What Makes Me Laugh

Our clawfoot tub, now in the kitchen.

Our extended family may not agree on religion, politics, or sports teams, but they can agree on one thing: “You need a new toilet.”

Every family member who visits says this to us and we always have the same response: “We know.”

It’s funny. I don’t remember noticing the toilet before we bought the house, but as soon as we moved in it became the primary topic of conversation.

“Why do you think it’s like that?” I asked, staring down at the brown, blue and green stained porcelain bowl.

“Minerals,” Doug said.

Our house was built in 1918. The toilet looked like it was built in 1818.

Still, it worked. Okay, so you needed a plunger for anything besides number 1, but as long as you were careful, it worked. We nicknamed it the Geyser because of our close proximity to Yellowstone and its strange colors and ability to shoot water.

I tried various cleaners on the stains until I could no longer stand the thought of flushing another toxic chemical down the toilet. We had other remodeling priorities, we thought, and as long as we warned visitors it was no big deal. Turns out, when you live with something long enough, you forget to warn people until it’s nearly too late.

“Um.” Tap, tap, tap on the bathroom door. “Sorry to disturb you, but we really need you to know that the toilet was like that when we moved in here and if there is any doubt in your mind about whether it will flush please use the plunger.”

We forgot to warn my mother-in-law before she visited, and she was waiting for Doug on the porch when he arrived home.

“What happened in there?” she demanded.

“In where?” Doug asked, genuinely confused.

“The bathroom.”

“Oh.”

When my father-in-law came to visit he immediately offered to buy us a new toilet. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re going to the hardware store and we’re getting you a new toilet. Shouldn’t cost more than $75.”

This was a kind offer, but we gently explained that actually a new toilet in an old house would mean ripping out the existing floor, and once you go there, an entire remodel including plumbing. We didn’t want to ruin his vacation entirely.

Because, you see, this is our only bathroom. That’s right, and we are currently in week two of the remodel, which did include removing the clawfoot tub, ripping out the cheap  flooring put in by the previous owners, and taking out the toilet. Not an inexpensive undertaking, but a necessary one.

Our toilet is not gone, however. It’s currently a big part of our lives in the garage, where we are employing space age technology to take care of our waste until a new one can be properly installed.

The Geyser, now in the garage

I’m not kidding. A local company called Cleanwaste sells “Go Anywhere Toilet Kits” which includes a bag that fits over a toilet seat with a powder in the bottom called Poo Powder. They also sell Wag Bags for camping and emergency situations. According to their website, “Poo Powder is a proprietary blend of a NASA-developed super-absorbent designed to gel and encapsulate liquid and solid waste, and a natural deodorizing agent and decay catalyst.” Which means, that you can poo in the bag, it biodegrades, and you can dump the sealed bag into your garbage without having to worry about it exploding or smelling. I know, eww. But a bigger eww would be not having something like that around in this situation.

Where are we bathing? At the gym. Doug claimed that he could go without a shower for a month, which I told him not to brag about, and he broke down after Day 3. Remember, Doug was a river guide for many years and bathed in a river the whole summer, but even he admits that this is different since he is doing the entire remodel himself and is covered in construction materials by the end of the day.

I try to remind him. “When it’s finished the bathroom will be gorgeous, just like our kitchen remodel, and we won’t have to knock on the door when people come over for dinner. Won’t that be nice?“

Yesterday I got an unexpected call from my massage therapist. “Hey, I’m looking for Doug. He hasn’t shown up for his appointment yet and I can’t reach him on his phone. I’m just wondering if he’s lost.”

Lost? In Livingston? This was theoretically possible since it was his first appointment with her, but I thought I had provided adequate directions the night before when he asked me if I knew how to get to her house.

“Oh, she lives just down the street from Mary,” I said, with a wave of my hand as if that wave would fill in the necessary details.

“She said something about turning down an alley,” he muttered.

I should have known then that I needed to be more explicit.

He called me fifteen minutes after his appointment had passed and I asked, “What happened?”

