bitter ole' lemon

I've decided I am a small person. Tiny. Minute. Itty-bitty.

Why?

I'm so glad you asked.

Mr. Lemony is on a plane to London as I type, which is not unusal. Corporation Lemony Employer, Inc. has an office there, after all. Every once in a while, though, when the mister announces these trips I get a pang of jealousy. Why does he get to go to my favorite city? Without me? Without a Lemony Offspring in tow? He doesn't even like it there. It's cold, it's rainy, it's gray.

Whatever, dude. It's London.

The last time he made the announcement, about three weeks ago, I said, "Hey! I want to go, too! If I can get my mother to stay with the kids can I go with you? I won't even whine when you have to work and leave me alone for sixteen hours a day."

Now, I'm not sure if it was the promise of no whining or the realization that my head was mere seconds from flying off due to his extreme travel schedule that convinced him, but to my surprise he said, "That's a great idea. Why don't you fly over a few days later and instead of flying home Sunday we can stay a few days longer?"

Woot!

Then Mr. Lemony thought, just maybe, that Lemony Teen might like to join us. She made a few noises the last time the two of us went and left her home with the siblings and Lemony's Crazy Mum.

"But she doesn't have a passport!" I explained.

"We can expedite the process so it only takes two weeks!" Mr. Lemony insisted.

I agreed (which, I realize now, was my very first mistake, and when I'm over the trauma of it all I'll tell you about our passport adventure, or what I've come to call The One Where Lemony Goes Nuclear on State Department Employee and Is Stared Down By Homeland Security Officer with Big Gun) and we had a plan.

Now, I am not a happy flyer and it has less to do with a fear of crashing (although it does occur to me that the plane can, you know, PLUMMET TO EARTH IN A BIG GIANT FIREBALL OF DEATH!!! without warning) as it does with being crammed in with 500 other trans-Atlantic travelers, all of them jockeying for the same armrest and bag of pretzels that I am. Some of these travelers don't smell as Lemony fresh as I do (if you know what I'm saying) and these are the ones I invariably end up jockeying with. So I did what anybody in my situation would do...I called my friend who is a flight attendant on our chosen airline and asked if she could finagle an upgrade. Being the amazing friend that she is she took the flight numbers and said, "I'll do the best I can."

I love her.

When I talked to her this morning she told me the flights we were on were all pretty full so we shouldn't get our hopes up. Maybe one flight, but not all three (Mr. Lemony's today, mine and LT's later in the week, and the flight we're all on together back to the west side of the Atlantic). I said, hey, no expectations at all and it's so nice of you to even check into it.

And I meant it.

I've been home all day with the youngest Lemon. The poor sprite has a spongy lung (ie: pneumonia) and an ugly ear (ie: goo-oozing ruptured eardrum) and I thought it best to give her an entire day with nothing to do but wear fleecy pants, eat ice cream, and suck down pink medicine from a dropper. Between not feeling well and being bored out of her skull, the child spent a rather large portion of the day whinging. Loudly.

Lemony Teen needed a ride to gymnastics practice at 5:00. Needing to juggle a carpool in order to get her a ride home at 9:30, I ended up having to pick up quite a few other gymansts enroute to the gym. We spent over an hour in the car, Lemony Child whinging the whole time.

No, I didn't blame her. What else could I do, though?

Lemony Brother thought 6:10 would be a good time to tell me he'd volunteered me to make cookies for the class New Year Event...which is tomorrow.

I was not feeling the sunshine by 6:30 p.m. EST, and when Lemony Mutt spit my running shoe out at my feet - minus a lace and a tongue - at 6:35 I was really not in the Happy Place. I parked my ever-expanding ass down right there in the kitchen with the carcass of my shoe and started chanting.

My head will not explode. My head will not explode. My head will not explode.

The phone rang. Surprisingly, my head did not explode.

I answered it. It was Mr. Lemony, calling from the plane.

"Oh, my GAWD, Lemony! This is the best first-class seat I've ever been in! It's amazing up here! Best upgrade ever. Please thank S for me."

The one upgrade. Went to NOT ME. The not me, mind you, who has never flown first-class anywhere, ever, unless you count the 45 minute flight from New York City, given to me merely because the plane was overbooked and my confirmed seat had been given away and they had to put me somewhere before I throttled a gate agent, while Mr. Lemony does it quite frequently.

I wanted to be happy for him, I did. But...but...well, do I really have to explain why I wasn't?

Yeah. I'm small and petty. You got a problem with that???

File under It Figures: Mr. Lemony called back shortly I typed this and said, "I'm sorry, honey. I know you've been home with a sick little one all day, and I know you have to juggle a lot of stuff to accomodate my travel schedule. I know your day was much harder than mine, and it would have been even if I'd flown in coach. You deserve the upgrade. The next time you fly to have a weekend with your friends we'll pay the extra for the first-class ticket. Okay? I'm sorry. I was thoughtless. I miss you. I love you. I can't wait until you get here."

Can't he just let me have my petty moment? I mean, is that too much to ask??

Damn him.