I really don’t remember my mom being this tired but looking back I’m sure she was. When we complained that she was waking us up too early in the morning, she was the one WAKING US UP TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING, which meant she was already awake and probably had been for quite some time. When we were up sick in the night, we complained about being sleepy the next day but she was up with us too and with who knows how many other kids. (I bet she knew how many.)

My sleep has been spotty at best this trip. The kids have taken turns with nightmares, stomach flu, ear infections and general crankishness. We all drove down to Utah together, had a wonderful time at the wedding and then Dan headed back to Seattle to work and be a responsible dad-type person while I’ve continued to vacate without him.

We bounce from relative to relative like leeches with short attention spans and the kids are getting sick of it. They like ALL the relatives and become attached to their various pets, bedding, and stacks of paper and then I tear them away to the next location. Their adjustment period gets longer and longer.

Most recently we’ve been staying with my sister in a king-sized family bed, Laylee, Magoo and I rolling, bonking and waking each other up throughout the night. Magoo isn’t happy unless he’s squished up beside me, his hand on my arm and his nursing lips fluttering in and out in memory of their glory days. Laylee finds his closeness to me highly unfair and wishes I would lay on her side… here… noooo… HERE… noooo… RIGHT HERE where my head will be placed just perfectly to allow the atomic zombie-slaying nightlight to sear my corneas with its rays of protection.

My body is becoming trained to wake up every 45 minutes. If the kids don’t call my name, I wake up automatically to check what’s wrong with them. I snap awake and spend 30 seconds trying to figure out which child has sent me the telepathic distress signal, then flop back on my pillow when I realize there’s nothing wrong… yet.

Right now I’m on my way to the BlogHer Business conference in New York City. I’m speaking on a panel with some ladies from Method and I’m nervous and excited to visit the Big Fruit for the first time. It seems a bit skeery to me but I’ve packed several pairs of shoes and multiple electronic devices so I think it will all work out okay in the end.

I miss my Dan and he’s too still sleeping to call. I miss my kids but I don’t want to call and remind them to miss me. When I left them with grandma, they saw me off with kisses and a polite nudge to the side as I was blocking Curious George on the TV.

Sure. Stay loyal to the troublemaking monkey. We’ll see if he carries you to the bathroom in the middle of the night and makes up songs about flowers, butterflies, sharks and flannel on demand.

My flight has been delayed for 3 or 4 years now and I’m getting to know the many citizens living in this airport community. There’s “Red Cap” reading a book by Vince Flynn, an older man with a mustache and no beard who CAN NOT believe that someone could be stupid enough to leave their laptop in the plastic tray after going through security. Can. Not. Believe. It.

There’s Rag Reader, perusing In Style to unearth the deats surrounding Brangelina’s latest breakup. I eye the cover of her magazine. Gradually my pity for their invaded privacy turns to disdain for people who read that trash, turns to morbid curiosity, turns to a burning NEED TO KNOW what kind of needless argument could have caused the split turns to a great desire to stroke their hair and counsel them through the hard times.

Angry Business Man seems to gain power pellets by yelling into his phone in FRONT of other people, the same way I gain them by using CAPS in randOM places and stockpiling bushels of shwag. Finding an appropriate moment to wear my Butterball Turkey button is beyond the scope of my limited imagination, and yet it’s currently keeping my 10 ugly t-shirts and foot-long pen company in a luggage truck somewhere out on the tarmac. I think it’s on the tarmac. I’m pretty sure my plane isn’t. My airline does not like to give out sensitive information, information like “WHERE ON THIS EARTH IS THE *BEAUTY LUVIN’ PLANE?”

I may post again with more than you ever wanted to know about the conference today since it appears I’ll be making my permanent home on this grey pleather chair with Jenny and Eve.

When it became apparent that I would be making like Tom Hanks and semi-permanently inhabiting the airport, I called home and told Dan to prepare for life as a professional blogger and Laylee and Magoo that they’d better learn how to warm their own spaghetti-o’s. Laylee asked, “What have you been doing in Chicago lately?”

Do you wanna know what it’s like to be a worm’s breath away from Oprah’s ex-apartment building? I’ll keep you in suspense for a moment longer. Right now I’ve got to build a spitting fountain in concourse D for Catherine Zeta Jones and eat some pizza.

*Jenny was recently told that she should wash her son’s mouth out with soap if he keeps using foul expressions like “DANG IT!” This weekend we helped her come up with more positive phrases she could teach him in place of his most heinous language. The best we’ve come up with are MARSHMALLOW PEEPS! PRECIOUS MOMENTS! and Luvin’ BEAUTY Joy! Nicer alternatives, no? May save her little miscreant son from a life of crime and offensiveness.

I’m beginning to the think the Tears for Fears song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was written about my children, and yes, possibly about me.

I was sitting on a plane coming home…(more…)

So, I’m on the plane, alone except for the totally cute non-couple sitting next to me… and all the other people on this completely full 2-hour-delayed flight from Seattle to San Jose. The couple next to me are wearing matching outfits, which they swear was not planned, neither are they a couple. Hmmm… Who goes on a trip, wearing khaki shorts and black t-shirts without a little advanced planning? When I say they’re not a couple, I know what I’m talking about because they quizzed me on it.

When I sat down, eavesdropped and then burst into their conversation, where they “realized” they were looking like twinners, they asked me to guess if they were related, a “couple” or what their relationship was. I guessed couple. They say “just friends” but they’re going to a garlic festival together this weekend and we all know how an experience like that can change people.

We are convinced (I can say “we” because I am also wearing khaki pants and have a black dress packed in my bag so I’m so totally part of the group now.) that our flight crew fully expects this flight to end in tragedy.

I have never heard a more detailed pre-flight safety presentation in my life. Flotation devices were demonstrated fully, along with instruction on how to partially inflate them if we were to make a water landing but were unable to escape through the standard exists for some reason so we would be able to fit through the windows, after which we should proceed to fully inflate the devices. Let’s just say that if I’ve gotta evacuate this booty out one of those airplane windows, there’s gonna be more than a life vest that needs deflating. They offered no contingency plan for this. Several contingencies were covered and the more detailed it got, the more it began to sound like the flight crew had just a little too much experience with crash water landings.

So, if I make it to California alive, I have officially been invited to a garlic festival by two hilarious people who say “This is the best part” when the engines fire up for take-off and “Engage” as the plane lifts off the ground. Star Trek quotes are fully acceptable when you’re sitting next to someone on their way to a “blogging conference”.

Heard over the intercom as we taxied prior to take-off — “Please keep your seatbelts fastened as we are about to experience a rapid drop in altitude”… Are we traveling to California via underground tunnel? I’m not saying it hasn’t been done before but to my knowledge this is the first time it has been accomplished in a 747.

Update: I have already met several amazing women whom I look up to. Chris has been wonderful and fun to hang out with and within less than an hour of arriving in California, I was able to meet Alice. She is amazingly sweet and down-to-earth. I spent a good portion of the morning stalking Mir. The more I meet these women, the more I want to read what they have to say.