‘”I’ve just spent a half hour driving around a three block area,” he said. I could tell he was frustrated. “I still don’t know where she lives. I finally flagged a woman down in her yard and asked her, ‘Do you know a woman named Allison? She’s petite? Blonde? She gives massages.’”

The woman denied knowing Allison even though they lived next door to each other. “Don’t you get it?” I laughed. ”She probably thought you were a stalker!”

“Especially since I drove around the block slowly for a half hour.”

Anyway, Doug had to reschedule his appointment because he was so late, and he’s certain to have started a neighborhood watch alert in the process, but this is not something that typically happens to him. It typically happens to me.

My sense of direction is literally nonexistent. When I have to guess, it’s almost always the wrong guess. I once got lost during a run where I only made two right turns, and ended up causing my in-laws to be late for their daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner. 

 This happens to me all the time. In fact, I now have to deliberate over whether I should go the other way just because my intuition told me the opposite.

My mother has this problem (so it’s inherited), but she is absolutely sure she’s right when she’s telling you which way to turn while driving. “Right, turn right,” she commands, and you do it, and then you spend 15 minutes trying to get turned around so that you can go left again.

Whereas, my brother inherited my father’s directional gifts including a superhuman talent that enables him to find his way anywhere in any city around the world without a map. He’s like a walking GPS unit.What I could do with this power!

I, on the other hand, struggle to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west. Right now, I am in terror of anyone asking me which way is north in Bozeman. Seriously.

 Combine this lack of direction with the unwillingness to ask for directions (my pride will not suffer such a fall) and you usually have a recipe for disaster. Let’s just say that I have to add in an extra half hour for any appointment at a new place, and I could use a GPS unit in my car. Doug wouldn’t need one if I gave better directions.

My mom called me a week before we left for Phoenix to remind me not to take our luggage into my grandmother’s house.

“If there is anything black on your luggage, or if it’s dirty, or if it could leave a black mark, just leave it in the garage and carry your stuff into the house. She has a lot of drawers in the guest bedroom.”

I’m surprised she didn’t just tell me to leave my suitcases in the trunk and pack in each item into the house separately. You could eat off my grandma’s garage floor. It’s just as clean as the white and cream carpet and furnishings inside and neither should be soiled by my black marks.

“You know, she can’t see that well anymore, so she won’t notice the black marks,” my mom continued. This was where I was thinking my mom would say not to worry about it, but I should have known better. “So I just get a wet rag and wipe them up if I see one.” Uh huh.

My mother’s warning says a lot about me and my grandmother. She knows that I am a.) an incurable slob who doesn’t mind leaving my bed unmade for the day; b.) incapable of living in a white house and not leaving a mark. It’s just one of those things that goes with my DNA.

She knows that my grandmother, despite being blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, would mind if I left a mark.

At age 87, with only the help of a walker to get around, my grandmother’s home is cleaner and better organized than mine. I admit, this is a little embarrassing. In comparison to most people I would call myself clean, but not neat. I never iron, and the last time I dusted might have been months ago, but I always hand scrub my floors. In comparison to my grandmother, I’m living in a demolition zone.

My grandmother is also an incredible cook. Despite her physical limitations, she baked oatmeal cookies, pecan pie, coconut cream pie, two coffee cakes, and cinnamon rolls (all by scratch) before we even arrived. No wonder I came back a few pounds heavier! Her kitchen and freezers are perfectly arranged so that she can reach everything, and labeled (case in point, all of her tea bags are in glass jars with an empty tea packet taped to the top so that you can tell what you’re getting). It was easy to clean up after dinner.

I thought about storing our clothes in her dresser drawers, but I seemed to be constitutionally unable. Instead I used the closet to my advantage, piling stuff up on the floor, rifling through clothing as I needed it. She never said anything, but I’m pretty sure she knew what was going on. You can’t hide anything from my grandmother — that’s why I love her.

