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Over the next day or so I will be moving this blog to its new home on TypePad. The new address will be randomoutlaw.typepad.com/randomoutlaw .

Why the move? Well, I liked the built in photo uploading options, as well as the categories and some other stuff.

So update your links. I should have the new site up tomorrow with all of the archives from the blogspot blog.

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The Schedule of Insanity

Usually when I realize that time is escaping me faster than I can account for it, I get upset and nostalgic. You know, the whole, my baby's growing up so fast thing, or I can't believe it's been six years since I graduated from college thing. But right, now I don't mind if the days fly by, because each day brings us ever closer to a beautiful thing: the undoing of the Schedule of Insanity.

The Schedule of Insanity was born at the same time the Moosh was. Or, to be more precise, it was born six weeks after the Moosh was, when I returned to work. The initial incarnation of the SoI involved me working nights five days a week, and R working from noon to 10 PM on Saturday and Sunday, and working nights from 8 PM to 6 AM on Wednesday and Thursday nights. So if I took off Wednesday and Thursday, we only needed a babysitter for about 3 hours a week on the weekends, when I had to leave for work before he got home. As you can see, this is an insane schedule. In addition, R and I only saw each other for about 9 hours a week, on Fridays. Lovely. Also, nobody got any sleep, except for the baby, and that was only because he didn't have anything to do, the lazy bastard. So yeah. The initial incarnation lasted for 18 months. 18 months of no sleep, marital strife, hunger, and crying (both for the parents and the baby).

Enter the business. And the quitting of R's regular job to become his own boss. And the switching of Lisa from the night shift to the evening shift. And the hiring of Lisa's sister to watch the Moosh from 2:30 to 9:30 five days a week. Joy. Joy, happiness, and sleep for everyone!

Unfortunately my sister has another job, which spawned the second iteration of the Schedule of Insanity. She works part-time doing after school supervision for a private school. She got permission to bring my son with her to after school for about 20 minutes, until my mom can come to pick him up. No problem, except that I have to drive the Moosh from my house to my parents' house three times a week, and then go on to work from there. Then my sister has to finish her work with the after school program, go and pick up the Moosh from my parents' house, and then drive him back to my house. This, as you can clearly see, is insane. It's complicated and crappy and cuts a whole lot of time out of everyone's day (particularly mine).

Fortunately for everyone, the after school job goes away in six weeks. In six weeks I won't have to drive anywhere. My (totally super awesome) babysitter will come to my house, and I will go to work from my house. Hallelujah!

So let the time fly by! Fly by I say. Even if it means that the Moosh turns two that much sooner (ACK!). Let the Schedule of Insanity go the way of the dinosaur. Extinction is a beautiful thing.

Some People

Lisa:[on the phone with a vendor at work, wrapping up] So, are we good?

Vendor: Yes. I'm just going to close your case now.

Lisa: No, man, don't close it. Put it on hold until tomorrow, OK?

Vendor: What?

Lisa: Just put it on ho--

Vendor:[interrupting] What did you call me? My name is not MAN. My name is DEREK. I introduced myself at the beginning of our conversation.

Lisa's Inner Bitch: OK, psycho.

Lisa: Sorry. I talk to so many people in a day, it's hard to remember everyone's name.

DEREK: You don't just call people MAN. I introduced myself. My name is DEREK. You should address people by their names. It's just common courtesy.

Lisa: Yeah, as I said, I'm sorry, DEREK. So are you going to hold my case or what?

DEREK: It's just common courtesy. You don't call people MAN.....

Lisa: [hangs up]

Lisa's Inner Bitch: Talk crazy shit to the dial tone, MAN.

Seriously. You can't make this shit up. I have been working with people, primarily on the phone, for four years. I call everyone "man" or "guy" or "ma'am" or "sir." All around me I also hear people using "buddy" and "brother." I talk to at least 75 to 100 individuals every day. I simply cannot remember everyone's name. I think that it is far worse to call people by the wrong name, which happens to me all the time. It's embarrassing. I'd much rather be called "ma'am" than Linda or Libby. I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time. C'est la vie.

