Archive - June 2008

Almost Famous

I have a friend who works for a major news agency.  Their website was launching a new feature about busy moms and one of their first articles was going to be about traveling with children.  My friend recommended me to the writer since I’m an expert at traveling with children.

Really?  Who knew?

Apparently, I once sent my friend a multi-page treatise on the Lessons Learned While Traveling with Our 3 Month Old Son.  Imagine, me – going on and on about my new-found knowledge.  Shocking, isn’t it?

So, lo these many years later, I found myself being interviewed over the phone about traveling with children.  The night before, Philip and I had sat down and brainstormed our best tips.  At this point, we have traveled all over the world with our children.  We’ve crossed the International Date Line 4 times with the two older ones, we’ve traveled by car, by train, by airplane.  I’ve been pregnant for a good portion of the trips and we’ve had all sorts of experiences, good and bad.  While we’ve never considered ourselves to be experts, certainly, we do have lots to say about the subject.

I wrote down my main points that I wanted to cover and 10 minutes before I expected the phone call, I sent my children upstairs.  I gave them instructions that on pain of death, they were not to come downstairs.  No screaming, yelling, hitting, biting, or throwing.  Don’t make each other mad.  Don’t touch each other.  Don’t look at each other and don’t even breathe in each other’s space.  For the love of all things holy – don’t bother me during this phone call.

So the phone rings and the interview begins.  I give the correct spelling of my name and brief family history, including travel experience.  I answer the questions intelligently, giving examples and personal anecdotes to illustrate my points.  Thank God I had written my thoughts down because it was hard to concentrate with all the screaming going on upstairs.

The writer was appreciative and enthusiastic over all I had to say.  She told me that the article was due to run on June 2nd.  She said she’d probably call back later in the week after she’d typed up her notes.  She never called me back.

That should have been my first clue that something was up.  Just this morning I remembered that the article should be up on the website by now.  I Googled my name.  Nothing.  I went right to the news agency’s website and found the link to their Busy Moms articles.  I found the story about traveling with a baby or toddler.

If you’re an actor who gets cut out of a movie, it’s called ending up on the cutting room floor.  What do you say when you’re an “expert” that gets left out of an article?  Well, whatever it’s called, that would be me.

The writer decided to go with real experts.  She quoted an author and a director of an internet parenting site, both of whom had shockingly similar advice as I did.   I guess that I, with my four children and thousands of miles of actually flying experience with them, lacked credibility.  Not that I’m bitter, of course.  I’m just saying.

I did get mentioned, though! My entire wealth of travel tips was reduced to 2 sentences about how Pumpkin Girl once threw up all over Philip on one of our flights to Korea.

At least my name was spelled right.

Anxious Days

I hate summer storms. Let’s be perfectly clear about this. I hate them. I know there is a whole group of people out there who love them. They love the way the rain refreshes the earth and breaks up the humidity while the gentle roll of thunder can be heard in the distance. Children grab rain boots and umbrellas and splash in puddles. Mom puts up her feet on the porch and reads a book. Yeah, I like those storms, too, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about severe thunderstorms. The kind that cause watches and warnings to be issued. The kind which are capable of producing strong winds, hail and tornadoes. Tornadoes terrify me. I live in a house with no basement, that is rumored to have no foundation and whose only interior room is a 3 foot by 3 foot bathroom.

The threat of severe weather puts my stomach into knots. I fret and pace and monitor the weather channel. I become crabby and tense. I may even round up shoes, my purse and some blankets and put them in the hallway next to bathroom in case we need to take cover. I try to talk myself back from the edge, telling myself that while our area does get frequent, often daily, severe thunderstorms that may cause some damage, and that tornadoes are possible, they are very rare here. And the one or two that have touched down in the DC Metro area have been small and short. Mostly. In the 5 total years we’ve lived here, we have not once ever gone to an actual tornado warning. But still, I worry.

Our forecast will hold the possibility of thunderstorms almost every day until the mid-Fall. It’s hard for me to relax and make plans to be away from the house, knowing that at any moment the weather is going to go to hell in a hand-basket. Yes, these are anxious days for me. Time to lay in a supply of chocolate.

note: As soon as I finished this blog post, the weather alert on my computer informed me that we are now under a tornado watch until 8 pm.  That’s 7 hours for me to worry about.  Lovely.

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