Unless you’re a Goldman Sachs banker, you’re probably looking for ways to stay within your budget. I normally stay away from financial ideas that seem too good to be true, but I happened on an article on Slate.com (my favorite online read during my lunch hour) by Alicia Barney who test-drove the concept of saving big bucks at the supermarket with coupons:

“After disappearing into the coupon blogosphere for two solid days, I felt ready for my first outing. But I didn’t feel confident enough to go it alone, so I arranged for a coach. I met couponer Pam Rea, a finance secretary for the local government, at her sprawling suburban Chicago Jewel-Osco store, the Midwestern outpost of Albertson’s Inc. I had previously assumed that a couponing diet meant only boxed and processed foods, but Rea’s yield seemed balanced. She picked up pork tenderloin, apples, bananas, and organic milk in addition to Pringles and frozen French toast sticks.

When every item was scanned, Rea’s total was $174.55. But after each coupon was validated, the number dropped—to $36.89, including $6.08 in taxes. She handed over $30 worth of store credits and charged the remaining 81 cents plus tax—which couponers must pay out of pocket—on her debit card. She’d saved $167.66. Not bad at all.”

Alicia’s narrative busted two myths of mine: 1.) Coupons are only useful if you’re looking for savings on Hamburger Helper type products; and 2.) Coupons won’t save you much money so it’s not worth your time.

Mathematically, the idea isn’t hard to grasp. To get the lowest price on a product you pair manufacturer’s coupons (say, General Mills $1.00 coupons for Cheerios) with the supermarket’s best sale price or coupon, and voilá! Mucho money saved on your grocery items.

Even better, supermarkets offer Catalinas, coupons that give you cash back for buying a certain amount of goods or groceries.  Think: If I buy $30 worth of these products, I’ll get a $5 coupon good for any item in the store back when I finish my purchase.

This knowledge was enough to set me off on an obsessive compulsive week of trying to game the supermarket system. If someone else is smart enough to get most of their groceries for free, well, I can too (I thought).

I started with Jill Cataldo, the syndicated columnist and expert on Super Couponing whose blog offers 200 places to find coupons, and a whole primer on how to super coupon. She actually offers courses on using coupons, which I think kind of defeats the purpose, so I decided to launch my grocery savings on my own.

A couple of things surprised me. A lot of organic companies offer coupons for milk and eggs and other products I buy. And, you can “load” your electronic grocery card with coupons online so you don’t have to take any paper with you to the store. I also found out that you don’t need your local paper. At Albertson’s online you can find an electronic copy of their sale flyer and even make your own list of sales items by clicking on them. Last week they advertised their own Catalina  – buy $30 worth of groceries from their sale flyer and get a $15 coupon back!

Wow, I thought. Ok, I can do this. I picked out mushrooms, avocadoes, organic chicken for $2.69 a pound, orange juice, even ice cream (2 for 1). With my list in hand. I was ready to shop. Unfortunately, it took a little convincing to get Doug in on my plan. We were driving back from Bozeman when I announced that we were going shopping – supercouponing to be exact.

“So,” I said. “Here’s the game plan. You’re going to get a separate basket, and fill it with $15 worth of  items that we need that are not on sale, like milk. After I check out, I’ll get the coupon for the $15 and then hand it to you for your transaction.” It sounded like a bank heist.

“But I didn’t bring my wallet,” he said.

This didn’t faze me.

“No problem. You shouldn’t need your credit card. You’ll have the coupon?”

He didn’t look convinced. This whole separate transaction thing seemed problematic. I tried a different idea.

“Ok. How ’bout you wait until I’ve finished checking out, and then will go into another aisle and check out your basket.”

“Why can’t we come back at another time for the $15 worth?” He clearly wasn’t into this.

What ended up stopping his participation was the price of milk. He walked over to the dairy section and found out that the milk was double the price that we normally pay at Town and Country. This ended his participation.

“Is there a problem?” I said, frustrated that the Cheerios was now not marked on sale.

“Tell me, why are we buying more expensive milk here again?”

I started to explain one more time, and then I just decided to lose the battle.

“All right, let’s just use the coupon another time. Don’t worry about picking out groceries.”

