I had an idea about hooking people up to share cabs at the airports in Chicago at BlogHer next week. No need to spend $50 and be lonely as you travel to the hotel - just print this .jpg out and wave it around like a fool at baggage claim or the taxi stand and watch other attendees flock to your side to share a cab!

(You also get the added benefit of meeting a couple other attendees before you even check-in, so you'll have a few familiar faces even if this is your first BlogHer and you don't know anyone.)



(Spread the word, if you don't mind.)

Our trip was a big success. If you had told me a couple years ago that we would be traveling internationally with a minimum of stress, I would have smiled politely and thought, "Not with these kids, we won't." Peanut was simply incapable dealing with that much change and transition and it wasn't worth the struggle to go anywhere when just getting through a routine day at home was so tough.

I won't pretend that this trip was all sweetness and light, because there were a couple rough episodes, the worst of which involved a weeping Peanut repeatedly banging his head on the fiberglass window of the tube train we were squashed into like sardines while I attempted to restrain him.

That was pretty ugly, a combination of heat and exhaustion and stress and ASD. All those people trying not to watch us as Peanut screamed for water and then screamed harder after spilling some on his shirt, as I tried to soothe him and keep him restrained while pressed up against strangers. Awful. But we pressed onward, stopped for breaks, got through it.

But for each one of those episodes there were entire afternoons of watching the kids discover everything there was to see all around them. Over the course of the week, we visited Big Ben and Parliament, rode a boat tour down the Thames to Greenwich and back, and spent a day at the Science Museum, where the kids were thrilled to find a "Wallace and Grommit" exhibit.

We spent another full day at the zoo, complete with a stroll through Regent's Park at the end of the day:



We made multiple visits to the British Museum, since it was right near our apartment:



At the end of the week, we rode the London Eye and saw the entire city laid out at our feet:



As if that weren't enough, we also rode around town on a double decker tour bus, visited London's largest toy store, and managed to cram as much time in with my sister and her family as possible.

Pepper astounded me with the kindness and patience she showed with her younger cousins and Peanut is such a little sponge for factual information that he was in heaven with all of the history and dates that filled our days. The place we stayed was terrific - it cost us less than a single hotel room at a nice hotel would have, and we ended up in a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment with washer/dryer and kitchen. While the lack of air conditioning was a problem, the location turned out to be perfect for us. There was a children's park a block away, a shopping center 2 blocks away, and the British Museum was only 3 blocks away.

In fact, other than the occasional crazy ASD-style meltdown, the only downside of the trip was the heat - it was in the 80's the entire time, which means the non-air-conditioned buses and tube trains were a nightmare. The weather report before we left indicated 70 degrees and breezy, so I never got to wear those cute cardigans I brought. As I've detailed before, I really don't do well in sweaty situations. The only thing that made me feel better about the heat was coming home and finding that the weather on Cape Cod had been wet and cool, including one freaky July hailstorm.

Getting back into the swing of things has been tough for all of us, but I always think it takes twice as long as you are away on vacation to get back to normal after you get back. Unfortunately, this means we should be approaching normalcy right around the time I leave for BlogHer, which is going to throw everything out of whack again.

(But - YAY! BlogHer!)

Labels: family time, getting all cultured and shit, London, sweat management, travel

Except I can't access them, 'cause my husband loaded them all onto our networked external hard drive and now the drive has dropped off our wi-fi network. I supposed I could haul my tired ass alllllll the way upstairs and fumble around with the USB cord and physically connect my laptop to the hard drive... but that seems like a lot of effort right now. Maybe I'll send Pepper upstairs to reboot the computer system up there, after I eat some more leftover potato salad.

(And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about the energy level around here. Between my surging hormones and the jet lag, I'm moving extry slow today.)

Labels: jet lagged and hormone riddled but at least the house is well stocked with carbs

Last year we spent this same week in Ireland on vacation, and we needed our fleece pullovers almost every single day. We had a turf fire going in the house almost every night, so much so that I needed my asthma inhaler to deal with the smoke. It felt strange because at home on Cape Cod we had been having a streak of years where the weather went from a rainy 50 to a muggy 80 within days and stayed that way for the rest of the summer. It was so odd to be somewhere more temperate, somewhere we wore fleece in July.

This year we are spending the last week of June in London and it is 85 degrees out - but I can say with authority that it feels like 110 in the tube. Maybe even 120, based on the amount of head-sweat I produced. Then again, I am a freaky head-sweater. I packed according to the 10-day forecast I had right before we left, which predicted 70 - 75 degrees and a couple days of rain. I packed rain jackets and lightweight pants and short sleeved shirts, but what I really needed to pack was stuff suitable for a tropical vacation.

