After the last baby’s mother took her baby home tonight, I took my kids to the beach to meet some friends for a picnic dinner. My friend brought the picnic and six of her seven children. Our children ran and climbed and threw rocks into the water and talked Nintendo and took turns on the slide.

And then we watched the sun set.

The sky was stretched out without a wrinkle or a cloud. When the sun slipped behind the islands, the sky blushed and gold rippled on the periwinkle waves.

The light is so perfect at that moment, just after the sun has gone. But, alas, I had no more film. I’d taken the last picture on my roll earlier when the children all clambered onto a tree, christened “The Bird Tree,” by my 3-year old. So I gazed fully at my daughter’s face as she stood with her toes in the sand.

And then darkness fell.

I hate mornings. Yet, I was ready for business when the doorbell rang at 7:30 a.m.

I called Amtrak and arranged a refund of our unused “Hurricane Dennis” tickets and a voucher to make up for the hellish Amtrak journey. Then I took four kids with me to the post office where I mailed them registered mail.

Then, on to the park. As I was saying, “Look out for that swing, DaycareKid, or it’ll hit you in the . . . lip,” it hit him in the lip. Sometimes I hate to be right. We stayed an hour, went to the bank, then to McDonald’s and then home.

At naptime, I left my husband in charge and took my youngest son with me to visit my 99-year old grandmother who lives alone in a tidy little house, despite her blindness. My son is fascinated by her old age and by disease and so on the drive there, we discussed death and cancer almost the whole way.

We visited for an hour and a half and then it was time to leave. (More about the visit in days to come.)

Came home to find the little ones awake and having pretzels for a snack. My husband continued his hacking and chopping in the back yard, while I climbed a ladder and did some trimming myself. DaycareKid left early–there were no babies today–it’s funny how just my own family can seem like a vacation compared to my usual routine.

The boys rented video games and had to clean their rooms and shower before they could play and oh boy, did they ever! I’ve never seen them move so fast, other than when I say, “I have a job for you.”

I feel a great sense of accomplishment tonight. I did two things that I needed to do–returning the Amtrak tickets and visiting my grandma. She only lives a half hour away, but it’s so incredibly difficult to carve out time to sit with her and ask her questions and listen to her stories. I need to do that more often. After all, she is ninety-nine, and as my son likes to speculate, she only has nineteen more years until she becomes the Oldest Person in the World. Time’s ticking. Life is short. I could see that when her vacant eyes stared off into the distance and she saw 1926 so clearly.

I guess it’s the post-“vacation” slump that has me in its sweaty grip. Next week, I am directing our church Vacation Bible School, and yet, since Babygirl and I returned from Florida, I have yet to even pick up a paper pertaining to Vacation Bible School, let alone glance at it or take action. I don’t want to do anything.

But I trimmed the ivy which threatened to overtake our driveway and filled the yard-waste bucket to the brim. I went to the video game store and then to Target in pursuit of a game that YoungestBoy desires. I scrubbed my refrigerator until it was clean, then bought food to fill it. I washed and dried two loads of laundry.

All that just to avoid the Vacation Bible School thing. Once next week ends, my summer is free and clear, if you don’t count taking care of my own four kids, plus another three (I’m adding another baby, just because I’m insane).

But, instead of looking forward, let’s look back.

When we arrived in Texas, Babygirl immediately burst into tears and informed us she wanted to go home. When this song came on the radio, we proclaimed it her theme song and turned it louder. She eventually settled in, probably due to the fact that we stayed alone in my sister-in-law’s house for a week. We spent the week playing at the park (in hundred degree heat), swimming at the community pool, and eating out. Babygirl mostly just wanted to be outdoors and I mostly wanted to be indoors, so guess who won? Well, she did and we both had crazy curly hair to show for it.