With my sale items in hand, we march up to checkout, and a sales clerk who we happened to know (small town).

I tell him I hope to get the $15 coupon, but when he checks me out my total bill is $50 and no coupon appears from the Catalina machine.

“Huh,” I say. “I know I bought the sales items in the flyer.”

This sparks the most embarrassing point of the night, when the supervisor gets involved.

Our clerk turns to ask his supervisor for help, “Mary, we have a problem over here. The coupon isn’t printing out and she says she purchased the food.”

The manager beckons me over and pulls out the sales flyer. “Now, she said, which foods did you buy?” The back of the sales flyer where she is pointing does not contain any of my items so I flip it over to point to the avocados and she says, “No, I’m sorry, did you buy any of these items?” and flips it back.

“Um, no,” I say. “I thought the sale applied to the whole flyer.”

She gives me an impatient sigh and points to a small box on the back with about 12 items – mostly canned iced frosting and country crock margarine. “Well, I’m sorry, but you have to purchase $30 of these items in order to get the coupon.”

“Oh,” I say. “Thanks.”

I think I hear Doug snicker in the background. I feel like I just got reprimanded from the teacher for reading the Cliff Notes version of Romeo and Juliet.

I managed to outsmart myself, which is deeply embarrassing, especially in front of a skeptic, but I’m not giving up. I’m going to figure out supercouponing if it kills me, because that’s what obsessive compulsive disorder does to people.

At the football game today …

Father to young son: “Don’t eat the popcorn off the floor.”

Young son picks up popcorn from bleacher floor and eats it.

Father to young son: “Don’t eat the popcorn off the floor!”

Young son picks up popcorn from bleacher floor and eats it.

Father to young son (exasperated): “Here, have some gum instead.”

Young son chews gum and seems to like it.

Father to wife (satisfied): “There, that should keep him from eating the popcorn.”

Young son runs off to play with friends at end of bleacher.

Young son returns after five minutes.

Father notices gum all over young son’s hair.

Father to young son (while picking out white strands of gum from back of head): “Haven’t you ever chewed gum before?”

Father picks out gum from hair for approximately fifteen minutes.

Young son picks up popcorn from bleacher floor and eats it.

Father to young son: “Oh fine, go ahead and eat the popcorn.”

And I laughed out loud.

That’s what my friend Crystal said when she realized that Doug wasn’t aware we were planning a trip to Vegas. 

“Yeah,” I said, giving a sheepish look over at Doug. “I haven’t told him yet. But I was going to soon!”

See, I have this bad habit of asking for forgiveness rather than permission (not that I need to ask permission from my husband to do anything, but we do make joint financial decisions together). And I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to go, and then there wasn’t a good time to say anything, and so I procrastinated. 

Anyway, let me back up here. I think I’m getting ahead of myself. This whole thing started with a call from my sister a couple of weeks ago.  “Hey,” she said. “I was wondering if you wanted to run a half marathon in Vegas with me.” 

“Yes!” I answered without thinking. “When is it?” 

“December 6.”

A good time of year to leave Montana. Sun in December. Just when I need it most. Plus, a fun girls trip with my sister. Plus, I’ve never been to Vegas (gambling doesn’t excite me), and we would be running on the strip in the Rock ‘n Roll marathon. Plus, I need motivation to complete my second wildly improbable goal: running a 10k in 50 minutes. I know that’s a slug pace for most runners, but believe me, it’s wildly improbable for me. I chronicled my first wildly improbable goal — winning a trip to Australia — a few months ago, and that was an awesome experience.

So, I asked Crystal if she wanted to run it with me. Before I got around to telling Doug. But I had a lot of time to tell him! Months to go even, if it just hadn’t have slipped out at dinner we might have gone weeks before having the, “You’re going to Vegas? On a girls trip? Without me?” discussion.

Anyway, that’s over now, and he’s cool with it, but I think he’s still willing to go and crash the party if I let him. Besides, he pointed out, there’s a run through wedding option during the marathon so we could renew our vows during the run! Hmm, now that’s an idea. I wonder if I’d have to buy a white running outfit?

