, I know, but I felt like I would be bothering my fellow overindulgers if I just let my kids stick their hands in everyone's food randomly. They already stick their hands into my food randomly, but I'm used to it. When I share a drink with them, for example, Mr Bunches will take a sip and then helpfully put half of it back for me. Mr F doesn't even sip; he just reaches his hand in up to the elbow and grabs ice cubes. What I'm saying is you don't want to ask me to share my drink.

Holding Mr Bunches up wasn't an option. On the other hand, if I walked him, he'd investigate every nook, cranny, and dropped piece of food on the floor. I wasn't worried about him eating stuff -- Mr Bunches does not like to eat, period, and we have to trick him into eating by distracting him. We'll get a spoonful of yogurt ready and say Look, over there, and when he falls for it, we'll slip the food in. Or we'll put something he might like on his plate, like a Cheeto, and when he tries to put it in his mouth we'll also cram some green beans in there.

So I didn't think he'd try to eat anything off the floor, but he did want to see everything that was on the floor, so about every inch we moved, he'd crouch down and investigate whatever blob of junk he'd found. We were holding up the line, and, equally importantly, holding up my access to gravy-covered chocolate chip cookies. So I tried to keep him from slowing us down, but Mr Bunches and Mr F have a trick up their sleeve if they want to stop: They go No Bones.

"No Bones" happens when the Babies!, holding a hand, go limp, as though all their bones have evaporated. It's a nonviolent form of protest they've developed to get their way, and Mr Bunches used it at the buffet. I'd try to take a step; he'd want to inspect a crust of toast. I'd say "No, come on, we have to keep moving," and there'd be a tug on my hand and I'd look down and he was flopped on the floor, hanging limply by his left arm, a puddle of baby looking up at me. It looks exactly the same as if I'd tazered him. It's an amazingly effective tactic. I intend to use it the next time I'm shopping with Sweetie and she wants to go in a store I don't like. I'll just go limp at the entrance and flop down.

Back at the table, The Boy, Middle, and Sweetie were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep Mr F from throwing napkins all over the place and rubbing stuff into his hair.

We made it through breakfast-- and left a large tip-- and headed over to Seaworld. The older kids had picked this as their theme park to go to. When we started planning the vacation, we were going to go to Disney World for the Babies! and then another theme park for the older kids, but then we realized that the Babies!, being only 21 months old, really have no concept of what Disney World is and would never remember it. They get every bit as much enjoyment out of bouncing on the time share couch as they would out of Main Street, U.S.A., more, maybe, if we also let them play with straws and napkins, so we opted for just one theme park, and let the kids choose. They opted for Seaworld, and I'm not sure I understand the choice.

Seaworld is not really an "amusement park" the way I think of it. There are only two rides in the entire place -- a water ride (shown above) and the "Kraken," a roller coaster. The rest of it is devoted to water shows, aquariums, displays of sting rays and dolphins and turtles, and a playland. It's basically an aquarium that lets you pet the fish and has a couple of rides.

If I had opted to take us to Seaworld, I'm fairly sure that it would be seen as something educational and thus boring, since everything I opt for the family to do is seen as educational and thus boring, a rap I get from the time I proposed, on our trip to California, that we go to Death Valley and along the way also see a canyon where there were fossils. I was voted down and in place of that we went to Rodeo Drive. But since the kids opted to take us to an aquarium, it was seen as "cool."

After waiting in line for 30 minutes to get tickets, which we did because we didn't want to risk getting whatever fake tickets every store in Orlando promised to sell us if we'd just look at their time shares, we got inside and the first order of business was cooling off. The temperature had risen by that point to something in the three digits, or maybe low four digits, and the humidity had hit infinity. Sweetie saw a guy selling water and those little spray-fan bottles and said we should get one to keep everyone cool.

"One bottle and a fan please," I told the guy.

"$17.75," he told me, and I almost choked. I paid it, but I wasn't happy. $17.75? I could have saved a lot of money by getting the water and just dumping it on everyone's heads. Or by 'accidentally' falling into the dolphin pond. But that's the way theme parks work, and I was prepared for that. We'd gone to Universal Studios in California a few years back, and had taken along a budget of $150 for the day for refreshments. That was spent before noon. A soda in a theme park will set you back between $5 and $10 -- more if you want the "souvenir" cup, which I always do want. If you eat dinner at our house in the months after a vacation, you will have the option of having your beverage served in a very-classy T-Rex cup, or day-glo souvenir "Gatorland" plastic thermos. You should opt to use those, because they have lids and that will help keep Mr F's hand out.

Seaworld is an extremely interesting place filled not just with $17 fans but with all kinds of animals that you can interact with, take pictures of, pet, watch do tricks during shows, learn about, feed, and otherwise have a great time with. You can do all of those things, though, only if you are not traveling with The Boy, Middle, and The Babies!, each of whom had their own agenda.

The Boy wanted to see the Shark display; that was his only goal for the day, as it turns out. The Shark display, though, is not anywhere near the entrance or any other exhibit; you've got to go through the whole park to get to it, which meant that The Boy had no patience for any of the other exhibits or rides. Take the sting rays: He pointed out for us the sting ray exhibit where you can pet sting rays. So we went there, and a Seaworld employee was giving a talk about sting rays and people were gathered around the tank trying to pet them. I petted one and took some pictures and a video, but was getting urged to keep going by The Boy. When I tried to slow him down by getting him to pet a sting ray, he stuck his hand halfheartedly in the water towards one about 8 feet away. "It doesn't want to come by me," he said, and moved on.

