Manic Monday Blogarrhea: The Travel Edition

The Lindstrom Family Circus has landed back in the land of reality, where snow covers the ground, and I drive a dirty car that smells like sour milk. However, on our travels, I picked up some observations that I'd like to Blogarrhea about here:

Remember the olden days when real people worked at desks and checked you in for your flight, took your baggage, and made nice with you at the airport? I haven't flown in a while, but apparently people have been replaced by computers, and now you have to check yourself in. WHAT????? This leads to a greater rant in future days about technology and how I think it actually divides us rather than unites us, but that's another blog for another day. For now, I just want to point out that humans are becoming obsolete and we should be afraid that computers are going to rule the world. In fact, I think we should be afraid that our children will evolve into computers.

kkkkmmm (What the heck does that mean? I decided to leave that there and tell you that I just dropped some kernels of rice on my keyboard and they were stuck between the k and the m key... moving on...)

When you are flying with three children under four years of age, people give you lots of looks. I want to think that they are impressed looks, but I think that the truth is that the looks are saying, "dear God, please don't seat me anywhere near that family!" We get the same looks at church and restaurants. I am used to it. This is strange to me, though: At the culmination of the flight, many people said to us, "what good babies you have. Are they always this good?" I find this to be the strangest question, "is s/he a good baby?" What does that even mean? Like is the baby a philanthropist? Do they give selflessly? Are they really asking if the baby cries a lot? Is there such a thing as a "bad" baby? And if I said, "no, they are actually usually really bad," what would the person who asked the question think of me? (For the record, I would like to say that I feel very lucky to have very easy going children, I would NEVER classify them as "bad.")

I want to make an airline a whole lot of money, by giving them this idea: There needs to be an airline that caters specifically to families. It's a win win. The families would be happy because the airline would cater to their unique needs, and business travelers would be happy that they didn't have to fly that airline. Bonus points for this airline if they are able to put an indoor playground in the terminal for children to get all their energy out in the airport.

I got a lot out of this vacation. An opportunity to spend some time in warm weather with my family, the time to be with very very good friends whom we see too infrequently, and a little natural vitamin D and pool time. The most life changing thing that happened during this vacation came as quite a surprise to me. I learned that I covet a mini-van like a retired man covets a Jaguar convertible. Between this realization and my pajama jeans, it has come to my attention that I am doing the exact opposite of "keeping my cool." Oh well... when in Rome...