No, no, no — Doug can’t go. Sorry honey, this is a girls trip, and training started this week. Crystal and I are running with the baby in the jogger and the dog’s leash in my hand. It’s an adventure every morning. It’s a wildly improbable goal. In Vegas! With the girls!

My mom first introduced me to Sudoku on a plane trip back from Arizona last spring. She opened her book of puzzles and started speaking in slow, precise tones about the numbers one through nine. 

“So, you see, if you put a one here, and then there is one over there, another one should go there.”

I nodded my head slowly, to indicate comprehension, just in time for the woman sitting next to us to turn off her headphones and listen to what sounded like a mother explaining a relatively simple concept to her adult, learning-disabled daughter. 

“So,” my mom continues, “if a nine is in this row, and another nine is in this box, what number should go in this box?”

My mom’s tone said, “Even a kindergartner could understand this. It’s not hard, but for whatever reason my 30-year-old daughter thinks it’s hard so I’m going to be patient. ”

The woman in the next seat hears silence and then a long, “Uh,” and then a giggle from me, and then my mom trying to go more slowly and more patiently. “Ok, let’s try another one. A five is right here, and a two is in this square, so what number should go in this column?”

“Uh,” giggle, giggle. “Uh.”

I’m surprised the woman listening in didn’t just lean over at some point and yell, “It’s an eight, you idiot, an eight!”

Since my failed experiment with my mom, I have avoided a repeat performance with Sudoku (which I have a hard time even pronouncing right). That is, until our trip to Australia this spring, when I decided that I needed an endless variety of entertainment for twenty hours of flying and Sudoku might be another good distraction for what feels like your head being squeezed by a vise.

And now I’m hooked. Completely. Which is even more surprising since I’m not a puzzle girl. I don’t like crosswords because I inevitably have to cheat and look up some stupid random piece of trivia about Humphrey Bogart or what moon is flying around Neptune or how many trees are in a wind break. 

But the thing about Sudoku is that it is totally logical, and if you just put your brain through enough pain you’ll get it eventually. Yes, I have checked my answers, but most of the time I just have to stare at it cross-eyed long enough to get all of my strings of 1-9’s in the right order in the puzzle.

It’s perfect when you’re sick, but don’t want the emotional strain of a good book that wrings your insides out through your tear ducts. It’s great when you’re tired, but up at 3 a.m. for no good reason whatsoever and need something to do to cure your insomnia. And if the experts are to be believed, it’s supposed to be good for your health because it can help ward off dementia in your old age by building up brain cells.

So, thanks mom. I owe you a better Mother’s Day present this year than last year. Even if I wasn’t the best student you’ve ever taught sudoku.

  

 

 

Cocoa, the culprit

I wake up to the sound of glass shattering in the kitchen. It’s 3 a.m. and I know immediately that it has to do with the cats. I try to keep them off the kitchen countertops, and they are banned when I’m cooking, but it’s kind of a futile effort when I’m not looking.

The image of a bloody cat running through broken glass runs through my brain so I yell to Doug, “Hurry!” because I can’t seem to get my body to move out of bed at all at 3 a.m. 

And he hurries all right. To pee. Walking right through the area where a water glass had been bumped from the counter and shattered on the wood floor. I’m still amazed that he didn’t cut his feet.

Fortunately, there is no blood spilled by any creature, great or small. Just a scared Cocoa looking at me guiltily from the countertop. I gently moved her and Peaches to a closed room and then work on cleaning up the mess while Doug goes back to bed.  

After scouring the floor for any glinting material, I climb back in bed and try to sleep. Breathe deeply, I think and then I realize that actually my breathing isn’t going very well. My chest is starting to tighten and the bell that rings in my brain to warn me of a coming asthma attack is dinging away.

Oh, but it feels so good to be back in bed and I’m tired, and maybe if I just lay here for a minute my breathing will return to normal.