We visited with various relatives. The first Saturday, my husband dropped us off at about 1:00 p.m. at the house and went to locate a church we planned to attend in the morning. We expected his mother and stepdad and brother and sister-in-law to arrive at about 3:00 p.m. Only twenty minutes later, I heard a doorbell ring. I hurried through the shiny tiled entryway and peered through the glass door to see three people clad in stereotypical Harley-Davidson parapheralia. In fact, they were members of the Bandidos club, but not the specific one mentioned here. For a second, I stared at them, bewildered. Then I remember that this must be Oldest Brother. A-ha! I invited them in.

Then I had to make small-talk until my husband returned, which sounds like torture to me, but ended up being fine and dandy. Oldest Brother’s Wife was delightful and after the day ended, I asked my husband who the second woman was. She was the daughter of Brother #2, who died last year. She’s also the one who was featured on a tabloid television show getting breast implants with her mother. They are talked about going to South Dakota for the Sturgis motorcycle rally.

Variety is the spice of life, isn’t it? My husband’s mother and stepdad arrived and eventually, my husband returned and we had a nice afternoon visiting and eating and drinking sweet tea.

Stuff I saw in Texas I don’t see around here:
1) Sno-cone stands;
2) Roadside places to buy crawfish, dead or alive;
3) Lizards.

We visited a bunch of other relatives, ate a lot of good food (Pappas seafood and Mexican food, yum) and then, it was time to leave. The Amtrak train was scheduled to leave from downtown Houston at 6:15 a.m. on a Sunday. Only, it was running a little late. At first, this seemed like good news–we wouldn’t have to set our alarm clocks for 4:00 a.m. Then, it became bad news. The train didn’t leave until 2:00 p.m. That’s right, folks, a full eight hours late. Eight hours! Right before we boarded, we went to the Houston Aquarium and scarfed down lunch while the fish in tanks watched us eat their distant relatives.

The fact that the train station’s air conditioning didn’t work was a bad omen that I refused to look in the eye. I dismissed the facts that our seats looked shabby and the crumbs and bits of trash littered the train floor and the air smelled. Amtrak is fun! Amtrak is affordable! Amtrak for thirty-seven hours. One night. Fun, fun, fun! (Okay, tolerable! Tolerable! Tolerable!)

At least that’s what I continued to tell myself until that three hours stretch right outside of Tallahassee when the train sat on the tracks, not moving, for three hours. Even Babygirl noticed and said, “The train taking a break?” I tried to believe this, even when a fellow passenger continued to pass the most foul gas and my fellow passengers commented, “Someone needs Castor Oil,” and “Did someone eat cabbage?” and then laugh like a bunch of junior high school students. I didn’t feel like laughing.

My husband was a few seats ahead of me with YoungestBoy. The man across the aisle from him, a mountain of a guy wearing Levis (waist 45, length 30) and a smeary tat*oo of “MATHILDA” lettered across his flabby bicep chatted with my husband throughout the journey. Mathilda Man had long greasy hair down to his shoulder blade. But that long gray hair couldn’t hide his bald spot–I could see that even while he wore his baseball cap.

The boys regularly jaunted to the lounge car to look out the big windows and watch the movie. They played their GameBoys, listened to music, snacked. They seemed to be tolerating the long train ride fairly well.

Babygirl just wanted to go potty.

Have you been on a train? The bathrooms are made to accomodate someone the size of Mary-Kate Olsen, after she loses a few pounds. And all Babygirl wanted was to wobble down the aisles, rappel down the treacherous staircase and squeeze into the impossibly tiny bathroom stalls. Getting both of us in and closing the door required me to saw off my right arm and right leg. No matter. Babygirl found the entire procedure entertaining and fun. I grew more grumpy and soon enough would say to her, “Go ask your daddy.” We went to the bathroom several times each hour. She never wanted to: 1) look out the windows; 2) sleep; 3) read books; 4) sit still.

But that first night, when the sun slipped from the sky, sliding right past the swamps and the scrubby trees, all seemed well. Babygirl snuggled up with an assortment of pillows, watched “Spongebob” on a portable DVD player and slept. Easy enough. I eventually dozed off myself, waking groggily in New Orleans, peering through the window at the eerie cemeteries as we click-clacked our way through the dark city.

