The Day of Many Breakfasts

I have a story I need to finish.  Actually, I have about eighty stories to finish from our trip.  I apologize for jumping around between present and past, but Uganda stories are just going to have to trickle out as I can process them.  And, um, you guys know I have a lot of distractions, right?

So we discussed the failed breakfast in London on the way to Uganda.  And I hinted that we managed to redeem it on the way back.  Here’s how:

When we finally arrived in Uganda and met up with the JTs, who had been in country for two weeks already, we discussed the trip we took.  We told them about the miserable breakfast that wasn’t in London and JT said, “Oh, well, you should have eaten at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant in the airport.  Amazing breakfast!”

I wiped the “Shtupid Amerikans” stamp off my forehead and inquired as to the location of said magical restaurant.  ”Oh, just down the corridor from security.”

But of course!  If only I had dragged my green husband just a touch further, we would have found Pancake Mecca.  As it was, I was eating horse food while he eye-balled some peppermint tea from the floor of the terminal.

So when we very happily exited Uganda two and a half weeks later…

Wait, stop.  I have to tell you people how happy we were to leave.  Things were getting a bit tense with an election looming in the country and as more police appeared in riot gear, restaurants began closing down, kids were let out of school, and the military convoys were in front of us all the way to the airport, we were MORE than ready to high-tail it out of there.  We’ll go back and enjoy it another time, I’m sure.  But this time was all about getting OUT with our daughter in our arms.

We wrestled our stuff and our baby through several security lines, customs, and some drama about whether or not Mira had a ticket.  She fell asleep at the first security line and slept through the whole two hour debacle.  When we finally found our seats on our plane, Andrew and I were fairly vibrating with anticipation to just take-off already.

Mira continued to sleep through take-off and the first seven hours of the flight.  I didn’t sleep because I was so busy worrying about her, but Andrew managed to doze on and off.   Then we got to London…

We did the whole security thing AGAIN, during which time I got a nosebleed (I have had a nosebleed one other time in my life.  Seriously, what is wrong with us?) and had to taste 50% of the baby food we brought with us for Mira.  I will hand it to Heathrow security, they are thorough.

We were finally able to locate the Gordon Ramsey restaurant, aptly named “Plane Food.”  I believe a host of angels sang as we brought our pitiful Boda Bellies to the table and begged for a real breakfast.  (The African version of breakfast was mostly corn flakes with hot milk.)  I had pancakes with honeycomb butter and bananas.  Andrew had a smorgasbord of porridge and some sort of egg and bacon scone.

Mira saw the pancakes and went buck wild.  I thought she wanted the bananas on top but when she screamed at me with all the anger she could muster, we discovered she wanted the pancakes and she wanted them NOW.  I shared with her, but not very willingly.  Because they were THAT GOOD.

All told, it was THE most expensive breakfast we’ve ever consumed.  But, boy oh boy, was it wonderful!  I have no idea if it had to do with the thrill of drinking water from a glass (not a bottle) or if the food really was that good, but it will go down in Vitafam history as “that amazing breakfast we ate in the London airport.”

(And it’s a big deal to go down in Vitafam history as anything, am I right?)

We left London and flew to Dallas.  We made it through customs (although if one more customs officer looked at my terrible temporary passport picture and then at me and squinched up his face in a question mark, I was going to scream:  I’D BEEN ROBBED, MY HAIR WAS WET, AND I WAS HAVING A TOUGH DAY, OK????  IT’S REALLY ME IN THAT PICTURE!) and headed straight for the first Mexican restaurant we saw.

I had no idea why two people who had just gone through the African Cleanse Program thought it was a good idea to eat salsa and nachos, but we did.  Mira had her first taste of Mexican food and deemed it “good.”  Considering we had no idea what time zone we were in, we called it “Second Breakfast.”

And then the next part of the story still isn’t really funny to me yet, but Andrew got really dehydrated and jet-lagged, worse than he was on the way to Uganda, and I couldn’t get him off the floor of the terminal to get on the plane to go home to my babies.  Mira was asleep in my arms, we had three carry-on bags, and he couldn’t get up.

I tried to get the airline to help me get him a wheelchair but they refused to put him on the plane if he was “sick.”  I insisted he wasn’t sick, just jet-lagged, but they wouldn’t help me, despite my tears.  I finally explained to Andrew that if he couldn’t get up, we were going to have to spend the night in Texas and suddenly, like the He-man that he is, he summoned strength from who-knows-where, carried our stuff onto the plane, threw up a few times, and then passed out for the duration.

He is my hero, every. single. day.

But from here on out, he only flies with an IV drip of fluids.

And I’m packing breakfast in our carry-ons.  Right next to my Granny Pillow.