we make a whirlwind trip up north.
Darin works for a company in Palo Alto, Eazel, from our home here in Los Angeles. This is a wonderful setup, as far as he's concerned, because he gets way more programming and other work done than he would with a lot of other people around, he doesn't have to leave the house, and the house is way nicer than anything we could afford in Palo Alto.
Periodically, however, they need him in person. He's, you know, important.
So Andy Hertzfeld asked Darin to come up for the day. Or for two days. Darin doesn't like traveling -- as a consultant, he always made a big point to his clients that he would not travel to see them. So he came to me.
"If you go up for more than one day, you have to take us too," I said. There was no beating around the bush: I am not yet at the point where I can have a whole day of Pookie by myself. And Darin doesn't particularly want to be away from Sophia more than he has to be anyhow.
"Okay," he said.
I had insomnia Monday night (as though of you on my notify list know all too well, heh). I had insomnia again Tuesday night. First I had to stay up late with Sophia, who for the first time was inconsolable and would not go to sleep at 10 when Daddy went to sleep. (Usually she conks out when Mommy and Daddy do. But not Tuesday night.) I went to sleep with Sophia around midnight. She woke me up around 4 to nurse, and that was it for me; I was awake. Four hours a night, two nights in a row. As I put it on my list, "You want the definition of unfair? A new mother with insomnia."
We got to the airport later than we wanted to on Wednesday. Late enough, in fact, that they had started boarding before we checked in. If you've flown Southwest, you know this is a problem. I got on board and managed to find the last two seats together for Sophia's first plane ride.
She slept through almost the whole thing, thankyouverymuch.
We arrived in San Jose and all Hertz had to rent us was (yesssss!) minivans. We didn't even have to ask. We loaded up the minivan with our bags: one roll-on suitcase that had 1 change of clothes for Darin, 2 changes of clothes for me (I'd had to change clothes twice on Sunday due to Sophia's voluminous spit-ups; I was taking no chances), and at least 8 changes of day clothes and 2 sleepers for Sophia. Plus, there was the Lands End diaper bag that had 30 diapers in it.
We met Rob, Laura, Mitch, and Greg at the Pancake House for pancakes. Sophia was mostly quiet, except when she saw those tasty pancakes and decided she wanted some. Some of mine, of course. The processed kind. We wrassled a bit. It worked out though: I got fed, she got fed, everyone was happy
Everyone told me I overreacted to her crying -- it didn't bother them in the slightest. I know I overreact to her crying. Crying babies have always bothered me. And not in a good way. In the past I've always been like, "Shut that baby up!" So I always want to take care of Sophia's problems not only because I want her to be a happy, well-loved baby, but because I don't want to annoy everyone around us. I shouldn't care whether the people around us are annoyed or not, but I do.
Darin had to get to work, so I drove him to Eazel, where he showed Sophia off to his co-workers, many of whom had never met him. He kissed her goodbye. His first workday without his baby close at hand.
I went back to Rob and Laura's and met their new puppy, Dawson. Dawson is also a Boston terrier, like Nutmeg, although unlike Nutmeg he is a normal-sized dog, which means he has to look out before sitting in case he sits on Nutmeg. Although Dawson hasn't gone through Doggie Obedience school yet, he was a very well-behaved dog. He wanted to see what tasty doggie treat I was carrying in my sling, but he accepted thwarting of this desire cheerfully.
We went over to Coffee Society -- Good Lord, I've been going there for over 10 years now -- and we sat on the patio, each of us with a tiny critter weighing less than 20 pounds on our laps. We drank Italian sodas and enjoyed the day.
Around two I realized I was fading fast and I would have to lie down soon. So I bade them adieu and drove to Palo Alto. Sophia cried the whole way, which made me very upset, not in the "Someone shut that baby up!" way but in the "My baby is crying hysterically and I can't comfort her because I'm hurtling down the freeway at 65 miles an hour!" way.
The only hotel I'd been able to find a room in in Palo Alto was the Hyatt Rickey's -- it seemed like everywhere else was booked up. I used the Web to search, of course -- one website I found listed just about every hotel in Palo Alto and then had an electronic method of finding if they had rooms available. I checked electronically and then called a number of the hotels, and it turned out the web information was correct. (Damn, I wish I could remember the website.) So I registered where I could and figured a Hyatt would be all right.
I parked, put Sophia in the sling, and carried her into the lobby, bouncing and singing. As I danced around, waiting for a clerk to become available, I realized the bottom of the sling was damp. Which told me why Sophia was crying hysterically.
Oh hell.
I checked in and got directions to the room. The Hyatt Rickey's is one of these spread-out hotels, where you have to drive to the area nearest the building your room is in. I quickly stuffed Sophia back in her car seat (overriding the temptation to just drive with her in the sling in order to expedite the process), drove to the building, took her out of the car, grabbed the diaper bag, ran to the room, set up the diaper changing area on the bed, and proceeded to change her and her outfit.