I’m not sure where we were when The Loud Family boarded the train, but when I roused from sleep and squinted at my watch, I saw it was 3:00 a.m. This family–mom, teenage kids, grandma, maybe some others–spoke loudly as if they were at a major league baseball game, shouting over hotdogs and the roar of the crowd. I glanced down at sleeping Babygirl and just then, Loud Mom leaned over me and said, “You need to move her or she’s going to get a crick in her neck.”

I just raised my hand in the universal, “stop” signal. Had no one explained to Loud Mom that it’s impolite to speak out loud in the middle of the night on an Amtrak train traveling at a snail’s pace? Loud Mom continued speaking loudly to Loud Son and Loud Daughter and Loud Grandma. At one point, someone in the Loud Family said in a stage-whisper, “Y’all should be quiet.” And Loud Mom poo-pooed the idea, out loud of course. Then she went on and on about grapes. “If no one else wants them, I’m going to eat these grapes. Grapes, anyone?” I was ready to lodge one in her windpipe. Alas, doing so might have made a ruckus and a ruckus might have disturbed Babygirl’s sleep, so I did not murder Loud Mom, as she deserved. The next day, when Loud Family snoozed, I so wanted to shout into their blanket-covered faces. But, I did not.

What was supposed to be one night on the train–the closest I ever get to camping–turned into two nights. By the second night, I began to fantasize about flying directly home from Florida. Our original plan was to take the Amtrak to and from Florida. I started hallucinating about airplanes and Seattle. I just knew that I could not, would not, ride a train again.

An hour from Orlando, at about 5:00 a.m., a train conductor woke me to inform me that we would make the final leg of our journey by bus. I never did ask why. We gathered our belongings and the children and marched wearily outside into the sticky pre-dawn morning and boarded a bus. Then we sat and waited. Our bus driver left his seat and disappeared, leaving us all sitting in the semi-darkness, bleary-eyed and a little stinky.

After quite a while, a large woman made her way to the front of the bus and began pushing buttons until a door opened. She ordered the bus driver to get her suitcase. “I need my medicine. You said it would be forty minutes, but it’s going to be longer than that. So get my medicine.”

The bus driver said, “No. I’m going going to go through all that luggage to find your bag. Sit down.”

She said, “Then let’s go. I want to go or I want my medicine.”

He said, “I’m not getting your bag. You should have kept your medicine out if you needed it. Now sit down.”

She retorted, “Then let’s go! We either go now or call 9-1-1 when I don’t get my medicine on time.”

At that point, I kind of wanted to see what would happen if she didn’t get her medicine on time. The bus driver shooed her back to her seat and we left, but he muttered out loud, saying, “Lord, give me patience,” in a Jamaican accent.

An hour later, we arrived at the Amtrak train station where our shuttle driver met us. By the time we checked into our hotel room, it was 8:00 a.m. We planned to stay in this cheaper room only one night, then transfer to the “Beach Club Resort” for the rest of our stay. Of course, we also planned to arrive at 8:45 p.m. the night before.

When it was all said and done, our train was ten hours late. Ten hours. And so we paid $166.00 for the privilege of showering at the hotel before we checked out and began our Disney adventure. We had to check out by 11:00, but couldn’t check into our regular hotel until 3:00 p.m. But we had to get to the regular hotel to pick up our park tickets. We rode a bus there, picked up the tickets, ate some lunch and went to Epcot for our first afternoon.

I admit that my attitude was a little bent out of shape. A lack of sleep coupled with the frustration of not being able to sleep in the room we paid for, plus the idea that my carefully scheduled week at Disney was now in disarray can do that to a girl.

But despite our rocky start, we saw as much of Disney as we could. We had fun, mostly. We stood in only a few lines, none of them long, we saw spectacular sights, we ate vast amounts of good food, we swam in remarkable sandy-floored pool, we experienced a climate unlike anything the kids had ever imagined and made a lot of memories. The weather was good, meaning that it didn’t thundershower on us until our last day. The skies were blue and the sun hot, but at least we didn’t have to wear the rain ponchos I brought along.