Nothing doing. I knew if I let it go I’ll only have an asthma nightmare where I can’t breathe and can’t find my inhaler and end up in a worse position.  So I stumble back out into the living room in my sneakers to find my overstuffed purse and search around blindly with my hand for the plastic object.

Found. I take two puffs and felt something foreign in my mouth. What is that? Stuck to the inside of my cheek is a pine needle that I gently pull out and stare at. Then I look inside the inhaler. Uh oh. My inhaler looks like it had made love to a national forest. Bits of leaves and other disgusting detritus are stuck all over the inside of it. I search my mouth for anything foresty and finding nothing I rinse the inhaler out and then go back to bed to begin my worrying.

What if I had inhaled some of the forest? An inhaler shoots a mist out fairly powerfully and I had just taken a big gulp of air. What if there was  a pine needle in my lungs right now?

Then I move to contemplating paranoid headlines about my death.

Woman dies in sleep from pine needle.

Cat breaks glass, causes asthma attack, woman dies from inhaling foreign material.

Pine needle stuck in lung kills woman.

Stupid cat breaks stupid glass left out by stupid woman who inhales pine needle and dies in bed. 

Spouse of woman who dies from inhaled pine needle sets up charitable foundation for pine needle victims.

I’m very worried about getting a Darwin Award for my death. You just don’t want your last act to be something so colossally dumb that people mumble for years, “I can’t believe she did that.” 

My next point of mental activity is to analyze every pain in my body and wonder whether I should wake Doug up to tell him that I was worrying so that he can tell me that everything will be fine. I don’t.

Could that stinger in my side be my lung? Wait a second. I think it’s the left side. Isn’t that the one that you should be worried will give you a heart attack? No, it’s not in my shoulder. Oh, now it’s in my back. How many lung quadrants are there again? Isn’t there some connection with the lung and back pain? Didn’t I read that in my Chinese medicine book? Shouldn’t I have made the 25 pounds of raw saltless sauerkraut it suggested would reduce dampness in my body and relieve my asthma naturally? For god’s sake, the Chinese don’t even believe in drinking cold water so if I hadn’t had that glass of cold water before I went to bed then Cocoa wouldn’t have knocked it over, and Ahh!!

Alternately, I worry about the cats. I should have vacuumed the spot instead of sweeping and wiping it over with wet towels. What if I missed something? What if they got slivers in their paws while I was sleeping? What if they bled to death in the living room while I die of a pine needle in the bedroom?

Then what would Doug do? He would be entirely alone in this world.

Except for the life insurance. At least he has the life insurance. Now back to sleep.

Adelaide from the airport

Saying adieu with Hannah

On the flight back to America, I collected a few more travel tips to share with my savvy readers. If there is one universal law about life I think it’s that you learn the best lessons the hard way.

Travel Tip #4: Clothes expand in your suitcase

It’s a fundamental law of traveling. What was an easy suitcase to close when you left becomes a wrestling object that makes you pant, sweat, jump up and down, and squash things that are likely to squirt gooey substances all over your clothing.

Only once in my life did I listen to my inner voice of reason and pack light. It was dreamy. I spent 10 days in Belize with a backpack smaller than the size of most school backpacks. Sure, I wore the same clothes nearly every day, but I didn’t have to hunt to find that one thing that I knew I brought but I didn’t know where I put it, or wait for baggage claim, or worry about thieves.  

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson, and this trip I packed about five books too many (gearing up for the long plane ride), not enough underwear (you can’t depend on finding a laundry), way too many clothes (at a certain point I couldn’t tell what was clean or what was dirty so it didn’t even matter), and a curling iron (what was I thinking?). I should have brought about half a suitcase full and left the rest.

Packing is really an art form that should be taught in high school right along with typing (or keyboarding, as they say these days). Next time, I vow to pack light.

Travel Tip #5: If you’re panicked about missing your flight, don’t try and rush through customs.

Ok, I’m more than a little ashamed of this story. We arrived at the Adelaide airport several hours early for our international flight. No problem. We lingered with Hannah until she boarded, and then sauntered the few gates down to where we should be boarding. Oh. It’s glassed off. Oh. We need to go through another security point. Oh. We need to go through customs.

