Mr. Happy on his First Airplane Ride
One of the biggest perks of my job is the free travel. With my seniority, my family and I can literally decide on a whim to hop on a plane to Paris and be there the next morning – for free.
Sweet, right?
(Well, it is based on availability, but still…)
When the Geek and I married, we dreamed about the fabulous traveling we would do together. Australia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany, Costa Rica, Russia…you name it, we probably wanted to go!
Just this week the Geek mentioned some of the places he’d like to travel for the photographic opportunities (did I mention that in addition to being an ace computer geek he’s also a pretty darn good photographer?) and we had a fun few moments imagining the great traveling we want to share with our kids.
We never got the chance to travel as a couple before we started the baby-making factory, but we fully planned to take advantage of my free travel benefits shortly after the birth of our second child.
Then Mr. Happy went to the hospital, and we discovered the extent of Mr. Charm’s issues.
Now, the thought of traveling is just…exhausting. Our recent trip to Atlanta just solidified any back-of-the-mind concerns we had: traveling with our food issues is a challenge this road warrior is barely able to meet.
My in-laws went above and beyond to make things easier for us; they put us in their mother-in-law suite downstairs, complete with our own bathroom (limiting soap contamination) and kitchen (making food prep and cleanup much simpler). They provided us with any cooking utensils we could need, access to laundry facilities, our own refrigerator and freezer, and even our own vacuum cleaner.
Even with all of that, though, the trip was stressful and exhausting for me. With our food issues, food doesn’t just happen – it takes lots of prep work and time to cook. Without my frequently used kitchen gadgets available, that prep work took longer than usual. Not to mention, cooking 6 meals per day (with cleanup in between each meal) is time consuming even if you were able to just microwave most of it.
Add in diaper changes, stool/urine collection, nursing Mr. Happy, and, well, basically that was my whole day!
In the end, I got to spend very little time with my in-laws. I was trapped in the kitchen, unable to leave for more than short breaks at a time. It stunk. I had hoped to spend more time with them; hoped to go and do more things with the grandparents and the boys.
It’s hard to go and do things when you have to pack a full days worth of food with you to go anywhere. It’s hard to spend time upstairs when you are needed downstairs to cook.
I think I actually offended them by spending so much of my time downstairs. Hopefully, they understand and weren’t offended, but still…it’s not my ‘norm’ to be a guest in someone’s home and only see them for 30 minutes a day!
All of this just brought up the fact that until we can simply pop in to a restaurant – any restaurant, anywhere – for a meal, our traveling days are severely restricted, if not eliminated.
After all, flying for free is great, but…what are we going to eat once we get there?
Sure, I could make sure we rent a place with a kitchen, but, frankly, if I’m going to have to spend hours of my day cooking I’d rather do it in my OWN kitchen, with my OWN pots, pans, gadgets and helpful tools.
That’s not even considering the challenge of making sure we can find “safe” food for us to eat once we are there! Have you seen the price of grass-fed beef in the stores? Have you even SEEN grass-fed beef in the stores? How about quinoa flour? Or the special rice crackers that are the only crackers I can find for Mr. Charm to snack on? How about the ONLY potato chips I can eat on this diet, that I’ve only found in one health-food store?
We’d have to ship most of our food out beforehand, and find health-food stores to shop at to supplement once we arrive.
Is it really worth all that just to experience a “vacation”, especially while the boys are as young as they are and not likely to remember any of it?
So, FPIES and fructose have officially won the travel war with the Flight Attendant.
I’d really rather just stay home.
Any other FAM out there that take “staycations” instead of vacations?