And I didn’t ride a train back home. Amtrak canceled the route due to Hurricane Dennis, but I’d already scheduled myself on a plane before that cancellation. For our trouble, Amtrak is giving us a refund of the portion of our tickets not used. They are also giving us vouchers to apologize for the ten hour late trip.

And just as soon as I get complete amnesia and forget the horror of traveling the rails, I’ll ride Amtrak again. But never in the South. Only from here to Portland, Oregon, or maybe up to Vancouver, B.C. Never again overnight. Never, ever, ever and even though I said that once before (three nights on a train that time and I was eight weeks pregnant, too, though I didn’t know it), I mean it this time.

Well. Babygirl’s awake and clamoring for a bath (she’s the cleanest toddler on earth), so off I go. Tomorrow, the boys will all be home and my life will resume here in the land of shoulder-high Shasta daisies and seventy degree blue skies and weeds growing like . . . weeds.

The sun shines here in the Pacific Northwest and the temperature hovers around seventy degrees. Babygirl naps upstairs while I savor the silence of my own slightly shabby house. I’ve already called my husband in Texas once today to gloat that I hadn’t stepped outside and begun to sweat, as I did the entire two and a half weeks I was gone to the edge of hell warmer regions of the United States.

I have a few pictures, just to prove what a happy vacation we had. Take a look at this, for instance: That was YoungestBoy’s first encounter with Mickey while we were dying from heatstroke enjoying our day at Disney MGM. He began a collection of Disney character autographs, beginning with Mickey.

Meanwhile, the twins were fanning themselves and complaining about the temperatures and begging me to slow down. I, however, had a plan and my plan did not include lollygagging under shade trees. My plan was foiled by the heat and uncooperative children, though I did usher them through the main must-see attractions, including the “Tower of Terror” and “Rock’n Roller Coaster,” as seen here: (Click on that picture and you can see their faces better.) The twins hated the “Tower of Terror” and “Rock’n Roller Coaster,” and refused to go on other attractions that sounded scary. YoungestBoy, however, gleefully rode every attraction–though “It’s a Bug’s Life” terrified him. (Go figure that a 3D movie featuring cartoon bugs would scare him.)

Our strategy in the theme parks included rising early and then following the suggested touring plans in “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2005.” My husband strolled Babygirl around when we went into an attraction not appropriate for her while I stayed with the boys, for the most part. This worked faily well, though one day we were separated and I couldn’t hear him calling me repeatedly on my cell phone, leading him to extreme frustration. But try it. Go to a theme park and see if you can hear your cell phone ringing in your pocket.

We loved our hotel (“The Beach Club”) and the pool there. We had a great time in the parks. But I would never go again in July, as it was eight billion degrees ninety-five (the heat index, I heard, was 106 degrees one day), and unfit for human survival. We managed to avoid sunburns and got hardly any bug bites. We didn’t have enough time, really, to see everything, nor enough stamina (due to the heat).

All in all, I’d say it was a successful trip (I can’t bring myself to call it a “vacation,” because that word would imply some rest and relaxation, which this was not about). And, as Dorothy would say, “there’s no place like home.” I’m glad to be here.

(Oh, by the way, if you hear that we are coming to your area, you should be very afraid. Wherever we go, extreme weather conditions occur. For instance, in Texas, they just had their driest June ever. In Florida, they just had one of the earliest severe hurricanes ever. And our church congregation should be doubly afraid because whenever my husband leaves town, someone dies. This time, a seemingly healthy, though elderly woman was discovered sitting in her chair, waiting for her hair appointment. Deceased. My husband offered to fly home for the funeral, but thankfully, those left in charge were able to handle everything. As I said, beware whenever you see us come or watch us go.)