We did eventually see the Shark display, and I could see why he loved it; it's incredible. It's one of those aquariums where you walk through in a tube underwater and the sharks all swim around you and over you, so you're almost in the water with them, and there's more sharks than you can ever imagine in one place.

Sweetie had this to say about the sharks: "They don't look that big." Jaws has ruined sharks for a lot of people, I bet. I tried to explain that six or seven feet was plenty long enough to be scary, but I don't think she was buying it. I could tell she didn't think they were scary because she was walking Mr Bunches and made no effort to put herself between him and the sharks. (Mr Bunches did not notice the sharks for almost half the trip through the aquarium. He was examining the floor. When he did look up and see them, he seemed impressed. But, then, he is also impressed by his own index finger, which he will examine for minutes at a time.)

Middle's agenda for the day was to ride the Kraken, so she, too, had no patience for anything else, before or after. We got to the Kraken relatively early in the day, skipping only the sea turtles and dolphins to do so, and because the lines were short we rode on it twice. I have a love/hate relationship with roller-coasters. I think they're fun and all, but I can't stand heights and so I hate that first ride up the hill, when the roller coaster is getting slowly yanked up by a chain, and it's creaking and groaning and laboriously climbing to the point where the ride gets quick enough to be fun.

It's not the heights, per se, which bother me, either, because I'm sitting in the roller coaster, so it's not as bad as it would otherwise seem. What bothers me is the idea that the train will stop, and I will have to climb out of the train and walk back down the rickety-looking stairs to the ground, a task that looks to me far more scary than the roller-coaster itself. So while everyone else is riding up the hill anticipating that first thrilling drop and the loops and twirls and all, I'm looking at the stairs wondering whether they're the kind that would crack open if I stepped on them and I'd fall to my death that way. If roller coaster designers really wanted to scare people like me, they'd have the exit be a flimsy rope ladder.

Also, I never feel quite like the safety belt is adjusted perfectly, and those shoulder bars always have just a little too much play in them for me to feel at ease. I worry that I maybe have a little more belly than the designers intended -- especially after a stop or four at the breakfast buffet -- and that the bar didn't get down far enough and only looked locked, so I clench it to me with a fierce passion. I always want to try it on the way up the hill, to see if it is locked, but I don't because what if it isn't? Then I'm screwed and I know it. I'd rather not know it.

The Babies! agenda was much simpler than either The Boy's or Middle's. Their goal was simply: keep moving at all costs. If we stopped their stroller for a microsecond, they'd start crying and try to climb out. Maybe they were intent on getting to the sharks and the Kraken, too. I don't know. But whenever we stopped to look at something, one of us had to keep the stroller moving, spinning it and rocking it and pushing it back and forth, to keep them pacified. The alternative was to let them out and walk them holding their hands, but that would again result in inspecting each iota of Seaworld's ground, and we'd still be there.

So we mostly let them out of the stroller when inside a building, like the Shark exhibit, where they could walk around and look at stuff and inspect the floor without reducing the whole procession to a crawl. That's when I realized that there was a significant difference between what is interesting to one of the twins and what you would think would be interesting. The entrance to the shark exhibit is a series of aquariums including one where the aquarium is built into the floor below you, so as you walk over it, you see all the fish below you swimming around.

Seeing that, I got Mr F and Mr Bunches out of the stroller and walked them over it, thinking that at last I'd found something they would want to inspect and could do so to their heart's content. They were mostly uninterested. Mr F did try to pick up a fish, but finding out that there was glass between us and it, he got bored and didn't perk up until we moved on to the carpet, where there was lint to look at.

Sweetie's agenda that day, aside from worrying, was to find personalized souvenirs for the Babies!. As a person whose name is unusual, I've long stopped trying that for myself. The Babies!'s real names are different, a little, but not weird or unusually spelled, and yet we could not find anything for Mr Bunches. They have every name you can imagine, names that don't even look like names, names that sound like the noises people make when they're trying to describe what they think a gravy-covered-chocolate chip cookie from the breakfast buffet would sound like, but they don't have Mr Bunches' real name.

The Shark exhibit was early in the afternoon, and leaving it we realized it was raining. Everyone else wanted to leave, but I put Matt's advice to work. "Don't worry," I said. "It won't last long. It never lasts more than an hour." I kept saying that for over an hour, when I switched to "I think it's letting up." A half hour later, I gave up and said "Matt's a liar."

The rain eventually lightened to the point where we thought it would end, so we tried to walk a little further into the park, but then it worsened and we eventually gave up, heading back out. The point we gave up at was the part of the park that was farthest from the entrance, so we were thoroughly soaked and exhausted by the time we reached the car and the rain started up again in earnest. In all, Tropical Storm Neverend continued through the entire night.

I did not want to head back to the time share yet, but there's not much to do in Orlando in the rain otherwise. I decided, therefore, that it was time to achieve the only remaining goal I had left in life.

I've gone to college, gotten married, had kids, gotten a career, started my own business, gone skydiving, been to foreign countries, met a Supreme Court justice, swam in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, visited the Grand Canyon... I have done a lot in my life, but there was one elusive goal that I had not met yet, and that was to eat at a Sonic Restaurant.

Ever since the advent of cable TV, people everywhere have been getting inundated with ads for businesses that they can't actually spend their money on, and that drives me crazy, especially when it's a business that I would definitely spend my money on, like a place where I can drive in and have them bring me my hamburger and ice cream right to my car. Sonic is that place. I'm not getting paid for any of this, and Sonic likely has no idea how I feel, so you can rest assured that this is my true emotion: I am hypnotized by the prospect of Sonic restaurants. For years now, I've been watching TV and those great ads come on with the funny people eating things that look delicious and having the time of their life, and I get excited about doing just that, only to again realize that there is not a Sonic restaurant within three states of where I live. I know that for a fact; I've checked, because one year I was going to make Sweetie go to one for our anniversary but it was too far to drive.

