Hurling, hurtling, hurting, and in between there were sandy beaches and laughter.

Well, that was different. I woke up the morning we were to leave for Portland with that familiar unwelcome tickle in my throat. Three hours later my nose was full of cement, not to be breached for another five days. It serves me right for my repeated criticism of the piss-poor restaurant selection in Missoula. I flew to Portland, to partake in the culinary ecstasy, only to be denied my sense of taste. And to reinforce how wrong I was to say Missoula's beloved Noodle Express sucks ass, my kids got sick too. Fevers, bloody noses, buckets of snot. All of it.

In between the fitful nights and glassy-eyed afternoons in front of Nickelodeon in the hotel, it was good. My mommy was there.

But then came the flight home. First a nasty altercation with the manager of the ticket desk for another airline. Apparently they should add the warning "May cause inarticulate speech and irrational anger" to the side of Dayquil. Then I got dumber and confuseder before going through security and had to pour out two bottles of milk and two sippy cups of juice, still reeling from the other-airline-desk-clerk -altercation.

Finally we were on the plane - or was it? It reminded me a lot of the cheap plastic toy planes I bought for the kid at the beach. The kind that are shot into space with a rubber band, only to come crashing to the ground because there's nothing remotely aerodynamic about them. That's what our plane was like. First the turbulence hurtled Quinn across the seats while I was simultaneously changing his diaper and trying to clean the spilled milk out of the crevices of my computer bag. Hurtled him across the seat into Madeleine's face, which immediately gushed scarlet blood all over her coloring book. Whee! Then Quinn settled down and fell asleep, just in time to miss the excitement of Madeleine vomiting all over everything. A grande hot chocolate. Am I a fucking idiot or what? At least I caught the majority of it in her sweatshirt. The rest will be left for the kind people at Big Sky Air. Dude. A flight should not be that bumpy, and there's no reason the entire plane needs to be heated by a 6000 Volt space heater strategically placed under Row 9. I stripped her naked and put my sweatshirt on her and we de-boarded sheepishly, leaving a trail of curdled chocolate milk and bloodied diaper wipes. I can think of no better way to put the exclamation point on such a frenetic, yet enjoyable, vacation.

Mom, let's do it again next year! I'll bring the Airborne, you get the gin. I think they'd mix nicely.