Oh, and one last picture. Here is Babygirl, standing a safe distance from Piglet:

I’m not actually supposed to be home today. We were scheduled to arrive in Seattle Thursday, but sometime in the dark hours of the second night on the train from hell Amtrak, I began to fantasize about flying home, directly home, do-not-pass-go, from Orlando, rather than returning via train to Houston for an additional three days before flying home.

That dream came true . . . and as it turned out that my husband and three boys didn’t have to ride the train back either, thanks to Hurricane Dennis. The train was canceled and they flew out of Orlando today, too, a few hours after Babygirl and me. But they’ll be in Texas for a few more days. So now, I am hiding out here at home, not telling a soul I’ve returned, though perhaps the neighbors will realize it when they see the front yard foot-high dandelions have been mown down.

This morning in Orlando, at about 3:00 a.m., Babygirl woke and whispered to me off and on for two hours, at which point, she slept again while I wearily began my day with a shower at 5:15 a.m. We left the room at almost 6:00 a.m. I scooped Babygirl from the bed and carried her downstairs, still in her pajamas. My husband helped me rolll my large bag downstairs to the check-in counter, where the three stooges Continental employees informed me that they could only check my bag through to Houston, not Seattle. They suggested I pick up the bag in Houston and recheck it, or take it along on the shuttle and check it at the curb.

In a moment of complete idiocy, I let them ticket the bag to Houston, thinking I’d pick it up at baggage claim and then recheck it to Seattle. While in the air, I realized the folly of this plan–my layover was less than one hour. An extremely helpful Continental employee in Orlando, Judy S., went above and beyond the call of duty and fixed the mistake the remote check-in location guys made and hand-ticketed my bag to Seattle and then paged me to let me know what she’d done. God bless Judy S.

We caught the shuttle to the airport at 6:25 a.m. for our 9:50 a.m. flight. When we arrived in Houston, we had about an hour, so I set about looking for food for Babygirl. A man directed us down a hallway to a Wendy’s, so off we went, Babygirl and I, me tottering along on blistered feet, her snug in her stroller, urging me, “Faster! Faster!” I settled her bag containing chicken nuggets and fries in her lap and hurried back down the hallway with thirty minutes before take-off.

As I rushed along, I hit a bump, a little ramp, and Babygirl’s food tumbled from her lap and skittered across the airport floor. Instantly, I grabbed her now-empty food bag and collected the chicken nuggets. To my credit, I did not attempt to salvage the french fries, but I plopped that bag of nuggets back in her lap, invoking the Five Second Rule (food on the floor less than five seconds is perfectly fine to eat). I held my head high, did not look around so as to avoid the horrified looks of fellow passengers.

I fed my child food that had spilled on the public walkway at an airport. I’m just waiting for the Child Protective Services people to show up.

Both flights went extremely well. Babygirl paged through the Continental catalog she found in the pocket in front of her seat. She spent a great deal of time carefully turning the pages and studying the superfluous items for sale, no bargains in those pages! We survived a total of six hours in the air, in large part thanks to Spongebob Squarepants on our portable DVD player.

Now, Babygirl sleeps in her own crib, though she tried to weasel her way into my bed.

I’ve unpacked, washed and dried a load of laundry, mowed the lawn (I use that word, “lawn”, loosely), and yawned a lot. No one knows I’m home, so I have a couple of days to recover from the exhaustion that is traveling with children, before picking up my life where I left off.

I need a vacation.

Ever go on vacation and run into a hurricane? Well, me neither, but there’s a first time for eveything. Even before our Amtrak train cancelled the return trip from Orland to Houston, leaving tomorrow, I’d decided that I would sooner gnaw off my own arm with my own teeth than ride the train again with a two-year-old. So, I have a flight scheduled to leave on Monday, all the way home to Seattle, where the temperature is a mild sixty-five or seventy degrees, as God intended summer should be.

Did I mention the heat index was 106 degrees yesterday here at the Happiest Place on Earth?

Well. Let’s just say I hate saunas.