Getting Back To Normal

We've been home for four days now, and things are slowly starting to get back to normal. The Moosh woke up at 7:30 this morning instead of 4:00. A vast improvement. He also went down for his nap on time.

I went to visit my parents yesterday, and at some point we ended up in Wal-Mart (where I almost never shop if I can help it), and I spent a boatload of money on 2 DVDs, 2 gallons of milk, a six-pack of YoBaby yogurt, and a toy for the Moosh. It cost almost $100. For 6 things. When did stuff get so expensive?

The toy was a LeapFrog magenetic alphabet toy that I'd been meaning to buy for some time. You can check it out here. He loves it, for the moment anyway. I promised myself that when I had children, I would not fill up my house with useless junk that the kids play with for 5 minutes and then ignore. Of course, when I made that promise, I had no children, and therefore had no idea what I was talking about. I have bought a myriad of junk in the last 1.75 years, and spent an untold amount of cash. He plays with about 10% of the stuff. Sigh.

I bought The Incredibles, even though I hadn't seen it, because I had been assured that it was good by reliable people, and I'm always looking to expand my collection of children's movies that I can stand. I only have a few, but I want to get some more before the boy takes a keen interest in television, so that I will not be forced to watch Barney. The Incredibles was really good, it kept me interested and it was funny. Two thumbs up.

The other DVD I bought was the director's cut of Donnie Darko, one of my favorite movies of all time. Director's cuts are such a crapshoot, because you've fallen in love with a movie in its original form, and sometimes the changes that the director makes just seem wrong somehow. Take the opening scene of Donnie Darko, for example. The original movie featured Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon during the opening credits. I love that song, and it fit perfectly with the main character's personality in the film. The director's cut has a different song, I think its by INXS. It's a good song, but no. Just no. I'll take the Echo and the Bunnymen song any day. I haven't finished the director's cut yet, but I intend to watch the first cut of the film, and then the director's cut, and do a comparison and contrast. I just love this movie. Seriously.

This morning I cleaned my house. I picked up all the clutter and put it away, and then I vacuumed. I even changed the vacuum cleaner bag. I also made muffins. I am so Martha Stewart all up in here. Tomorrow I will have to clean the bathrooms and the kitchen, but then everything will be clean! We will have a fresh canvas of a house to crap up and let dust settle all over.

Home

So, we made it back. I am currently at work, dog tired from the damn jet lag. The Moosh woke me up at 4:00 this morning. This is not surprising, since he went to sleep at 4:30 PM the previous day. I'm not mad about it, I'm just very, very tired.

Our trip back was fairly uneventful, except for the general suckiness of traveling that far with such a young child.

We left Iran at 3:05 AM local time, so the Moosh slept through that flight. Upon landing in Germany, we ate our complimentary breakfast at a restaurant in the airport, then we went to the legendary McDonalds in the Frankfurt airport. I got two Chicken McNugget Happy Meals, and they had free balloons for the kids. The Moosh loves balloons, so I grabbed two of them, hoping that they would keep him entertained for the (long, long, long) trip home. We then did the standard security stuff, and boarded the plane.

The flight from Frankfurt to Dallas is 11 hours long. It also has the bitchiest flight attendants I have ever met. In general, I find Lufthansa's service to be outstanding. Our previous three flights were fine, and I had no problems with the staff, but on that last flight, the long haul from Frankfurt to Dallas (F to D, for short) , I have had problems with the staff for two years straight.

Last year, the Moosh was an infant, and we were carrying his infant seat with us. On every other flight they simply took the seat from us and stowed it. F to D? The flight attendant told us that they "didn't do that" when we asked her to stow the seat. R asked her if she thought this was our first time on a plane or something. We pushed, and she found a place for the seat. Later, that same flight attendant got in my face and started yelling at me regarding a conversation I was having with my husband. Granted, she was mentioned in the conversation, but you simply don't do that to customers. Ever.