Who'd have thought I'd be worrying about a sunburn in London? Damn. What threw me off more than anything, though, was that we had finally been having a fabulous spring-into-summer season on the Cape - it has been the first year in memory that we haven't tripped directly from rainy spring into full-blown summer. We've had weeks of "Ish" weather, as in "60-ish" and "gorge-ish." You bring a cardigan with you everywhere, and you are good to go, and it has been lovely.

So, here I am, in London. Sweaty, hot, and at times fairly miserable, but there is also good stuff to talk about. Spending time with my sister tops everything. Just letting the kids hang out, playing and fighting and just being in their house and catching up, has been the highlight for me.

Sure, the park at the end of the block has become a godsend in this weather, complete with ice cream truck. The nice people we are renting from have supplied us with a super-duper fan, and the prepared food at the local supermarket is totally kick-ass. But it all comes down to spending time with family.

Dr. V and my bro-in-law went out to the local pub on Saturday night, leaving my sister and I to deal with the kids and chill out. We got to have a bro-in-law love-in AND my sis and I were reassured that our freaky kids aren't all that freaky given the shared genetics we witnessed. :)

We are all going to meet up and ride the London Eye, which will be awesome... although I think I need to check and see whether those pods are air conditioned. On our own, we have been to the Science Museum, and seen lots of bus tour "sights," and traipsed around the city, and we will do more of the tourist stuff. After a few days here, though, it's obvious that it all comes down to picking the right restaurant for 8 of us to keep 4 crazy loud children happy while 4 parents get to catch up and just... hang.

Labels: siblings, the Universe maybe has a little crush on me, travel

... and now I'm trying to think of something funny to write about underwear. Maybe it will come to me.

We are in London. Actually, I am typing this from the sunny back room of my sister's house a bit out from the city. We arrived on Thursday night after a loooooong flight. The plane had a "maintenance issue" that had to be resolved, so that added an hour of "when are we taking off?" to the 6+ hour flight. Fun! (Plus? I scored 100 bonus super sparkly fabulous anxiety points by starting a vacation with that old favorite, "Potential Death by Plane Crash Due to a Maintenance Problem.")

The flight was long, and while it was a lot of work keeping Peanut happy and occupied on the plane, it was easier than the overnight flight to Ireland last summer when he was crazy psycho tired. When we arrived, we didn't know if the cab we had arranged would still be there, and it finally felt like vacation to me when we walked out and saw a man with my name on a sign waiting for us to take us to the hotel.

I'm actually not sure what to call the place we are staying. It's not a hotel, per se - it's a "short stay rental." And it is AWESOME. I'll link to the company but not the actual property we are staying at for now, and all I have to say is that we are never staying in a hotel again if there is one of these places where we are going. We have 2 bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a fully equipped kitchen. We are right in town, a few blocks from a huge supermarket and a block away from an awesome park with multiple playgrounds for the kids.

I've actually got to go now, to do fun things with the family, but we made it.

"Mom, I want to be goth."

"Goth? What do you mean?"

"You know, like black clothes and scary makeup."

"Dude. You're six. You can't be goth."

"When can I be goth?"

"When you are older."

"Like a teenager?"

"Yes. When you are a teenager, you can be goth."

.........................

An hour later, he comes out of my room with brick red lipstick smeared around his mouth, complete with fake blood drips down his chin, asking if he can use my eyeliner to make fake stitches on his arm. We discuss everything that is wrong with this scenario, from rooting around in my makeup without permission to why he wants to look so scary.
.........................

As I am tucking him into bed, he asks, "When I'm a teenager and I am goth, how old will I be?"

"Eighteen, honey. That's a good age to be goth."

10 hugs, 10 kisses. I nuzzle his neck, smooth his hair, run my hand down his back. Barely 3 1/2 feet tall, 44 pounds. He's so little, and yet he's so... MUCH.

As I move to the door, he mumbles, "I think I'll be goth when I'm 13. THAT'S when you turn to a teenager."

I whisper, "How about 16? You can be goth when you are 16."

The last thing I hear as I shut the door is, "How about 14? That's a good compromise."

Nothing like a little late-night negotiating of future alternative lifestyles, huh?

(We settled on 15.)

Labels: Peanut, so cute I could puke

Oh, yeah. I'm bringin' it, baby!

(And as if the entire performance isn't friggin' adorable, check out my kid near the end singing "... and I think to myself, what a wonderful world," and then mugging at the videocam. My kid RULES THE CUTE.)

Labels: Peanut, school, so cute I could puke