So Sonic seemed to me to be a dream beyond reach, something I'd hear about all my life and want to see but would never actually encounter, like tidal pools, until we decided to go to Orlando, and it occurred to me that they might have a Sonic there. So while the kids were planning trips to Seaworld and the beach and Sweetie wanted to go shopping and we were making sure there was a kiddie pool for the Babies!, I was also mapquesting a route to the closest Sonic, and I had my directions handy as we made our waterlogged exit from Seaworld.

The drive to Sonic, in the rain, took about 30 minutes, during which I became more and more anxious about whether Sonic would really exist because we seemed to be getting no closer to it. We went by various buildings and restaurants and miniature golf courses as we drove along "International Drive," which is to Orlando what 5th Avenue is to New York, only with smaller buildings and infinitely more franchise restaurants, including one called "Fish Bones," which said it served fish and steak. I'm no marketing expert, but I don't think the skeletal remains of the meal are the main selling point in luring hungry diners. Calling a restaurant "Fish Bones" did not make me think "Let's go eat there." Maybe "I hope they know the Heimlich maneuver there" but not eat there.

While I was concerned about that, The Boy was getting enraged by the miniature golf courses. These drew The Boy's ire because we saw a miniature golf course called "Pirate's Cove," and there is also a miniature golf course called "Pirate's Cove" in the Wisconsin Dells, not far from where we live, relatively speaking. The Boy thought this was an incredible ripoff, that Orlando minigolfers would think they could golf at "Pirate's Cove" when there was only one real "Pirate's Cove," ("real" being a relative concept in the world of miniature golf). We tried to mollify him by pointing out that maybe it was a franchise, that these were owned by the same person as the Wisconsin Dells site, but he remained unconvinced. I even tried pointing out to him that, historically speaking, Florida has more of a claim to pirates than Wisconsin would, because there were actual pirates in Florida at some point in the past.

"There were no real pirates," The Boy informed me. When I tried to convince him otherwise, and pointed out that Thomas Jefferson had to deal with the Barbary Coast pirates and that pirates had actually existed, he tuned me out. This was a first for me, though. The Boy has seen all the "Pirates of the Caribbean"movies, and generally speaking, if something has been in a movie or on TV, The Boy assumes it existed and actually took place. So Jurassic Park, the moon landing, Gotham City: these are taken as historical fact by The Boy. But take a historical fact like pirates and put it in a movie, and he assumes it is fake. I blame the Internet, because that's what parents do: we throw up our hands and blame the Internet. I don't know what parents blamed before the Internet. Fish Bones, maybe.

We made it to Sonic, finally, and I was so excited that I had Sweetie videotape our entrance to the parking lot. I'd share that with you, but it's too private. I get a little choked up just thinking about it. I'm going to keep it alongside our wedding video.

We pulled in, and I was overwhelmed. This might be my only chance to ever eat at a Sonic; I wanted to get everything. Plus, it all sounded really good, although that may have been that we really hadn't eaten anything since the breakfast buffet, and that gravy can only carry me so far.

It turns out that the trip would be more historic than even I can imagine, because Sonic is where I really came to understand Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim, you'll remember, was the star of Slaughterhouse-Five who had a sad experience, one that haunted him all his life, on vacation. Billy went to a cave with his dad, and the guide was going to turn out the lights and place Billy into total darkness for the first time in his life -- darkness more complete than any human being will ever experience. Only, when the guide did that, [SPOILER ALERT!] Billy was standing next to his dad, who was wearing a glow-in-the-dark watch -- so Billy missed out on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The message of that story? Dads screw things up without even trying. As I learned at Sonic, where I became Billy Pilgrim. Or maybe Middle did. Someone did, and here's how: We ordered, and I ordered the special -- the "Island Fire Burger," prominently advertised and loaded with bacon and two kinds of cheeses and sauce you could get only at Sonic.

My rule when going to a restaurant is: get what the restaurant is known for. If a restaurant specializes in one kind of food, order that. Don't go 'off the board' as they used to say in The Joker's Wild and get all tricky. I once ended up at a Red Lobster with my mom and my sister. I hate seafood so I ordered a Caesar salad and a burger. (Because I was dieting at the time, and because I had no idea what a "Caesar salad" was, I ordered it without dressing. The waitress just stared at me until Mom and Sis explained what was wrong.) My salad and burger were awful and tasted like fish anyway. At "Johnny Rocket's," once, I ordered the burger and Sweetie got chicken. When my burger came, she was jealous because her chicken was awful.

(You should note that my diets include burgers. That's the way to diet.)

While I got my "Island Fire Burger," Middle ordered a regular double cheeseburger. The food was brought out to us, we distributed it, and ate our meals, and only after eating it did we realize that Middle and I had accidentally eaten the other's sandwiches.

My once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the first sandwich I'd ever eat from Sonic -- the only sandwich I'd ever eat from Sonic-- was the wrong one. Just like Billy Pilgrim, only in a more burger-esque way. Or Middle was just like him. I'm still not sure, but we both got the wrong burger and it was very significant in a literary sort of way.

But my burger was still really good. Let me emphasize that. It was a great burger.

In retrospect, I'm not sure how we did not realize the mixup. For my part, all I thought while eating it (besides "I can't believe I'm at Sonic! This is great!") was this: This is not as spicy as I thought. I wasn't sure which Island, exactly, the "Island Fire" was coming from, but it was definitely not one of the spicier islands; it was an island where maybe British citizens would go on holiday, like the Isle of Wight. I don't know what Middle thought as she ate her burger, but I do know that she was more disappointed than I was because for the rest of the trip, she wanted to go back to Sonic and get her "real" burger. So maybe she's Billy Pilgrim in this story. I was never very good with symbolism.

