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August 20, 2003
Hey Everyone,
Let me start out this entry by saying that I am usually a much more prompt diary updater than this. I have been on holidays for the past two weeks or so. I had actually planned to update while on my holiday, but my parents’ so-called high speed Internet could not manage to load this site before timing out. So there, my excuses are out of the way.
Holiday Fun
We flew four hours to Ottawa to visit my family for our summer holidays. I was petrified to fly with a very active 16 month old. He was hyper as can be, but happy on the way out. He just would not go to sleep. Luckily we got the whole back row to ourselves, so Sam could climb about to his heart’s content. The best idea that we had was to bring DH’s laptop and the mesmerizing Baby Doolittle DVD (Sam loves all of the Baby Einstein series). We plopped him down in the middle seat and plunked on some headphones and he was calm – until the laptop battery wore. Note to self – charge the batteries next time. He literally fell asleep about 5 minutes before the plane touched the ground – a good two hours past his bedtime.
As with every time we’ve gone traveled out east, we immediately put Sam on the new time zone – a two-hour difference. He had no trouble at all adjusting to it either way. I highly recommend this all or nothing approach rather than easing them into a time change or keeping them on the old one. At least with a two hour difference, it would be too hard to change meal times etc.
Sam was a complete charmer the entire two weeks. It was like he was perpetually in a good mood. He was charming the pants off of his nanny and poppy. My grandparents flew in from Newfoundland and Sam was as social as anything. Sam had NEVER been a social kid, but I swear he was performing for them all. Sam sits in his high chair during all meals (I’m a big proponent of family meals) and he is very used to entertaining himself once he finishes. But we let him down to play when we have our tea. Well, he took to climbing on my parents’ couch and leaping up (the back faced the kitchen table) yelling PEEK! He would literally do this forever.
We also tried to take Sam out on the boat – I can’t say that was a screaming success. It’s just not fair to expect a 16 month old to stay still on a boat all day. He had fun at first but quickly became bored. He hated having to wear the big bulky lifejacket. He loves the water and playing on the beach, but he wasn’t even all that crazy about dipping in the deep water of the middle of the lake. Ah well, lesson learned. He had a lot of fun below deck – he would have stayed there all day!
Where were you when the lights went out?
So last Thursday I was online at my parents attempting to send a couple of emails. Then BOOM – power failure. It had been swelteringly hot and humid for days, so naturally we just figured a brownout due to overuse of electricity. My grandparents were going to take us all to Swiss Chalet for dinner, as we had to do groceries that night (what is it with older people and Swiss Chalet??). So we all piled in the car. After driving five minutes we saw the lights were out at the Chalet. So we decided to go further into town to another one. At that time I suggested we turn on the news to make sure the blackout wasn’t covering all of Ottawa. Immediately the news was filled with stories of the massive blackout across Ontario and part of the U.S. Uh oh – we VERY quickly turned the car around and came home before we got caught in the gridlock that soon encompassed the city.
As I said earlier, we were going to do groceries that night, in other words, we had no food. Well, all the grocery stores closed. Lets just say our meals were, um, interesting for the next 24 hours. We basically ate everything in my parents’ freezer. Everything was BBQd. We even BBQd a pot of boiling water for tea. We ate a LOT of meat. We ran out of milk for Sam, so he had to have 1% for one meal. The things you take for granted. We couldn’t even go for a drive as the car was low on gas, and no gas station was open. Oh – we did get a hot dessert – my mom had frozen blueberries and rhubarb and I had brought a recipe for a BBQ blueberry/rhubarb crumble. It was great – served with quickly melting frozen yogurt.
Anyway – the power failure was, in and of itself, no big deal. Getting home was when the REAL adventure started. Well, the airport had been shut down for 18 hours hours. Then the airline we were flying on had a generator issue and they were shut down for a further 8 hours after the power was back on. So the backups were tremendous – astonishing really. My DH had a ticket; I was flying on a family pass so I was standby. When I saw the three-four hour line to check in, I figured I was in for a long haul. We decided DH would go with Sam and our dogs as they were guaranteed to get home on his ticket. I tried all day Friday, but DH, Sam and the dogs got out. However, even they had a four-hour delay in the departure lounge, and then a four-hour flight. Sam was AMAZING for DH; he said he was a pure angel the entire time – and they didn’t even get home until 2am. The dogs had a harder time. Because of the delay they were in the crate for 10 hours in incredible heat. One was pretty badly dehydrated and threw up for a full day upon return although she’s fine now.
I didn’t get out at all Friday. Saturday morning I couldn’t get on the flight to Calgary. So I decided to go to Toronto where there were 6 flights that day I could try. I got on the last flight by a total fluke. I spent 12 hours in the Toronto airport among crazed people who were desperate to get home. And many of them were still waiting when I left. I got home around midnight – and there were literally hundreds of pieces of luggage scattered throughout the airport from all the people who tried to get on flights for two days. It took me almost two hours to find my average, non-descript luggage.
I am SO happy to be home – in case you haven’t guessed. I don’t want to be traveling any time soon, I can tell you that.
TTC
AF arrived while I was on holidays. I can’t say I was surprised – what with the nasty UTI I came down with right around ovulation time. Not happy, but not surprised. I am actually half way through the next cycle, cycle six. I also have an appt. tomorrow to get a prescription for Clomid. Sigh.
Well, I was going to ask a bunch of questions, but since this is already a novel, I’ll wait until next week.
One question though – where were you when the lights went out?
All the best
Jenn and Sam
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