At this point, I’m sweating it. It’s boarding time, and the customs officials are taking it slow and easy. I put on my most charming voice and ask two couples in front of us if their planes are boarding right now, and oh please, would you allow us to jump in front of the que since our plane is about to take off for New Zealand without us? Thank you.

Then, we finally get to the customs official, and she helpfully says, “Ok, it looks like everything is in order except you haven’t filled out this form. You’ll have to go fill that out over there and bring it back to me.”

Next, I got a little crazy, and tried to tell her that our plane was leaving and couldn’t we just fill it out right there? I swear, when stressed, I could feel the rude American just creeping out from under my skin where I had tried to bury it and deny that it ever existed. For two weeks I had been as quiet as possible (trying to dodge the loud American stereotype), polite in line, smiley with strangers, and very clear with taxi drivers that I loved Obama and never voted for Bush.  

All of that goodness fled in a mere five minutes until Doug, seeing reason, pulled me over to the table to fill out our forms. Then, he told me that he wasn’t wearing his reading glasses and couldn’t fill out the form. I think I had a panic attack right there. In a split second, I started to fill out my form, hyperventilate, and read off the various lines to Doug. “First line is first name,” I shouted. “Second line is your birthdate!” while he muttered, “Damn. I think I put my occupation where my country of origin is supposed to go.” Ahh!!!

We finally return to the desk, and the customs official smiles at us and says, “Don’t worry. They won’t leave without you. They come back here to find you if you don’t show up.” She leans in closer to me and delivers the final blow, “No panicking. We don’t panic in Australia.”

We made the flight in time for economy class boarding and for Doug to ask me if I needed medical attention.

Travel Tip #6: Don’t wear fleece clothing on an international flight

So, I bought this really cute gym outfit from Eddie Bauer at Christmas that doesn’t look like sweats, but really is (it’s tailored fleece after all). I thought, “This will be perfect for the plane. I won’t get cold. It’s comfy. I can sleep in it.”

Well, I could sweat in it too. After my panic attack at customs, I still had about 20 hours of travel left to go and I was already afraid to lift my armpits up. I applied some wet towels and new deodorant but the damage was already done. My other clothes were checked and there was little I could do when the airplane didn’t cool down from tropical temperatures. Even in good times, when the airplane stays cool and I stay cool and I wear enough deodorant, I want to burn the clothes I wear when I travel. This time, when I got off the plane, the urge was almost unbearable. If I was a little more off my rocker I would have started a fire made from fleece in the airport bathroom, but instead I just changed and have banned the said items from my sight for the next millenia. Still, I wouldn’t put it past me to do it in the future.

Travel Tip #7: Don’t watch sad movies on the airplane

I knew what I was getting into. I avoid movies where the animal dies at the end for a good reason. I just couldn’t help myself. I deliberately chose to watch Marley & Me on the airplane, knowing full well how it would turn out, but resolving that this time, just this once, I would be able to control my emotions.

Yeah right. I collapsed into hysterics at the end, trying to rub the tears off my face slowly, like I was scratching an itchy spot, so that I wouldn’t scare the little old lady sitting in the window seat who probably was wondering why I hadn’t taken my meds that day.

All during the movie I had been laughing and chuckling, pretending that it would be a happy ending and telling Doug, “Oh, you have to watch this. It’s really funny!”

And then, the dog died, and I couldn’t bear it, and all sorts of totally humiliating fluids were coming out of my face like a storm and Doug was trying to calm me down saying, “Well, I guess I won’t be watching that movie.”

Travel Tip #8: If your flight is over 12 hours long, business class is worth the extra money

Filing on the plane from Auckland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but stare at the pods in business class with outright envy. They had space, real space, enough space to lie down and maybe enough space that they could avoid having their feet swell and pure hypochondriac, “oh my god, I’m going to get a blood clot” moments on the plane.