I got over my literary-esque disappointment in the best way: Ordering dessert, which posed its own dilemma because all of the desserts, too, were enticing, and there were exotic, one-of-a-kind things to order like a Coconut Creme Pie Shake. In the end, I opted for the Blue Coconut Slush drink, because "Blue" is always the best possible flavor for desserts. There is no flavor so great already that you can't make it a little greater still by making it "Blue."

With that, Day Two was essentially done, because there was nothing else to do and we were all tired from running past Seaworld exhibits to get to other Seaworld exhibits, and from keeping the Babies! moving. That and we were three hours into the rainstorm that Matt promised would last only an hour, a storm which showed no signs of letting up. So we drove back to the time share and began trying to wind the Babies! down to get some sleep, because we'd need all our energy for the next day... since the next day, we were heading for alligators.




Tomorrow: Gators! And, I reach the limit of my sample-ness.

Important Mug

Important
by

brianefp

Get this custom mug
at Zazzle

Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.

Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! AlwaysMostlyRight!: It’s the sports blog for people who love sports but hate sports blogs.

Vacation Part Two: Please Don't Feed McGriddles To the Alligators

My vacation story continues. To read part one, click here.

There's something either very disturbing, or very bothersome, about how long a "McGriddle" can stay fresh sitting in a backpack without any special wrapping whatsoever.

We got some "McGriddles" at O'Hare International Airport at one of the 150 McDonald's we passed going from the gate where we arrived to the gate where we would leave.

When your flight begins in Madison, Wisconsin, you may develop an unrealistic expectation of airports. We made it to the airport in a reasonable amount of time, and unloaded the Babies! and luggage. I then parked in the long-term parking lot, which is cheaper because it's far enough away from the terminal that you can't actually see the terminal. It's so far away that there's wildlife there; as I walked past a tree, something moved and ran away. I hoped it was a cat, but I thought it might be a raccoon-- maybe even one of the ones we'd displaced.

Security at the Madison NonInternational Airport is pretty easy to get through, even when you're carrying Babies! like Sweetie and I were. They made The Boy start the laptop, they made me show them a can of formula, we all had to take off our footwear, and then we were through, with a half-hour until boarding.

"You need to go to Gate 7," the security agent told me. With only a half-hour, I was nervous.

"Where's Gate 7?" I asked. "Is it, like 40 minutes away? Should we run?" The security guard shook her head.

"It's right there," and she pointed, and it was. All the gates were right there. So we sat down and ignored the hostile stares of the other passengers as they contemplated the fact that they were about to get on a plane with two Babies!, and did what all good parents do to get through tough times: we drugged the Babies!

It's okay; we had a doctor's excuse. The pediatrician had told us to load them up with children's cough medicine because it would help them sleep on the plane and then we wouldn't have to worry about being that day's lead story on CNN: Plane forced to land one mile outside of Madison because of terrorist twins.

Just to make it palatable, though, we rationalized the dosage by pointing out to each other that the Babies! had some mosquito bites, and the bites were pretty big, so maybe they were allergic. Maybe they were developing hives right then! Maybe they were about to go into seizure or something and only a dose of hypoallergenic cough syrup could prevent that!

Boy, did it work. They both fell asleep right about as the plane took off. Mr Bunches didn't wake up until we got to Florida; he slept all the way through O'Hare and the subsequent flight from Chicago to Orlando. That made Sweetie's job a little easier, carrying him through O'Hare, where we had to make our way from one terminal to the other, traveling approximately 450 miles on foot carrying two babies and dragging the carry-ons behind us.

We had an hour or so to kill at the gate. Here is how each of us spent that time:

Mr Bunches: Sleeping sprawled out on the bench, oblivious to the world. He didn't even wake up when I changed his diaper.

That's actually when we started to worry about whether we'd calculated his medicine dosage correctly. The doctor had said to give him a teaspoon, but the doctor had forgotten that the rest of the medical community pretends that people remember the "Metric System" from when we all spent a week on the Metric Unit in 4th grade, and so the medical community labels everything in units like "ml" and "cm" and "cholesterol" and other meaningless terms. The medicine's syringe had no "teaspoon" marking on it. We'd solved that by googling the question How many milliliters are in a teaspoon, and decided that since most of the websites said it's between 4.8 and 5.0, we'd go with that.

Mr F spent his time at O'Hare pounding on the glass window and trying to escape the little enclosure we'd set up using suitcases and sharing everyone's McDonald's breakfasts, alternating between eating his pieces and throwing them at Mr Bunches, who paid no attention.

The Boy sat and slumped and tried to pick fights with Middle.

Middle sat and slumped and tried to pick fights with The Boy. Their efforts failed because they were both picking fights on different subjects, and not paying any actual attention to what either was saying. It was more reflexive than anything. The Boy would claim that Middle could have caught Mr F before he got away, and Middle would not respond directly; instead, she'd point out that The Boy was making a mess.

Sweetie worried. That was her number one activity for the whole trip.

And I ate two of the three McGriddles we'd bought as part of the breakfast pack, and tried to corral Mr F using makeshift toys because I didn't want to unpack the carry-on and get his 'real' toys out. So we distracted him with straws and napkins and soda lids, all of which he would play with for a second, then throw on the floor and try to climb over the suitcases. I don't know what primal compulsion was telling him to get lost in O'Hare airport, but it was very strong.

