Under New Management (Without a Clue)
It all started, as many things do these days, with an email. I filled in a web form, selected a few boxes, typed in some text in a little box, and sent it off. Little did I know.
Little did I know my email was going to wind up worse than any virus that snags your address book and mails out friendly mails apparently from you with a fun little zip file attached that's nearly as nosey as my eleven month old son, and it nips into their address book and rushes out to all those people until eventually, one must imagine, Kevin Bacon gets one heck of a lot of mail, if everyone is truly separated by six degrees from the lanky actor. It's funny that my eleven month old son should come up, because this story, in essence, is about him.
The little form I filled out was for a bed and breakfast down the Cape for my lovely wife and myself, and our constant little companion of eleven months. It was an enquiry into a room at a place by the sea, by the ferry, by a bike rental place, by a little restaurant, for my wife's birthday (she's turned 22 *). And in the enquiry I made sure to mention the fact that we were traveling with our eleven month old son. I failed to mention the seventeen suitcases, fourteen bottles of water and accompanying formula to mix with the water, seeming cast of thousands of stuffed animals, two hundred jars of baby food, and bag of diapers that has come closer to anything I've ever seen in life to replicating the trick clowns pull with their little car.
Traveling with a baby is an act of the highest order of coordination. If the Universe were created in seven days, I would bet that, had the Creator had a small baby, it might still have taken the seven days, but only after months and months of planning, stockpiling and preparing food and spare bottles, making vague allotments for naps in between especially spaced out planets, and then the actual creation of the Universe might be put off by a couple days because the child's nap ran long, or short, or a feeding took slightly longer than planned/hoped for, and some corners may have been cut when the Creator noticed the child attempting to crawl off the edge of a galaxy and had to just leave that asteroid belt the way it was. Actually, this all sounds suspiciously similar to massive public works programs. Which might explain a lot.
So this is the circus that made it's way from somewhere slightly north of Boston down I-93 to Cape Cod early Thursday evening after the work day.
This occasion was something else that was emailed to the same people who ran the B&B at which we planned to stay a few days in advance. Mindful of the fact that we were traveling with a twenty-plus pound little mound of curious flesh that seems to think he's a dog, I was trying to prepare myself as much as the B&B owners that we were coming, and one of us was shockingly small and shockingly opinionated for someone so small.
"There'll be a crib," they said. "We'll buy one if you're not traveling with one."
"Okay," I thought. "This is very considerate of these people. They must know that there is no way on Earth we could have fit anything else in our car. Unless those home vacuum-packing things worked on suitcases and the multitude of bags we're toting."
So we arrive. The child is an absolute angel on the ride down, which is to say he slept the entire drive. I can happily imagine a heaven full of winged, sleeping angels, strewn about, the occasional soft snore sounding like waves hitting the shore.
As the father in our traveling party, I parked the car, and assumed my duties as pack horse, bringing in the bags, one or perhaps two or perhaps three or even four at a time, hung from whatever odd angles I never knew I could produce by contorting my body. Different contortions got me inside the front door, and the screen door banging on the doorjamb brought out one of the owners, who showed me to our room. There was a little Winnie the Pooh crib, and we wrapped a spare set of sheets around the mattress. At this stage, the boy made his first appearance, which sounds like he was holding an autograph session, and is probably not too far off from capturing the atmosphere of himself arriving in what instantly becomes his room, whichever room that may be.
It became infinitely more his room when the owner brought in their dog. Our son's personal Scale of Attention Importance, the scale by which he judges things to be pointed at and requested fervently with an "Ah, ah, ah!" sound goes something like this:
* 1. Dogs
* 2. Other People
* 3. Blueberries (sometimes)
* 4. His parents
And this was before really having the opportunity to crawl around a more placid dog and poke at him without fear of being eaten or trampled. So the arrival of this placid, friendly dog to the room was perhaps the Greatest Thing Which Had Ever Happened to this young boy. This was also 10 o'clock at night.
So after the dog and owner left, we were left with a child who, I can only imagine, kept telling us "Mom, Dad! Did you see the dog? Did you see him? Did you see me petting him? He nearly bit me! And he had claws! And teeth! And this massive tongue! And fur! And Mom! Dad! Did you see him! he was there! Right there! On the floor! Near where I was! Dog! Oohf! Oohf!"
The "oohf! oofh!" part is the only part, if you were listening without subtitles, that would have sounded the same between the conversation he apparently was having with us and the one we heard. None of which was helped by the fact that we replied, "Yes, D----, that's fascinating, anyway, suck on this pacifier thing, sort of shut your eyes, and here you go," as we lobbed him into the brand new crib. So the "oofhs" became cries, until, finally, a half hour in, we caved and he was able to reconcile his brand new experience with the dog with our desire for him to sleep when he was sleeping right between Mum and Dad. Which he did, until 8 o'clock the next morning.
"Now that's not too bad," you're probably saying to yourself. "Sounds like a nice start to the mini-vacation." And it was.
And the next morning, when we had a nice enough breakfast provided by the owners and himself had a few blueberries (see number 3 on the Scale of Attention Importance) and got to see the dog again (see number 1 on the Scale of Attention Importance), things were also quite nice. As was the walk out on the beach just outside the door, the trip back to our room to let the boy have his morning nap, and the walk to the bike shop to rent bikes nearby. Somewhere between the dog the evening before and the next morning the multitude of baby paraphernalia made its way into every single nook and cranny ** in our little room. The fridge was full of his food, the counter next to the stove held his empty bottles, the counter next to the sink was home to his oatmeal and a few plastic containers that served as portable plates and toys in an emergency, as well as a few plastic spoons. The drawers held yet more plastic spoons, the bags that had been carrying the plastic containers and still held the various pieces that made up a bottle, as well as a few pacifiers. The trash can under the counter held quite a few full diapers. The shelves on the way to the bathroom held a half dozen or so facecloths, for the aftermath of a feeding time. I don't know why we bothered with the facecloths, really, as nearly every shirt I own will attest to the fact that he's just as happy wiping his face and hands clean on his dad as he is in using a facecloth.
It was to this mostly ordered chaos that we returned for D----'s afternoon nap.
And this, Dear Reader, is where it gets nasty. We were about to be evicted.
To be continued next week.
disclaimer:
* This is a special birthday present of my own to my wife, who looks 22, at any rate. A beautiful 22, mind you, because looking 22 in and of itself could mean anything, really.
** The phrase "nook and cranny" really hits home when you have seventeen million jars of pureed food and manage to find a place to hide each and every single one of them. The picture of a kitchen with all the cupboard doors closed and a caption claiming there was a week's supply of baby food behind the closed doors would speak more volumes than any bog standard dictionary definition ever could.
The rest of the disclaimer:
Okay, we're not so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this week, I have to say. It seems every Monday, whether it's in part due to the tremendous gear coming off the MacBook Pro or some other force, it feels, generally, like my face is about to melt off.
Which is unpleasant, to say the least. A bit like being thrown out of a B&B with a baby, the seventeen suitcases required for traveling with a baby of a certain age no matter the duration you're traveling for, and the pervasive stink of stale formula clinging to every piece of clothing you own and the suddenly very claustrophobic (and very smelly) car.
The issue you have just read is based on a true story.
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