And the whole time I am thinking, I am pretty sure that is not a king-size bed.
Everything about whatever hotel room I could get was negotiable except for two things: it had to be a non-smoking room and it had to have a king-size bed. I even reiterated that request to the clerk and he assured me, Yes, yes, a king-size bed, of course.
I finished changing Sophia's diaper and outfit and she smiled at me as though she hadn't just spent the past twenty minutes screaming her head off. And I thought, Yup, this is no king-size bed.
I called the front desk and they sent a guy to the room with keys to my new room, which, he assured, really did have a king-size bed this time. Of course, the room was on the other goddammned side of the hotel lot, which meant getting Sophia back into her poop-stained car seat, driving, parking, and lugging her bag up to the room.
Fine.
I got us to the second room just as Sophia starting wailing again, this time, I knew, because she was hungry -- her biggest meal of the day is usually around noontime and she hadn't eaten particularly much so far that day. I was sweating, I was annoyed, I just wanted to sit down and commune with my daughter in peace, and the second I walked in the room I thought, The air conditioner's busted and there's no thermostat. Christ.
Slowly but surely it dawned on me why the Hyatt Rickey's had rooms available.
I called down to the front desk and they sent up a technician -- who proceeded to show me that the old-fashioned air-conditioner unit over by the wall that had the hidden dial. He turned it on and left.
Sophia asked, a little less politely this time, for lunch. And she pooped rather loudly. I changed her, went back to nursing her. She pooped again.
I had been in this hotel twenty minutes and already had changed her three times. I began to wonder if the 30 diapers I had brought would be enough. She was clearly tired, because she was staring with a wavering focus, and she was hungry, but not so hungry she couldn't cry in between sucks. I was hoping things were going to improve mightily very quickly. I was exhausted, she was cranky, and all I wanted was for us both to take our afternoon nap.
Eventually I just lay down, latched her on, and said, "Wake me if you need anything."
I woke up two hours later to the sound of my cell phone going off. I'd been sleeping so deeply it took me a few seconds to figure out what the noise was. Sophia was sleeping so deeply she didn't even stir as I got off the bed to find the phone and answer it. It was, of course, Darin, done for the day and ready for dinner and to hold his baby. I said I'd get us there as fast as I could.
We called Greg and arranged to meet him at Hunan Gardens in Palo Alto. I will speed through dinner, stopping only to say that Chinese food in the Bay Area is the best; Chinese food in Los Angeles totally sucks. Oh yes, and Sophia yakked all over me and herself while nursing, so Darin had to go change her outfit in the middle of dinner.
Then we went to go see Greg's new house. More space than he knows what to do with, although I bet he'll figure out something to do with it soon enough.
We went back to the hotel and Darin fell asleep almost immediately. Sophia decided she didn't want to sleep quite yet, so I moved to the sitting chair with her on a pillow on my lap. Once she did fall asleep I moved her back to the bed and we got some sleep as well.
We went to Hobee's for breakfast -- breakfast places in the Bay Area rock; breakfast places in Los Angeles suck in comparison -- and then Darin went to work again. I drove to Borders bookstore in Palo Alto, getting a nice spot under a tree, right near the sign that warned that I had two hours in the Blue Zone and I could not park in the Blue Zone again for the rest of the day.
I pretty much stayed at the Borders all morning. I asked the valet at the Garden Court Hotel what the parking enforcement was like; he told me the parking police came around at 11 (one hour into my parking) and would come around again at 2:30, which meant I had plenty of time. Which saved me the trouble of putting Sophia into her car seat and taking her out again a couple of times. I walked down University Avenue a little and made sure to make a pilgrimage to the Prolific Oven.
Yes, I should have scheduled getting together with someone, so as to make the most of my morning and to show off Sophia. I kept calling a friend of mine but couldn't get through. I had a fine time just relaxing at Borders -- I read a book and Sophia slept the whole time.
I picked Darin up at 2:30 as we had agreed, but our departure was delayed by Sophia needing some TLC. The freeway was slow (surprise) and I dropped them off at the terminal before dealing with the rental car return, which went faster than I thought it would, thank God.
I had to fight my way through the ridiculous quantity of people waiting in Southwest check-in lines to find them at the gate. I think San Jose Airport did not plan well for the amount of use the airport is now getting -- who could have guessed what would happen to Silicon Valley? It's crazed.
We got to board first though. Yay.
Lots of people passed our seat and commented on cute Sophia is. None of them were talent agents or modeling agents evidently.
She wasn't quite as copacetic on this leg as she was on her first flight -- she was fussy during descent, refusing to nurse (the prescribed method of preventing equalizing problems) for a while. But then she fell asleep during the last ten minutes and slept all the way home.
Darin went to bed immediately.
Sophia started crying, so I swaddled her (worked for a while), sang to her, danced with her, rocked with her in the rocking chair. Eventually I got her to fall asleep too.
I should get some sleep myself. I'm bushed.
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com