All that said, we have a lot of happy memories and some not so happy, like when I sat at in the midst of the Rainforest Cafe’ with my three boys and cried. They didn’t even notice for about twenty minutes. The next day, however, their behavior was impeccable. Nothing like a little emotional blackmail to whip kids into shape, especially when kicking them really hard in the shins is frowned upon.

So, I’ll be home soon. This is costing me sixty-nine cents a minute or I might ramble on and on. See you soon.

Did I scare you? You probably didn’t expect to find me here–I certainly didn’t think I’d find me here. A computer is available for me to use at the house where we’re staying, but I started thinking about the electronic trail I might leave and so I didn’t dare to even visit my blog. But now? Now, I’m at the Harris County Public Library next to a teenager wearing headphones that don’t actually block out the thumping music funneling into his ears. It’s 1:30 p.m. and I left Babygirl napping with her daddy and the boys lounging around watching cartoons and playing their Gameboys.

So far, so good. Babygirl found the idea of riding in an airplane thrilling, as did the boys. Our eardrums didn’t explode and no one screamed and the plane stayed in the air, hitting only a few “bumpity-bumps” as we descended into Houston. During the four-hour flight, Babygirl watched the “Heffalump” DVD, ate the salad from my lunch, drew on her “Color-Wonder” paper (a true miracle, that stuff) and finally napped in my arms. [I have to note that Babygirl, not yet three, drew faces, complete with ears and hair and a bruise, and then wrote a row of the letter “H.”]

When she woke from her nap, she was not happy to be still on the big airplane. She wanted to go home. Landing distracted her, as did the escalator. However, when she walked out of the airport into a blast of heat, she grew concerned. When I buckled her into her carseat in the white Suburban, tears rolled down her face. She did not want to go to her aunt’s house. “I want to go to my home!” she cried over and over.

Since then, she’s come to understand that her home is too far away and that we are staying at “the lady’s house.” (She calls her aunt, “the lady,” and sounds exactly like Jerry Lewis when she does so.) “The Lady” left the next morning, so we’ve been housesitting, sort of, and exulting in the cleanliness and emptiness of a whole house to ourselves. Within blocks of the house are two swimming pools and parks, and I must admit that things are bigger in Texas–the pools are both twice the size of the pool at home, and the parks have two or three sliding/climbing toys. Babygirl loves to slide and climb and swim, so we distract her from her homesickness with carefully timed mentions of swimming or sliding. When all else fails, I say, “You want to go shopping?” and then I take her to the local Wal-Mart Supercenter. When in Texas, you know, do as Texans do.

I took the boys to see Madagascar. They are having a blast eating out every day. (I am enjoying not cooking, though I carry on with two loads of laundry each day). Tonight, they are going with their dad to his niece’s house to swim and play. I hear rumors of dirt-bikes and four-wheelers and other devices designed to break children’s bones. I’m staying home with Babygirl–we think it would be just too much for her–and we’ll probably walk to the pool on the greenbelt paths.

We leave Sunday morning at 6:15 a.m. on Amtrak, heading for Disney World. Babygirl is excited about the idea–the train and Disney World itself–though she really has no idea what we’re talking about. The boys cannot wait for this portion of our adventure to begin. We’ll arrive late on the night of July 4th, ready for a five-day whirlwind tour.

Alas, I failed to get my house perfectly clean before I left, but in the end, I told myself it was good enough. When I get home, we’ll be so happy to see our own not-quite-clean digs that it won’t matter. Maybe that’s the point of a vacation anyway. By the time you see your own worn carpets and grimy windows, you are just thrilled to be back in your own territory, nevermind if the high temperature is only seventy-one degrees in the middle of July. At least at home, you can plop your baby into her crib at 8:00 p.m. and she goes to sleep without a fuss. Here, we’re sharing a full-sized bed and she sleeps fused to my spine, causing me to wake up puffy-eyed and sore.

Who knows when I’ll check in again . . . Gina will be posting re-runs here and there for your entertainment. I’ll eat some barbecue for you.