Sunny Side Florida

I'm back. No hangover. Although I'd forgotten that Florida is a lawless state--no closing time for bars, smoke galore. I walked out of the Deuce smelling like a Phillip Morris factory and now my throat is raw. It what happens when you're out of the practice of inhaling second-hand smoke. I love going to the Deuce, although the crowd is quite different from when I started going there, when I was a young, underaged drinker afraid of getting booted out. I realized I've been going to that bar for twenty years now. I was there with a crowd of other old-timers (sorry, Rachel, Jennifer, and Bettina, but you are) celebrating early the 40th birthday of my cousin Oliver. We tortured the other patrons of the bar by playing the music we listened to when we went twenty years ago (and I still don't see what's so wrong with "Just Can't Get Enough." Even my own crowd gave me grief for that one).

The trip began inauspiciously: Our plan to leave on Monday the 24th were scratched when a family situation required us to be home on Friday the 21. So I scrambled to get our tickets changed, not the easiest feat during the holiday season, but I managed to get all of us on the 7:45 p.m. flight on Thursday. I knew the kids would be toast, arriving at 11:10 p.m., but we'd get them quickly to my parents' place and have them to bed and hopefully they'd be fresh for our obligations on Friday.

What's that they say about the best laid plains? That they'll screw you over and leave you in the middle of Logan airport with a screeching toddler with no desire to sleep at 11 p.m.? Yep, that's it.

Thursday began with a dashing of snow--kiddies went to school, the day went along as planned. One inch of snow. One inch. One inch. And that's what we got. One inch. And then another one inch. And another one inch... Delays at Logan. I checked before I did anything and was happy to see that we were still on schedule. For a 7:45 flight on the Thursday before Christmas we knew security would be a nightmare, so we figured we needed to be there at 6:30. We park offsite and take a shuttle over to Logan, so we figured we should be there about 6. I needed to pick Adam up at his office before we headed over, and as you may know, Boston traffic is rather notorious even when it's not snowing and rush hour. So we figured we should pick up Adam around 5. So we left our house at 4:45.

Traffic? What traffic? Got to Adam's just after 5. Got to parking just about 5:45. Got the car unloaded, car seat out, and at the shuttle at 6. At 6:05 my phone rang. "May I please speak to Jennifer?" the voice said. "Speaking," I replied. "Hi," the voice said. "This is Joan at American Airlines and I wanted to call you to let you know your flight has been delayed to 9:10 p.m." As we're on the shuttle. To the airport. At 6 p.m. With my toddler. And my preschooler.

At least we're assured it'll take us an hour to get the bags checked and through security. It's the first time ever I've been grateful for a long wait because I'm not sure how to kill time with these two. Adam juggles the stroller, a car seat, and three suitcases; I'm handling the kids and the carry-ons. Time to check-in bags? We walked straight through to open kiosk. Done by 6:20. The line for security? Nonexistent. You people out there who have flown out of terminal B at Logan: When have you ever not had a security line? When have you ever just walked right through? If you looked out your window on Thursday night and thought you saw Santa flying, sorry, it wasn't. They were merely pigs.

So it's now 6:30 and we have A LOT of time to kill. We go to the Todd English restaurant, Bonfire, where Pie is delighted to order mac and cheese and Doodles is willing to have the relatively healthy guacamole with some chips. And here's where we killed a lot of time. Because it took a full twenty minutes for someone to come back and report they were out of guacamole... and mac and cheese. Thank god those knives past security were plastic because I think the kids might have used them on the waitress... or me on the kids... or Adam on all of us. We survived a mac-and-cheese- and guacamole-free dinner and then headed down to our gate. To wait. And wait. And wait. Now my little munchkins who go to bed at 7 (the bigger muchkin) and 7:30 (the litter munchkin) react to lack of sleep in different ways. At about 7:30, unable to keep his eyes open any longer, Doodles climbed into Pie's stroller and went to sleep. Pie, forcing her eyes open, realized that if she took off her shoes, the center aisle of the terminal was as good as a Slip N Slide for running down and falling. "Wheee!" she yelled and everyone thought it was sooooo cute. That little muchkin running and yelling and jumping up and down.

But, oh, did they think it was so cute at 11:45 p.m. when the plane finally took off? My bigger muchkin curled into the seat, trying to sleep and the litter muchkin straining against her car seat screaming at the top of her lungs, hysterically, "Get me out! No like car seat! No like airplane!" Do you know what an overtired Pie does at midnight? Refuse to sleep and scream like a banshee. Still cute, folks?

We landed at 2:45 p.m. My parents left a car for us at the airport, so we waited for our luggage, Adam put in the car seats, and drove to my parents. We arrived about 3:40 a.m. and by the time we got Doodles down, it was 4 and Pie refused to shut those eyes until she was in our bed at 4:30. Which might have been workable had everyone not been up before 8:30 a.m. Needless to say, Pie was escorted out of the family obligation shortly after it began for screaming about sippy cups, sunglasses, and snacks.

I'd like to say that things improved from there, but frankly they didn't, and I'll spare you Adam's Day of Poop and the three days it took for for Pie to become almost human being-like again.

But yesterday things perked up. Rachel, Bettina, Jennifer, and I made the annual pilgrimage to the spa at The Standard, where we were buffed and polished to a high sheen, which we then showed off as we lounged in the steam bath, the hamman, the pool, and outdoor waterfall. No spa day is complete without a martini, of course, and it finally felt like vacation had begun. The evening continued with the aforementioned birthday party--complete with copious amounts of sushi and drink, which is pretty much my idea of heaven. Adam and I stayed out until--wait for it folks--midnight! Whoo hoo! We were partying like we were... well, like we were almost 40 (true, Adam is only 35, but he's old beyond his years).

So now, I plan to drink martinis, mainline cafe con leches, swim in my parents' newly heated pool, take a ride on my cousin's boat, and generally enjoy the decadent behavior one associates with South Beach. Happy new year everyone!