On the plane, while Mr Bunches stayed in his coma on Sweetie's lap, Mr F tore up the emergency instruction card, tore two pages out of "Skymall," slammed the window shade down, and stuck his finger in my eye. I was fearing the worst, but then the plane took off and he dropped to sleep like someone had removed the oxygen from the cabin. He stayed asleep the rest of the way, awkwardly perched on my lap.

I spent the flight trying to look out the window and figure out what the things on the ground were. That's hard, because from the air, everything looks like... nothing. Unless you're flying over the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon, ground looks like ground and trees, grass, fields of corn, houses, and factories are all more or less indistinguishable. It would have helped greatly if Illinois or Kentucky had bothered to put up huge diagrams like the Incas did, or crop circles, or maybe just a large sign next to everything they own, saying THIS IS A BARN or THIS IS A CAR DEALERSHIP or ANOTHER BARN.

In the end, based on my reckoning, most of the country between Chicago and Orlando is made up of three things: golf courses, Georgia, and truck stops. That's what everything looks like from a mile or so up in the air. But I've driven through the country, too, so I know that actually is what most of that area is made up of.

We made it to Orlando and got off the plane and the very first thing we noticed was the phenomenal humidity. I've lived through some pretty humid days, days when you sweat just walking around and everything feels damp. I've never felt Florida humidity. Stepping off the plane into the jetway alone it was terrible; it felt like stepping into a hot shower; there was that much moisture in the air.

And it showed. The Orlando Airport is not very welcoming, not least because it's dark and smells like smokers, but also because it's covered in something that appears to have come from the future and is slowly taking over the world. Most of the airport is torn apart and you can see the skeleton of the building, which includes some sort of fuzzy, green substance that I guessed was mold and The Boy thought might be insulation. But why would you need insulation in Orlando? To keep the humidity out? Because it was not working.

The futuristic/decaying impression was only heightened by the monorails we had to take to get from one terminal to the other. In that sense, Florida seemed at first more enlightened than Chicago. O'Hare makes you walk a marathon to get to your plane. Orlando gives you a train ride to move you 100 yards. I thought they were being nice until we walked outside the airport to get our rental van and realized the real reason: nobody wants to go outside in Florida. Breathing Orlando's air is difficult, at best. While it's clean, it tastes like jungle and is wet, and you sweat just breathing. Getting everything into the car left me more soaked with perspiration than many of my workouts.

It was only a short drive to the time-share we were using for the next few days. Sweetie's parents have bought umpteen time shares. A while back, they inherited some money, and began investing in time-share condos, which they've bought one after the other. I think about 75% of all time-shares are now held in my in-laws' names. They travel all the time to them, spending three weeks in Branson or a week in New Jersey. I' m not sure why they do that; Sweetie says that they don't go out and do much when they get there, and if you stay in a time-share, you still have to make your own bed and do your own cleaning and cooking (or go out to eat, as we did), so if they're staying in a time-share in New Jersey and still cleaning and cooking and not going out, their life is pretty much what it would normally be. Except they're in New Jersey, and that seems to me to be trading down.

Along the way to our time-share, we saw the 'sights' of Orlando and Kissimmee, which are: not much. I love tourist spots, and tourist stores, and gift shops, and so I was prepared to love this area of Florida, which to me exists solely as a place to hold theme parks and draw tourists. But I was disappointed in the tourist traps that Orlando/Kissimmee presented me with.

I am a consummate tourist. The off-the-beaten-path, for locals-only, classy, reserved spots in states are not for me. I like the Mystery Spots, the mini-golf courses, the fudge shops. In California, we'd seen the Drive-Through Tree and Pier 39 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In New York, we'd bought those "I HEART NY" shirts and shopped at the NBC Store. Las Vegas was one big tour of t-shirt shops, photos with Elvis impersonators, and even touring a fake New York at the New York New York casino. If there's anything more touristy than going to Las Vegas to go to New York, I don't know what it is.

Orlando/Kissimmee featured mainly walk-in clinics. We began driving to the time share, and the first strip mall we saw featured prominently a sign for a walk-in clinic. A few miles later, there was another one, this time next to a liquor store. When we saw a third, I began to wonder just how dangerous the area might be.

I had to wonder that because there was one fact I knew about Florida before going there, and that fact was that any body of water larger than my can of Coke Zero had an alligator in it. This was reinforced not just by the yearly story CNN plays about someone who has an alligator in their kitchen, but also by the prevalence of signs warning people not to feed the alligators -- implying, I think, that the "feeding" would be done using one's own body parts.

Florida-ers, I think, take alligators for granted. The sign outside the time-share's own lake warned us not to feed the "Alligators OR Wildlife." The use of "or" seemed to me to make a distinction: Alligators are not wildlife. Or maybe it was to highlight the fact that there were alligators. Warn a tourist against fishing or swimming because there's "wildlife," and we'll all jump in and try to get pictures of it. Say there's alligators, and we'll stand ten feet away and wonder whether the leaf we see is actually an alligator drifting just below the surface waiting to charge up and eat your twins.

We had to walk by the alligator-filled lake to get to the pool, which raised the possibility that an alligator would, actually, leap out and eat the Babies! Sweetie dealt with this by making sure that the Babies! walked on the side of her that was away from the lake. She does the same thing on busy streets, placing herself between danger and the Babies! While admirable parenting, I have trouble believing that Sweetie would be able to stop either a reptile or an SUV.

So maybe, I decided, all the walk-in clinics were for people who hadn't heeded the warning signs.

