Even at (-)109 degrees, it would have melted

So, here I am in Las Vegas in the middle of July and sweating. It's (+)109 degrees by noon. And they say that is not the hottest part of the day. We anticipate that it will reach 115 degrees by 3pm. I never did pick up the dry ice that I wanted for our trip out here. And now that I know what "hotter than hell" actually feels like, I'm not too sure my plan to transport frozen breast milk would have worked.

I had every intention of getting the dry ice. In fact I had a lot of intentions the day before our big road trip. I had my day all planned out but my first errand took longer than expected. They always do, but I keep thinking that will change. After 35 years, I still think that. And 35 years plus a baby in the back seat means I'm a moron for being so optimistic about my time management.

I had to go to the AT&T store to pick up a new phone, one that I vow to take great care of. (My old phone found it's way to the ground a few too many times. It's hard to blame the phone service for dropped calls when I needed to hold the battery cover on when I used it.) The guy at the phone store was SLOW. So, at 4:55 pm I remembered that I had another errand. Yes, it's possible to forget why you left the house in the first place. So, I called the ice store which closed in five minutes, and told him where I was. "I'm two blocks away. Can you wait for me to get there to get some dry ice." The guy apologized and said "I'm sorry, I don't think so. Everything shuts down." You mean to tell me that the ice store is so high tech that everything computerized just stops working at 5pm on the dot? So then I ask if I can just pay with cash and they take care of it tomorrow. A solution I thought worthy of a chance. And he said, "Oh no. We have to balance out the cash drawer every day." I'd like to point out that I was only going to spend about $5 there. Couldn't he just put the $5 on the side and ring it up the next day? Just give me the damn dry ice! However, in retrospect, I realize that my measley $5 was precisely the reason why he had no interest in waiting for me. He stammered like he knew his reasons were stupid, so he kept talking, a lot of backpeddling. I just kept quiet to see what new reason he would come up with. He says, "I'm really sorry. I wish there was something that I could do. We're taking inventory." They sell ICE! What kind of inventory could they possibly have to keep track of. And what if it melted? How are they gonna keep track of that inventory? Hhmmm. So, I resigned myself to the fact that I will not be able to transport my frozen breastmilk. I will just have to bring that damn breast pump on my vacation... Despite the fact that I have gallons of breastmilk in the freezer at home, all of which is expiring in a few weeks.

I packed it, though I was tempted to "forget" it.

I did get my phone an hour after I told the guy that I was in a hurry. You see, my optimistic attitude towards my time management would work seamlessly if other people would just get out of my way. Then, within two hours of owning my new iPhone, I dropped it. Again, optimism does not win out.

While I'm happy that it stills works, I had to continue on to my next task. I had to say a very sad "good-bye" to my dear friend Allison. She is my friend who has a son two weeks younger than Kien and we have become great friends. And of course, our boys are best friends. We would swim in her pool often and chat about mundane mom stuff. Like how long our boys slept that night, how much sleep we didn't get, were we wearing clean clothes that day, or ask each other when we washed our hair last. Sometimes we would even daydream about the future when our boys would have been in the same class and sitting next to each other because their last names started with the same letter. Yes, sounds silly to some of you, but this is the type of person that I have become. And Allison was not just a good friend, she was also a fellow EC parent (Elimination Communication). A topic that we would spend hours discussing together, supporting each other's efforts, laughing about, and witnessing huge explosions right before our eyes. Sometimes these explosions would happen right when we were talking about the last great EC miss. And she was also a fellow HypnoBabies mama so we had similar experiences with our labors which was fun to share. (Writing all this now makes me realize what a great big (dirty) hippie I am.)

Anyway, I said good bye to the one friend I had. Then went home and attempted to pack for both myself and my baby. A feat not easily accomplished. By the end of it all, it looked like I had packed to move out of the house.

I fell into bed at 1:30am but realized it was sort of pointless to even go to sleep. We were in the car by 6:30am (half hour later than my husband's firm departure time) and I was highly anticipating this great adventure of ours. This is a five hour trip by car when there are no infants to consider. I was deathly afraid this would turn into a 10 hour road trip thru Death Valley. You know, the kind where the car breaks down, we just drank our last sip of water, and we're 20 miles away from the nearest po-dunk town, and the baby decides to grace us with a bout of diarrhea.

Well, I hate to disappoint. Kien handled it beautifully. We made two pit stops. He even sat on his potty in the middle of two parking lots. No modesty what so ever! And the whole trip took only 6.5 hours. I think I got more cranky being in the car than him.

So, here we are in the desert. It's hot. It's dry. And the weather is only adding to my already cracked, falling apart body. This is hard to believe, but the water that actually comes out of the "cold" faucet is not cold. It's slightly warmer than luke warm. It's bizarre. But on the plus side, I get to see the family and there's more love for Kien than he knows what to do with. Translation: lots of baby holding time in arms other than mine. Everybody wins.