Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Back by Popular Demand!

OK, well maybe not POPULAR demand. But I'm back by request! 

Can I wrap up almost a year of events into a single paragraph from where I left off just before Christmas 2011? The spa I ranted about back in my last post is now closed. Quel surprise. Christmas good. Kaya turned 3. Kieran turned 5. Junior Kindergarten ended on a high nutrition note and all was good. Summer good. Gee, with high points like that, you can see why I haven't blogged in awhile.

It's not like I don't live a life of bloggable moments, because God knows I do. It's just putting fingers to the keyboard that appears to be the problem.

However, there is one thing that is still annoying me three weeks out (and if you know me in person, it's highly likely that I have ranted about this already) but I just want to take a moment to throw this nugget into cyerspace...

Screw you Air Canada.

You are the only airline that I can think of that when assigning seats to a lone adult who is standing right in front of you, holding a three year old, scolding a five year old for trying to sit on the rolling suitcase conveyor belt, with a luggage cart laden with three suitcases, 4 carry ons (all which will, or course, be carried on by me) and a car seat, that would hand me three boarding passes where none of use are seated anywhere near each other. Now, don't get me wrong...as enticing as not sitting with my children would be, it reeks of poor customer service. Especially since I didn't even have a chance to glance at our seat assignments until, after I had finally got us all through security, put my belt back on, carried the three year old and four carry ons to the gate, unloaded the crayons and snacks and got us all settled before I happened to notice that we were seated randomly throughout the plane. And this was at 6:30 am well prior to having ingested any coffee.

Pissed does NOT describe how I felt at that moment.

I stormed up to the first Air Canada employee I could find who, since she was not actually working on my flight, couldn't do anything. Then over the loudspeaker I hear that they have changed our gate (of course) and we have to pack up and move to a totally different area downstairs. In the end, I did manage to get the two kids together and I was in the row in front of them but, sweet mother, was I mad.

Anyway, feel free to log on and defend Air Canada and tell me that I brought this on myself by not anticipating their stupidity or whatever. It just didn't cross my mind that even assuming there were only single seats left when we checked in two hours early, that the woman at the counter wouldn't mention that she couldn't seat us together and that I would have to talk to the agent at the gate. Do they think that is appropriate to seat toddlers 9 rows behind their mother these days? I see the answer is yes.

On the way home I made sure that we were seated together prior to leaving for the airport, so yes, a lesson was learned about the value of online check in and I felt like a bit of better parent at that point. Well, that is until Kaya pointed out, after I scooted her into the bathroom - 20 minutes after we had been there already -  and left Kieran with all our bags doing his Spiderman dot to dot in the security lounge, that "Mommies shouldn't leave their kids all alone while they take other kids to the bafroom." Honest to God that is a true story. I was a bit shocked that she would even have been aware of my parental transgression, let alone call me on it. I guess I shouldn't have left him, but he was 10 feet (15 max) from the bathroom door and this was in the security lounge in Thunder Bay, not Frankfurt. It is really just a big quiet room with no exit. I had thought about packing us all up to stand in the can to watch Kaya pee for the third time in a hour, but it felt overprotective and Kieran didn't want to come and I knew if we all left that we would lose our seats. Jesus Kaya, get off my back.

Next year...we drive.