Other than walk-in clinics, the area offered one prevalent kind of shop: The combination food store/liquor store/electronics store. These were buildings, usually two stories tall, with a generic sign that labeled them to be a "Grocery/Convenience Store." (There were lots of generic stores or restaurants in the area. Some restaurants said, simply, "Pizza." How lazy of an enterpreneur are you that you couldn't even use your own name for your shop? What if that trend catches on? Honey, let's go out to eat tonight. I'll take us all to Chicken.)

Absent a name, we could still gather what the store sold by looking at the giant oversized posters that covered every window and prevented us from seeing into the store itself. On the store nearest our time-share, one poster said "GROCERIES MILK EGGS". Another said "CAMERAS IPODS ELECTRONICS." A third advertised beer. And one whole window said "LAPTOPS $289." It went on like that around the building.

I got a little sad picturing people coming from around the world and flocking into stores to get eggs, beer, and a cheap laptop. Plus, that's not a souvenir. A souvenir has to say the name of a place you visited on it. Unless the laptop said "Busch Gardens," it was not a decent souvenir.

Combination stores seemed to be Orlando/Kissimmee's specialty. The electronics/grocery store was joined by a plethora of Super Walmarts, which were flanked in turn by gas stations where you could get gas, beer, pizza, and a tattoo, if you so desired. I wondered how the consumer need for that type of store had sprung up. I need to stop and get some gas in my car. I'd better pick a spot that also sells beer and pizza or no dinner tonight. But, darn it, I'm running out of time to get that tattoo! Could you get the tattoo while you pumped your gas? That's full service.

Plus, every store-- literally every store, including the World's Largest Orange (which sold fruit and t-shirts) also promised to sell you a time-share and to buy or sell your amusement park tickets at a discount. Florida's shopkeepers leave no stone unturned. Every trip to the store is one-stop shopping.

We made it to the time-share, and checked in and managed, too, to avoid a lecture on how we should buy a time-share of our own by politely declining to attend a "short" seminar that would be "short" and would be "no pressure" to buy a time-share and although it would be "short" and "no pressure" it would be informative and we could get discounts on Disney tickets by attending this "short" "no pressure" seminar. By the end of the spiel, the lady had used the words "short" and "no pressure" so often, I guessed maybe she thought those were our names. When we declined for the fourteenth time, she said, archly, "You mean, you're just going to pay full price?" and gave us a look that seemed to say Do that and you won't be able to afford even the discount laptops at the Tattoo Gas Station.

We held firm and finally made it to our room, where we used the luggage cart carry up the suitcases and the Babies!, unpacked, and then piled back into the minivan to visit our first thrilling Florida destination: The Super Wal-Mart.

You can only bring so many diapers onto the plane, after all, and we'd gone through most of ours.

The Super Wal-Mart would turn out to be our most visited spot over the next four days. I went there four times, and Sweetie went there once, although to be fair Sweetie's trip was made only to get the stuff I had been supposed to buy but had screwed up on.

While going to the Super Wal-Mart, I also called my brother, who lives in Tampa. I'll call him "Matt" (his real name). We were planning on squeezing in a visit to Matt's house, because I hadn't seen him in 8 years and because we were in a closer geographical location than usual.

That's how people think, you know. I've learned it. We have relatives in Milwaukee, California, and Florida, and if I venture into some undefined radius of their homes, I'm expected to stop in. After getting back from an all-day seminar in Milwaukee, I called my dad, who lives there, to talk to him.

"I was at a seminar in Milwaukee today," I said, when he asked why I was home late from work.

"You should have stopped in," he said.

"It's my anniversary," I told him, which was true, but it didn't seem to mollify him.

When we went to California to visit Los Angeles, we had to begin our trip to Los Angeles by staying in Oakland with Sweetie's dad for a few days, and then go visit my sister in Northern California for another day, the thinking being that if we're in the state, we should just visit them, but that kind of logic doesn't really hold with California, which takes up about half the landmass of the US and which takes 14 hours to drive through. Still, we did it, and now that we were in Florida and only 87 miles from Matt, we were expected to visit.

So I called him, and told him our plans for the next few days, and he gave me some advice. First, he said, when it starts to rain, wait it out. He claimed the rain (which was going on at that moment) only lasts about an hour. I registered that and stored it away to use on the kids if it kept raining, because it could be useful in forcing them to keep doing something they don't want to do, like walking in the rain. When "Come on, we're on vacation, let's tough it out" stopped working, I could switch to "Matt says it only lasts an hour."

Matt also suggested we visit a beach, and I asked him about sharks. Specifically, I said "Are there sharks at that beach?"

To which he replied: "The sharks aren't going to bite you."

I noticed that he had tried not to answer my question, but had actually answered it quite well. I also thought he seemed a little casual about maneating sharks. But maybe living with alligators surrounding you has that effect.

After Super Wal-Mart, we drove around a little more, looking at the liquor stores, laptop shops, and walk-in clinics, until, exhausted, we went back to the timeshare to fall asleep. The Boy and I spent a little time at the pool, where we were treated to the sounds of karaoke coming from the bar next to the pool. (To the guy who sang Bohemian Rhapsody, which I did not know you could sing at karaoke: I admire your courage. Also: Pick a key and go with it Just one key. If you ever hear anyone, including me, trying to sing a Queen song, especially that Queen song, you come away with a new appreciation for just how talented Freddy Mercury was, and just how talented we are not.)

That night, with the older kids in their room and the Babies! on their air mattresses at the foot of our bed, Sweetie dozed off, but I was too excited at being on vacation, so I distracted myself by eating the third McGriddle which had been in the backpack all day, rationalizing that by telling myself (1) It should not go to waste, (2) It appeared to still be fresh, and (3) I'm on vacation. I can justify anything by telling myself I'm on vacation. It's kind of scary, actually. If someone came up to me and asked me to let them practice some elective surgery, and then pointed out that I was on vacation, I'd be tempted to undergo the procedure.