This time around, they started giving me shit because they said that the car seat we had with us, the same car seat I had used on the previous three flights, was not airplane compliant. I informed them that it certainly was, and that I had already used it three different times on their airline. After much crap, they realized that the seat was airplane compliant. Imagine that. When the flight attendant told me this, I replied that I knew that, because we'd already used it three times. She smiled at me condescendingly, and said they just had to make sure, and then, leaning down so that she was eye-level with the Moosh, she cooed, "for the safety of the baby." I refrained from kicking her.

Then later, I got into a fight with a different flight attendant about food for the Moosh. On every other flight, when they served dinner, I just asked for an extra piece of bread and some extra cheese, and then I split the entree with the kid. He doesn't eat that much. But on the F to D flight, when I asked for extra bread and cheese, she told me that I couldn't have any. I pointed out that I paid a full child's fare for the Moosh's seat, and that included meals. She then asked me if he were over or under 2 years old. Irrelevant. I paid for a seat. That includes meals. It was on his ticket. However, I could see where this was going, so I told her that he was over 2. She gave me a full meal tray for him. He ate half of his bread, and the cheese, and a few bites of the pasta entree. What a waste.

The Moosh slept for the first 3 hours of the flight. After that, I really did my best to keep him quiet and entertained, but I will fully admit that I failed miserably. I was exhausted, and so was he. We were stuck on a plane. He didn't want to sing songs, or play tickle mouse, or color, or anything. He wanted out of his seat and off that plane. So yeah, he cried. A lot. I cried some, too. I kept telling him that we were going home, and that his aunt would be there when we got to the airport, and then we could sleep. I had really hoped that he would take another nap, but he didn't fall asleep again until about 15 minutes before we landed. He finally tired himself out crying. Then I had to wake him up again to get off the plane.

I got his stroller, and we went down to the baggage claim. I just kept up my little mantra to him the whole time: we were done traveling, his aunt was waiting for us, we were going home. Our first bag came off the carousel. Then we waited and waited, and then the carousel broke. It broke, and our other bag was still not with us. I nearly fainted. I also felt like a fraud, because I had visions of having to go through the lengthy lost baggage process, and my poor sister was waiting for us, and she had no idea what was going on. Luckily, they fixed it! And there was our bag. We breezed through passport control, but had to go through customs. They screened all of the people who had come from Iran.

In Iran, one of their things is that they always want you to take a crapload of food home. Dried fruit, nuts, candy, cookies, you name it. They don't ask you if you want it, they just put it in your suitcase. So when the customs agent asked me what food was in my bag, I told him I wasn't exactly sure. I was positive that most of the food would be thrown away. All around me, the other people from Iran were having their food items trashed. I opened up the suitcase for the customs guy, and I just chattered away at him, explaining how they just kind of threw the stuff into my suitcase, most of it was packaged food, etc. He poked at the stuff cursorily, telling me about mold or something, and I nodded and smiled and chattered. Then he closed up my suitcase and sent me on my way. I had the exact same food that all those other people from Iran had. They got theirs thrown away, and I got to keep mine. My theory is that I was American, and I wasn't emotionally attached to the food. I really didn't care if they confiscated it or not. Anyway, I got to keep it, and we were finally done with the exit process.

We walked up the ramp, and there was my sister, waiting for us. She saw us, ran over, and lifted the Moosh out of his stroller. She hugged him for a minute, and finally this look of recognition came over his face. "Sister?" he said, and then he hugged her. We got everything loaded in the car, and headed home.

My sister stayed for a few minutes, but she had to get to work, so she left quickly. We puttered around the house for about 30 minutes, then we went to lie down in our soft, soft bed. Both of us were so very tired, and we just kind of lay there, shell-shocked, for about five minutes. Then the Moosh reached over and stroked my face, as he always does when he's about to go to sleep, and, eyes drooping, he looked at me and said, "Home." I stroked his hair, and told him, "Yes, baby, we're home."