Monday Monday — Headache Pay

Greetings Wench fans and all of you who aren’t but still read this!

Thought I’d share an early chapter of my upcoming memoir: Headache Pay.
 
 Fun Fact: I have lived in three different countries, with small children. As a matter of (even more fun) fact, I left Ann Arbor the first time with a 5 year old, a 3 year old and the (Surprise! You’re Pregnant Again!) Soccer Wenchling in utero. We were quite the group on our first Giant Jaunt across the world to Japan.
 
 I was given a wealth of advice about traveling that sort of distance with little kids. Never mind I was more or less a zombie, given my penchant to zone out in the first trimester. I’ve been known to wear 2 different shoes in public and not even care during those early, nausea-riddled months. So ponder the glorious reality of me, living in the “poor me” zone, sipping as much lemon-infused water as I can lay my hands on and dragging my spawn progeny around the Delta terminal at the Detroit airport, wondering exactly how one boards a plane with 2 normal (read: active) children at say, nine a.m. on Monday in Michigan only to emerge about 12.5 hours later. On a Tuesday. At nine a.m. 
 
 Right. So at that time in the Automotive World that we inhabited, said Auto Company That Shall Remain Nameless flew their ex-pat families “business class.” This, for you unwashed masses, is like “first class” only with more seats, but the grumpy “coach” flight attendants.
 
 Funny Story interlude: One of my most favorite/sadistic things to do was to arrive at the point where you must go left for “first” and “business” or turn right to enter the cattle car of international travel, smile, shift the baby up onto my hip and grip one of my other kids’ hands (it mattered not which one at that point) and turn left.

This “business class” privilege also implied admission to the “Delta Lounge,” where sugar-drenched goodies and free colas became the bane of the Crowe existence. Trust me when I tell you there is nothing as angry as “Business Man Disturbed By Wandering Children High On Sugary Granola” Angry.
 
 One of the bon mots I got from somewhere (probably Grandma Wench, who was famous for something called “gork juice” but that’s a total digression) was to give the little darlings a bolus small dose of liquid allergy medicine (the “pink kind”) right as we were boarding or slightly before. That stuff was meant to provide the knock out needed to survive enjoy the first half of a twelve hour flight, relatively kid-free. 
 
 They say that it’s Urban Legend how the “sleepy medicine,” as we came to refer to it in our ExPat years, has the exact opposite effect on some kids.
 
 I can attest from direct experience, there is nothing “urban” or “legend” about it.

My oldest, currently toiling the fields of pharmacy school in Memphis, acted like I’d given him a diet pill laced with aderall. Which I did not, of course. So calm down.
 
 The middle kid, soon embarking upon her first civil engineering co-op in Detroit (I say these things to reassure myself you that I did not in any way hinder their brains during these years. Perhaps only their potential emotional capacity.), succumbed to the a-sleepiness. But that kid could sleep 12 straight hours and then take a mid-morning nap so she’s not a good case study for effectiveness. 
 
 So I spent our first around-the-world-in-a-day family trip alternating between trying not to puke (I don’t get air sick. I was in a delicate condition and dropping F-bombs about it almost non-stop), holding a mirror up to the middle kid’s mouth to make sure she was alive, and convincing the oldest and only boy not to take out every single lego and Matchbox car from his well-packed “activity bag” during the first hour.
 
 This was my first foray into the parenting hack known as “portable movies.” Now, mind you these were the dinosaur days wherein one had to pack a bulky, mini DVD player along with one of those nerdular sleeve thingies that holds the discs without their cases. Once he realized he could watch The Lion King on a continuous loop, he calmed down a bit.
 
 Of course, once we landed, I had something akin to parenting PTSD because the middle kid was wide awake and crying (she gets air sick, as it turns out), and the oldest was sound asleep, curled in a ball under the seat in front of me, his face sticky from multiple desserts, his little hands gripping tiny cars. Between holding yet another air sick bag in front of one kid and trying to peel the other one off the floor and belt his floppy body into a seat, I was fairly convinced that this was going to be a Bad Idea.
 
 And I hadn’t even hit the Osaka airport.
 
 
 To be continued….
 
 Oh! If you like free books, be sure and sign up for my newsletter. Once you confirm your email you can download 2 full length novels in my 2016 “Just Write the Damn Thing” project. APPRAISED and CONTINGENT are back to back stories set in the world of real estate and real people. You can also snag 6 sample chapters of FAMILY LOVE, my most recent release, a women’s fiction novel that can be read stand alone or as intro to the critically acclaimed Love Brothers series.
 
 Happy reading. And as always, super, duper Happy Monday y’all.

Liz