China Bound with Livvy

Hello dear reader, sorry it's been so long since my last post but September was spent settling the kids into school and reconnecting with family and friends state side. Oh and getting back into shape (much needed after 2 months gorging on delicacies in Israel, Turkey and Greece this summer) with the help of my strict new trainer Jason. "Do you want to be fit or fat," is his favorite refrain, clearly he knows his audience.

Today I embark on my new adventure, 3 weeks in China with my favorite 9 year old, Livvy. Much, I am sure, to the shock and dismay of those intent on their daughters attending Harvard, I have indeed taken my bright eyed fourth grader out of school for 3 whole weeks in order to explore China together. After most carefully packing her backpack with enough DVD's, coloring markers, and earrings (Livvy is nothing if not accessory mad) to shake a stick at, we headed to SFO. We checked in at the Japan Airlines desk where our remarkably efficient and smiley ground hostess provided the most thorough and clear instructions about how to proceed through security, then to the lounge and finally to the gate. Had I never set foot on an airplane before, I would have been perfectly sure of the process. Once in the lounge we treated ourselves to a few finger sandwiches and a soda. The lounge attendants can only be described as aggressively helpful. I could literally not swallow my second finger sandwich (an excellent egg salad on white) before one of the half dozen attendants lunged for the now empty dish on my side table to remove it. It was as though the condition of a dish went suddenly from a thing of beauty to an embarassment the moment emptied of its contents. I found myself going back for seconds and slightly overfilling my plate in defensive anticipation of the swooping attendants. One sandwich too many might just prevent them from removing my dish I reasoned. I was wrong, for the code of conduct in the JAL Sakura Lounge must state that any empty or idle full dish must be immediately removed under pain of permanent family shame. There I sat with my 3 finger sandwich filled plate, and after nibbling at just one I turned my attention to my magazine. At that very instant, a smiling attendant swooped down gesturing wildly to get my attention and ascertain my intentions vis-a-vis the remaining sandwiches. I hesitated as I came eyeball to eyeball with the slightly genuflecting woman in her white starched blouse and navy polyester vest, her smile painted dark red and arms motioning insistently toward my plate. I panicked and nodded in ascent, yes I am done, sorry to delay consumption, please take the plate away.

We boarded our flight and safely ensconced in our comfy cocoons were soon aloft and headed for Asia. The flight attendants on board must be graduates of the same training school as the lounge attendants, and throughout the flight I found it somewhat difficult to relax with the near constant Felix Unger-type tidying. I did my best to bundle the plastic headphone wrapper, slipper wrapper, eye mask cover etc. in order to limit the cleaning episodes and even made an extra trip to the lavatory to discard my own rubbish after unwrapping some hand sanitizer I had bought for the flight. In fact, prior to landing one particularly fastidious attendant literally knelt down at my feet and repositioned my carry on in a slightly neater fashion. Hmmmph.