Flanked!!!!!

Current mood: kill me now.

Or, "I used to like flying."

Babies to your left, babies to your right, babies all around you, all through the night!!!

Other than the plane falling out the sky or bursting into flame, this is pretty much my greatest flying nightmare. And, naturally, a perfect baby storm pretty much describes my flight. The kids on my left weren't exactly babies, but they were pretty young kids, with noisy toys, each other to amuse themselves/fight with, no parents in the same row, and there was NO in-flight movie (thanks sooooo much, American! What exactly is the American Advantage?). The baby in front of me was actually the most engaging, snaggletoothed (literally, one tooth) thing, gurgling happily to himself the whole time at the top of his fully operational teeny-tiny baby lungs. 4 hours of mehmehmehmehmeh... oooooooooooooooooooooooooo... (he worked his way through the entire vowel set) gatgatgatgatgatgatgatgatgatgat!.. uhbauhbuhbauhbauhbauhbauhbauhba... and he had the rapid-fire, cackling laugh of a cat trying to hock up multiple hairballs: kakkakkakkakkakkakkakkakkakkakkakkakkak. Actually this little guy totally cracked me up...for about ten minutes. I spent the rest of the flight wishing it were OK to tranquilize other people's children, or at least stuff (clean! I'm a nice person!) socks in their mouths. The baby behind me (shock of dark hair and a fully-formed adult face. It's weird to see a real face on a young baby - usually, they're sort of squashy and formless) was just pissed off. For the entire flight. I'm fairly certain the baby wasn't hungry, cause the mum fed it. And not dirty, cause the mum changed it, but something was sure stressing it out and it was making its displeasure KNOWN. Oh, to be a baby, when you could just scream at the top of your lungs if anything displeases you - of course, there's the downside of no one understanding you...

Sandwiched between the babies, it was almost entertaining to listen to the kids bicker.

I've never looked forward to a layover so much in my life.

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So, DFW Airport. I haven't seen such commitment to a mullet (carefully coiffed spikes! Well-groomed tail!) in quite some time...

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Another baby. A screamy, angry, little bugger. Wasn't even cute. HATE babies. What did I do? My baby karma is totally wonky today! (Maybe it's because pretty much all day I was thinking, I hate babies, I hate babies, I hate babies!) I think for my return flight, I'll do an anti-baby juju dance.

The flight was delayed for 1-1/2 hours while we waited to vet a cranky light. Unfortunately, while the plane engine isn't engaged, they can't run the air-conditioning, which is quite uncomfortable in 94-degree Dallas weather (90s, 100s, in April! I can't wrap my mind around that!). Also? At night, at 32,000 ft is not the best time to be running daytime, 94-degree-strength air-conditioning. Urgh.

13 hours total travel time. Fresno, you are so not worth it!