Writes for Kicks

I recently booked a ticket, online, to fly to New York for the weekend.  It was a really good price: under $200, including all taxes and fees.  And since I am just going to bring a carry-on, I can avoid the extra fees to check luggage.

However, I encountered something new to me when I went to choose my seat assignments: there was a charge to select any seat on the plane.  I know that the emergency exit row costs extra, and, of course, if you want to upgrade to first class. But they were charging for the cramped middle seat—in the last row, near the stinky bathroom, and for the middle seat—that doesn't even recline, directly in front of the emergency exit row. It would cost me $6 to have either of those seats. If I wanted to sit near the front of the plane, it would cost me $10.

"What is the alternative?" I wondered.  Can you sit in the bathroom, or on the wing?  I decided not to choose my own seats and proceeded to payment, at which time the airline assigned my seats.  A couple weren't so bad, but I wasn't crazy about getting the middle seat, right in front of the emergency exit row, on one leg.

Anyways, it got me thinking.  Perhaps, as a freelance writer, I am going about billing all wrong. Typically  publications will offer you a flat fee for a story, or pay you by the word.  I've decided that from now on I am going to take a lesson from the airlines' playbooks and tack on the following fees:

• Colons and semicolons are going to cost extra: 50 cents apiece, every time I use one.
• Em dashes will cost even more—a dollar a piece—because they are so much work; I have to hold down the alt key and press 0151 just to make one.  It's exhausting. (Loved that sentence! It will make me an extra $2.50.)
• If I write something funny, I am going to charge an extra $10.
• If I write something funny—and clever—I am going to charge an extra $25. (Not everybody can come up with this stuff, right? I just want to be compensated for what I am worth and—like the airlines—end up in the black.)
• If I get confused and have to Google "in the black" and "in the red" to make sure I don't get them mixed up, it will cost an extra $2 per Google search. It takes time not to make a fool of myself and someone needs to pay for it.
• If thay want me two proofred my storie it will coet anotther twenty $.  After all, look how annoying it was to read that last sentence!
• To ensure I hit my deadline, they are going to have to double my fee.
• And finally, I am going to offer natural disaster insurance.  This is solely to protect the editors if I drink too much water and need to pee a lot.  If they purchase the insurance, I will hold it and get the story in on time. If not, I cannot be held responsible for needing to take potty breaks when I am on deadline.
• Oh, and that last one made me think of another one. I will charge a fueling surcharge, too, but only when the price of milk and eggs (oh, and maybe tomatoes) go up.  It takes sustenance to keep my brain sharp.

That reminds me, I need to go and eat some breakfast before I head out for my day job. Who is going to pay for that??

Mom, you gotta’ watch this! So shouted my kids as I walked in to our hotel room in DC last weekend. I had gone down to the business office to check in for our flight the next morning. They had played the same game that had been entertaining them, for the past two days, whenever we were in our hotel room—they stood on either double bed in our hotel room and whipped a beach ball back and forth between the two of them. There was also some leaping between beds, I believe, and some diving of some form or another. This time, they had recorded it for posterity’s sake.

As I sat there watching their shenanigans—hoping that during the heat of the day, all the guests surrounding us were either at a museum, the hotel pool or sweating it out at the National Mall or the Zoo (this was a fairly noisy game)—I couldn’t help but wonder if we could have had just as much fun at a hotel within an hour or two drive from our house, rather than a somewhat pricey, holiday weekend, Washington DC hotel room.

It got me thinking that I am looooooooooong overdue to do a blog posting. So, since traveling with kids is pretty commonplace for me, I thought I’d share some of my worldly advice in the hopes that I can make someone’s vacation with their kids a little more enjoyable.

1.      Less is more – kids enjoy the little things. They loved their beach ball game, the hotel pool and the Metro the best. They didn’t care for the heat and my son doesn’t like museums. So I kept our visits to the museums and the zoo short, knowing that for us getting there and back on the Metro was half the fun; and since all the museums in the Smithsonian are free, it didn’t matter how long we stayed.

2.      Bring a beach ball or two – my kids always make friends at the hotel pool with a beach ball (all the kids want to play with it). It takes up no room in the suitcase and supplies hours of fun at the pool or in the hotel room. You can leave them behind if you want, it’s not like they cost much. You will feel good about making another family happy and it’s one less thing to carry home in your suitcase.

3.      Pack light! – The rule in my house is you only pack what you can carry. And if my youngest doesn’t have to carry much, even better. My children shared one carry-on that we took on the plane and I had a second one. Mine included a small blanket for us to sit on for the fireworks, and my suit case still had room left in it, in case we bought anything on our trip. We also pack one backpack for the plane, that we share, to put their DS’s in, a deck of cards, some reading material, and snacks. That’s it. Your kids will find stuff to entertain themselves with if you don’t bring many toys. Promise.

4.      If all else fails, bribe ‘em. – My kids, like all kids, can drive me nuts when they bicker. A typical exchange goes something like this: “Hey do you guys want to go to the Air & Space Museum or the Natural History Museum first?” One says one, one says the other and then depending on their moods they could fight to the death to get their way. I instituted an “every time you guys agree you get a dollar policy.” It actually works. You need to pay for stuff for them anyways, why not make it part of a reward? And half the time, like on this trip, I don’t even end up having to pay up, it’s just making it a game that makes it fun for them.

5.      Make games out of stuff – OK, here was one I just stumbled on to (or I’m a genius, I’m not sure which). We were walking back to the hotel and Miranda was really tired. We were about three blocks from the hotel. She was whining heavily. I said, “how many steps do you think it will take to get back to the hotel? I think 409.” She threw out a number. She forgot about being tired as we counted our steps the last few blocks. Funny thing was I was only off by nine steps. What a fluke! We both enjoyed the game.