I also tried to doze off by watching local news with the sound muted. That might sound boring, but in Orlando, it's not.

Our local news, in Wisconsin, is things like property taxes and road construction. Local news in Orlando involves an alarming number of arrests and murders and fires started by lightning and shots of police tape or mug shots, each with heading that probably make sense if you can hear the reporter, but which are like haikus with the sound off. Under a picture of a haggard looking woman that might be a mug shot: Stolen. Was she stolen? Why not show a picture of what she stole, if that's what happened? A live scene of police tape and flashing lights over a reporter's shoulder might have a banner saying Highway 192 Threat. We had driven in on Highway 192; if only I'd known! A family crying, a courtroom scene, and a guy in a suit talking were followed by the anchor's face and the heading "Sex Scandal." With that one, I saw a second reason for the prevalance of walk-in clinics, and fell asleep wondering if the Highway 192 threat was stolen alligators, and how they might fit into the sex scandal.

Tomorrow: Sea World, and Matt's A Liar (But [spoiler alert] Not About The Sharks!)

Date Quiz:

Date Quiz
by

brianefp

Get this custom shirt
at Zazzle

Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.

The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours! Find out what’s The Best in any category you can think of, and a lot you can’t. Best Simpson Sister? Best Candy Bar to Eat In Sections? Best Plot Twist That Makes a Lame Song Cool? Best Sexy Sci-fi Alien Chick? They’re all here—and more!

Vacation All I Ever Wanted.

Here is some interesting math for you: My ratio of hours of sleep to alligators in the past 5 days is about 25-1 -- which is to say, I slept 1 hour for every 25 alligators I saw on vacation.

I like those numbers.

We took 80% of our kids on vacation over the last week. Oldest is 21 now and has important things to do like see her new boyfriend and wait for her tax rebate check, so she opted not to go. She did call us several times to complain that her tax rebate had not arrived and to complain that she wished she'd come, so it was a lot like having her on vacation anyway; complaining is how Oldest blows off steam.

I blow off steam by taking two teenagers, two toddlers, and Sweetie on a cross-country trip to Orlando and Tampa, but by "Orlando" I actually mean "Kissimmee," which I pronounce "kiss-im-me" but which The Boy and Middle tell me (repeatedly) is pronounced "kiss-sim-mee." I meant to take us to Orlando, and we actually did go to Orlando -- we just did not stay in Orlando, because I never stay where I think I'm going to stay. When we went to California, I thought we were going to stay in Redondo Beach, which I picked for our vacation because it was mentioned in a Beach Boys song. But we stayed in Hermosa Beach, which is not mentioned in any songs, so far as I can tell. Before that, when Sweetie and I went to New York, I booked all our nights into hotels in advance, only to find out later that the hotel I'd booked us into in New York was actually in New Jersey, and in a bad part of New Jersey, at that.

It was a bad part of New Jersey because first, while it was, as advertised, only a mile or two from Manhattan, that "mile or two" was the Hudson River or the East River or some river, or maybe a bay; I'm not very strong on geography because I spent all my time in school studying the Gilded Age and pretending to read the books I was assigned, books like Slaughterhouse-5, which I eventually did read and which allowed me to make a connection, on this vacation, with Billy Pilgrim in a burger-ish sort of way. (And that, readers, is called foreshadowing, a literary technique in which a writer [me] lets the reader [you] know that eventually he's going to tell you a story about eating a burger and try to make it seem significant somehow.)

It was a bad part of New Jersey, second, because, as the new hotel booking agent I talked to on the phone told me: "If you're taking your wife there on your honeymoon, you'll also want to take an Uzi." She may have been just downing the competition, but I believed her. I was talking to her, at that point, on the first night of our honeymoon, when we had checked into the first hotel I'd picked out, and were horrified because it was in a terrible neighborhood and was dirty and appeared to have cameras installed in the walls. I should have, then, been tipped off not just by the fact that our hotel was the only building for miles that didn't look like a crackhouse, but also by the fact that the check-in desk was protected by bulletproof glass. I didn't sleep at all that night, because I was worried that we'd be mugged or perhaps just poisoned by whatever was on the bedspread; instead, I spent the night rebooking our hotels, which is how I came to talk to that particular lady who explained to me all the problems with the hotel I had selected on my own.

That's part of how we ended up in Kissimmee instead of Orlando; the other part is that we were staying in Sweetie's parent's time-share. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We left for vacation on Wednesday morning, but it would be equally correct to say that we left on Tuesday night, because our flight was scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., which meant we needed to be at the airport by 4 a.m. -- not because of security, but because the logistics involved with getting the teenagers and Babies! and enough electronics to build a new space shuttle through security. One whole carry-on was devoted exclusively to electronics: two cameras, two iPods, a laptop, a portable DVD player a "Playstation Portable," and approximately 1000 miles of adapter cords, all of which were entangled into a Gordian knot the precise moment that I put them in the suitcase.

In packing that carry-on, I took a safety precaution that the experienced travelers among you will recognize: I stuffed (clean) disposable diapers above, below, and all around the electronics so that when The Boy, whose job it was to transport the electronics carry-on, dropped it (as he did roughly every 3.5 seconds), the electronics would not be broken.

The clever use of diapers also meant that we were even more completely unprepared to go through security than I had thought, because it meant that The Boy had to unpack all the diapers to get to the laptop to start it up to prove to them that we were not going to blow up the plane. In this case, though, I think it would be reasonable to assume we were maniacs,because who else besides suicidal maniacs is carrying two toddlers through an airport at 4 a.m.?

