rationally answered.
“For cocktail hour,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. It had the opposite effect.
We hiked straight up, stumbled over chipped boulders, and gasped for breath. We finally made it to the peak of the ice-and-snow-covered glacier a couple of hours later. It was not a hike; for me, it was a battle for self-preservation. My children rallied (they had no choice), but if we’d been the von Trapp family, we’d be dead. And I would have ditched that guitar ten minutes in. Frank thought it pertinent to stop every few yards and regale us with some glacier story barely understandable through his accent. One story was about a shepherd leading his sheep through the glacier to reach the grassier knolls on the other side. One of the sheep fell in a crevice and when the shepherd tried to save him, he too fell into the hole. Just as the shepherd was about to eat the sheep, he realized that the sheep had burrowed himself in the ice and built a tunnel, which led them to freedom. The shepherd and the sheep made it to the village, and in celebration of the sheep saving the shepherd’slife, the shepherd cooked the sheep for the whole village to enjoy. Needless to say, my youngest burst into a fresh bout of tears. A few hours later Frank told us another tale of a father and his baby trapped in an ice cave; the father was able to save his baby by cutting off his own nipple and allowing the blood to nourish the baby. “Zat is why allza min in Iceland haff only one nipple!” I told Frank he should write children’s books.
My children couldn’t peel off their crampons fast enough when we reached the lava-filled parking area. I had never seen them so infuriated. Well, maybe the one time I forgot to DVR Teen Beach Movie .
The doors slammed and, in silence, we started the drive back to the hotel. The kids were not interested in the crashing waterfalls or bucolic pastures of goats. They were too filled with rage. “Are you guys excited about salmon fishing tomorrow?” my husband asked at the exact wrong time. At least with hiking the glacier, there was movement. I didn’t quite know how to sell standing in a frigid river in a rubber suit for hours waiting for a fish to take the lure.
And then it came. The phone call from my agent.
I could be on the space shuttle, in a cave held captive by Islamic fundamentalists, or in a fjord in Iceland and my Hollywood agent would be able to intercept any Microsoft cloud and find me.
As always he cut to the chase: “Production had to move dates, they need you on set tomorrow.”
I laughed out loud. “Um, I’m in Iceland on a glacier?”
He replied without missing a beat. “Yeah, I told them that. Can you be on set tomorrow?”
I wanted to do the movie, but more important, I wanted out of Iceland. “Absolutely, I’ll figure out a way.” I had a fleeting vision of myself in the makeup trailer, giggling and sipping tea with Nicole Kidman while my family hunkered down to another plate of poached fish in Reykjavik.
I turned to my husband. “I have to go back. They had to flip days around because of the weather and they want me on set tomorrow.”
And before my husband could even process what I had said, my girls, in unison, screamed, “Take us with you!” I had secretly relished the idea of my husband fumbling to hook flies on their poles. I, of course, would be curled up on Icelandic Air watching Grown Ups 2 .
But no such luck. When Mommy is taken out of the equation, it causes fragmentation within the ecosystem and the resistance becomes weak.
S omewhere above Nova Scotia I looked over at my gleeful children in their faux leather airplane seats flipping through SkyMall magazine and taking One Direction quizzes. They turned to me and beamed. They willremember the reckless canter on the pony, struggling not to slip off a glacier, and the gamey taste of venison, but most important, they will remember that when they were teetering perilously on the brink of misery,
“For cocktail hour,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. It had the opposite effect.
We hiked straight up, stumbled over chipped boulders, and gasped for breath. We finally made it to the peak of the ice-and-snow-covered glacier a couple of hours later. It was not a hike; for me, it was a battle for self-preservation. My children rallied (they had no choice), but if we’d been the von Trapp family, we’d be dead. And I would have ditched that guitar ten minutes in. Frank thought it pertinent to stop every few yards and regale us with some glacier story barely understandable through his accent. One story was about a shepherd leading his sheep through the glacier to reach the grassier knolls on the other side. One of the sheep fell in a crevice and when the shepherd tried to save him, he too fell into the hole. Just as the shepherd was about to eat the sheep, he realized that the sheep had burrowed himself in the ice and built a tunnel, which led them to freedom. The shepherd and the sheep made it to the village, and in celebration of the sheep saving the shepherd’slife, the shepherd cooked the sheep for the whole village to enjoy. Needless to say, my youngest burst into a fresh bout of tears. A few hours later Frank told us another tale of a father and his baby trapped in an ice cave; the father was able to save his baby by cutting off his own nipple and allowing the blood to nourish the baby. “Zat is why allza min in Iceland haff only one nipple!” I told Frank he should write children’s books.
My children couldn’t peel off their crampons fast enough when we reached the lava-filled parking area. I had never seen them so infuriated. Well, maybe the one time I forgot to DVR Teen Beach Movie .
The doors slammed and, in silence, we started the drive back to the hotel. The kids were not interested in the crashing waterfalls or bucolic pastures of goats. They were too filled with rage. “Are you guys excited about salmon fishing tomorrow?” my husband asked at the exact wrong time. At least with hiking the glacier, there was movement. I didn’t quite know how to sell standing in a frigid river in a rubber suit for hours waiting for a fish to take the lure.
And then it came. The phone call from my agent.
I could be on the space shuttle, in a cave held captive by Islamic fundamentalists, or in a fjord in Iceland and my Hollywood agent would be able to intercept any Microsoft cloud and find me.
As always he cut to the chase: “Production had to move dates, they need you on set tomorrow.”
I laughed out loud. “Um, I’m in Iceland on a glacier?”
He replied without missing a beat. “Yeah, I told them that. Can you be on set tomorrow?”
I wanted to do the movie, but more important, I wanted out of Iceland. “Absolutely, I’ll figure out a way.” I had a fleeting vision of myself in the makeup trailer, giggling and sipping tea with Nicole Kidman while my family hunkered down to another plate of poached fish in Reykjavik.
I turned to my husband. “I have to go back. They had to flip days around because of the weather and they want me on set tomorrow.”
And before my husband could even process what I had said, my girls, in unison, screamed, “Take us with you!” I had secretly relished the idea of my husband fumbling to hook flies on their poles. I, of course, would be curled up on Icelandic Air watching Grown Ups 2 .
But no such luck. When Mommy is taken out of the equation, it causes fragmentation within the ecosystem and the resistance becomes weak.
S omewhere above Nova Scotia I looked over at my gleeful children in their faux leather airplane seats flipping through SkyMall magazine and taking One Direction quizzes. They turned to me and beamed. They willremember the reckless canter on the pony, struggling not to slip off a glacier, and the gamey taste of venison, but most important, they will remember that when they were teetering perilously on the brink of misery,
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