I’m not going to lie. I had the worst seat. We were seated in the middle aisle (the dreaded middle land of nowhere), Doug on the aisle, and I in the middle of the middle aisle seats, next to a man who had one foot in my seating area and who refused to speak when spoken to. I swear he was meditating the entire time on me disappearing.

In crowded situations like these, every little thing starts to disturb you. For instance, Doug’s stuff had started to wander into my space — his shoes, his travel pillow, his book, and when he was a little bit grumpy when I woke him up to go to the bathroom I admit to being a bit more emphatic than necessary when I plonked everything back into his space and then leaned in. “Just because we’re married does not mean you get to hog my space on the plane,” I whispered passionately in his ear. Fortunately, he was asleep again by then.

Travel Tip #9: Don’t go to the bathroom after you’ve run through the entire airport to catch your flight.

It was the last flight. The flight that we had been waiting for, dreaming of, for over 20 hours. The flight home. And if we missed this flight we would be stuck in Salt Lake City overnight, if not longer. We had ten minutes. We ran. We ran like we had never run before. From terminal D to terminal A. Past bathrooms, past the obese person being dropped off at his gate by cart, past food, down escalators, up escalators. At one point I almost had to cry, “Go without me. I can’t make it. You can! Save yourself!”

Then, relief. A line at the counter, people were boarding at our gate, so Doug fled for the bathroom.

 ”Bozeman!” cried the man at the gate. “Yes,” I panted. “We’re right here. My husband. Is just. In the bathroom. He will. Be back. In a minute.”

A minute went by and the man looked at me. “We’re closing this flight in one minute. He needs to be here by then or we’re closing this flight.”

I ran towards the bathroom, not knowing if I had the courage to run into a men’s bathroom and yank my husband out by his unzipped pants but willing to do so if I had to.

He saw me coming. I waved and made a face like a close family member was dying. He ran. They scanned our boarding pass and urged us to hurry.

And then we ran some more. To the furthest gate in the extension off of the main terminal.

I slid into my seat like an animal dying from respiratory distress and the second little old lady to sit next to me asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be. All right. In a second.” Cough. Inhaler. Cough.

And then a voice on the loudspeaker. “Folks, this is your captain speaking. We’re just going to be a few more minutes. Looks like we’re still waiting for some delayed passengers to reach the airplane. Sorry for the delay. We expect them here in the next 15 minutes.”

The next 15 minutes? I just ran like a track star with a heavy suitcase for probably a mile and nearly had to drag Doug out of the bathroom by his pants and you’re waiting another 15 minutes for more people? We were supposed to leap on and you were supposed to take off! That’s the best ending possible! That’s the only ending that justifies my heart rate!

I don’t know what to say to conclude this long rant except that we did eventually make it home. I showered three times before I felt clean. I buried my washed fleece outfit in the back of the closet where it may stay forever. And I swear to you that I will never, ever run through an air terminal again.

I don’t hang out that much on YouTube. Perhaps it goes along with my aversion to “reality” television, which couldn’t get any more fake. But my brother-in-law revealed that YouTube holds at least a few more chuckles than I thought, when he called and directed me to search for phrases like, “little girl and monsters” last night. So, thanks to Don, I have a few children’s videos to share with you today that are guaranteed to make you laugh and ponder the great wisdom that can come out of a young child’s mouth.

For a warm up, let’s just start with the giggles. The short, “4 Laughing Babies” is about as anti-intellectual as you can get. There’s just something about these babies laughing that is totally infectious and I don’t really know why. Go ahead. Have a giggle.

For the little girl in this next video, monsters are nothing to be feared. In fact, she’s convinced she can beat ‘em up. I think she’ll be the next Kristen Schaal.

In “Charlie bit my finger” we ponder the fact that even babies can be sadists. Especially when we see the younger brother grin after chewing a bit on his brother’s finger. Oh, anyone who has a sibling can relate to this.

Finally, there is this post-modern, Barbaric Yawp of a video called “David After Dentist” in which a child asks, “Why is this happening to me?” and other great philosophical questions of his father after his dental treatment. The video below is part of a series from the David After Dentist blog.