We were packed and ready to go Tuesday night, because I had it all carefully worked out to minimize problems and maximize relaxation. I had sorted the carry-ons into three categories: electronics, food, and "miscellaneous." "Miscellaneous" included more diapers, the DVDs to watch on the player, the book "So Big," starring Elmo, some random toys that I'd grabbed, and the book I hoped to read on the plane. We had the suitcases ready to go, the documents in a special folder, and I'd laid out my clothes, which included one of the t-shirts I'd made (cross country advertising!), cargo shorts, and, as a last-minute switch, sneakers instead of "Mocks."

The "Mocks" I was going to wear are fake "Crocs," those awesome shoes that everybody hates. I got my pair from the Babies! for Father's Day and was planning on wearing them on the plane, but at the last minute packed them and wore my Starbury running shoes instead, because there might be some sort of traveling emergency that would require me to have reasonably-priced footwear on.

Then, we went to bed with the alarms set for 3 a.m. We were on a tight schedule: Up at 3; shower, get ready, load the car, have the older kids get in, and then at the last second, we would go up, wake the Babies!, dress them, and get them in the car before they knew what happened.

I have to say, it worked perfectly, except that by "perfectly" I mean "not at all." First, we couldn't pack all the suitcases right away because Sweetie and Middle are girls, which means that they had to use each of their 140 different skin-care products first thing in the morning, and then pack them in the suitcase, because skin-care products cannot be taken onto a plane nowadays unless the total amount of product is less than 3 ounces and is in a clear plastic bag and was not made in China and you can answer three security questions including "What's the president of Nigeria's middle name?" (Answer: If you know it, you are a terrorist.)

We learned about that regulation and others the day before while trying to decide what we could put in the carry-ons. Our plan with the Babies! to get them to behave on the flight was to drug them into submission and then ply them with bottles and cookies everytime they woke up (we had the same plan with The Boy and Middle, only with "electronics" and "gummi worms" substituted at the appropriate place.) Only we didn't know what drugs and bottles and cookies might be allowed on the plane: Could we take formula? Were cookies okay? What if they were not the take-apart Oreo-kind of cookies, making them less of a security risk because you can't hide something in a Chips Ahoy!, while you might be able to hide something in one of those double-stuff Oreos 'cause they have a lot of frosting?

Those were not the only questions we had about the trip, either. We also wondered whether our ATM cards would be any good in Florida. We wondered that because everyone knows that you can't carry cash on a vacation; in fact, based on years of seeing Karl Malden on TV, everyone knows that if you are more than 0.7 miles from your home, and you have more than $1 cash on you, you're a sucker who's marked for death. Here' s a universal truth about the United States: Everyone who lives anywhere else but your home is a thief and possibly a murderer. So to avoid trouble, when you go on vacation to troubled areas like Orlando, you have to secure your cash. I already carry my wallet in my front pocket all the time because my upbringing taught me that everyone I see, including my boss and probably the Babies!, is a pickpocket, so I had a head start on the plethora of con-men and castoffs from Danny Ocean's crew that were waiting to beset us in Orlando.

We learned that our ATM cards would, in fact, work just fine in Florida, a state which, as it turns out, is part of our banking system and everything. Actually, we learned that the random guy who answered the phone at our bank thought that our ATM cards would work just fine, probably, in Florida. Thus almost reassured, we decided to risk it. What's the worst that could happen?

By the way, I learned never to ask that question around Sweetie, who gets nervous about traveling (and why not, with all the terrorists and thieves and lack of access to face creams while in flight?) I learned not to ask that when she was nervous about the flight and asked if I thought it was likely that we would crash, and I said I thought a crash was extremely unlikely. I then added, to reassure her: "Don't worry, though. If the plane crashes, you'll never even know it because we'll be dead." That did not reassure her, for some reason.

Once we got the suitcases packed and the suitcases loaded and the older kids loaded, it was time to stow the Babies! And we were only 10 minutes behind schedule at that point, too. We went up to their room and turned on their light and tried to act happy and cheerful, as though it was not only normal to wake them in the middle of the night, but a fun, partyish kind of thing, too.

They were not fooled and began crying immediately. Moving as quickly as we could, we threw on their traveling clothes and started to head down. That's when Mr Bunches decided that he wanted Sweetie, and Sweetie only, to carry him, which would have been fine except that Sweetie had already handed him to me so that I had both twins and she could throw away their diapers and lock up the house. So I tried to just hustle him down to the car, but he began screaming more and more and that upset Mr F, who started crying, but I soldiered on and we got them to the car, where Sweetie began strapping them into their seats while I went to turn the lights off in the car that The Boy had pulled into the garage; we'd had him park the car in the garage, and he'd thoughtfully left the interior lights on and locked the door.

These are kids that don't lock our house door. But put a car into a locked garage, and they seal it up hermetically.

So I had to go get the car keys to unlock it to turn off the light, and left Sweetie to supervise the remainder of babyloading. She was trying to settle down Mr Bunches, who is no pushover. Having failed with just crying, he upped the ante: While I went to get the keys, Mr Bunches decided to barf.

I came out with the keys and had to go back in and get a change of clothes, and we changed Mr Bunches in the car in the driveway, his howls and Mr F's cries waking up the neighborhood.

With that finished, we started our vacation... only 40 minutes behind schedule.

Tomorrow: From the airport to our first day in Orlando!

(All pictures in this entry are taken by Middle Daughter.)

Comma:

Comma
by

brianefp

Get this custom shirt
at Zazzle

Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.


Babies! Babies! Pets! Pets! is all about the Babies! And the Pets! . Check out the photos there, and send your own to win a t-shirt!