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Bedbugs, Brain Collapse, & Birthdays
Long time, no type.
Mainly, I’ve been riding the wave of gleeful post-homework life and spending very little computer time doing anything that requires significant cognitive processing. Not to mention that the last few weeks at work have been tremendously busy, and insanely stressful what with top-down administrative reorganizations, severe budget cuts, and the like. So needless to say, I haven’t been in much of a bloggy frame of mind.
However, I feel the need to issue a report on our grand vacation in early June; a whirlwind trip that started with my #1 niece’s high school graduation and ended with a crazy 5-day stint in…..you guessed it…..Las Vegas. The Vegas leg of the trip was a long-awaited family celebratory extravaganza to ring in a host of decade-centric birthdays (ahem, yes, I wasn’t the only one with a milestone this year.) One of my nephews, my brother, and my dear hubby all hit “decade” birthdays between mid April and mid June. So naturally we all felt the need to hoop it up in sin city.
But before I get ahead of myself too far, let me reel back a bit and describe the first segment of the trip. My dear eldest niece, so lovely in body and spirit, was graduating with honors from a tremendously rigorous International Baccalaureate-affiliated school the first weekend of June. I was very excited to attend, particularly to hear her speak at the graduation ceremony. However, seeing as said ceremony was scheduled to begin quite early in the morning, at roughly a 2-hour drive from our house, we opted to drive up the Friday before and meet up with GMom to share a hotel room.
Considering that we also had to plan ahead/pack for the Vegas trip, get the pets settled, load the car, feed the kid, and a million other things after an already-long day of work, we didn’t get out of town until almost 8pm, which put our arrival into a rather late-ish timeframe. After unloading our overnight gear and securing a late night snack courtesy of the only open business in the area — Circle K — I started prepping the little genius for bed. I left her in the hotel bathroom to marinate in the shower for a few moments while I went to unpack her jammies and get the bed ready. Upon reaching for a pillow, what did I see but a tiny little bug on the pillow!
Now, not that I travel all that much, but you’d have to live in a deep cave anymore these days not to be aware of ye olde modern hotel bedbug epidemic. Being a bonafide bug-o-phobe already, of course my mind leapt to the possibility of bedbugs, although the little specimen was very tiny. I asked FF and Uncle Bubba (also sharing the room) to give it an eyeball, and in the course of examining that and other pillows, they located a much larger and more suspicious looking critter, which we caught in a plastic cup. At that point, with frantic smartphone image Googling underway, we felt rather alarmed and certain that we hit the unlucky jackpot of a bedbug-infested room.
And honestly, the front desk wasn’t all that much help…they offered to move us to a different room, but that wasn’t very reassuring considering that all of us had horrific images of bringing home our very own bedbug buddies to our respective domiciles, never to be pest-free again. This was particularly unsettling to FF and I, considering that a few years ago we suffered through an epic, almost yearlong flea war at our old crappy apartment. And believe me, we tried everything, to no avail. Moving out WAS the final solution. So needless to say, we are pretty particularly picky when it comes to bug issues.
So our troops did a quick huddle and we decided to relocate to another hotel (by this time nearly 1am), yet unfortunately the only affordable place reasonably nearby was a 30 minute drive away. Ugh. However, despite our collective exhaustion, this seemed a better option than potentially offering ourselves up as blood donors to the native fauna. The little genius was taking everything in stride pretty well, despite some confusion and tiredness. We repacked our overnight gear and shuffled back down to the van. Unfortunately however, during the baggage and kid-loading insanity, we managed to lock a) the kid b) all our stuff and c) the keys, snugly in the van.
Oh shit.
So yes, friends and neighbors, we stood outside a bedbug-ridden hotel in a sleepy small hamlet at 1am shouting instructions through a closed window to our frantically crying daughter on how to escape her snug, safe, 5-point carseat harness with the child-resistant latch so that she could unlock the van for us. Totally not one of my proudest moments. Fortunately the little genius is a trooper and she calmed down and persevered enough to get us out of the fiasco. After that, we hit the highway and about an hour later we all collapsed into an exhausted slumber.
So the management did call and talk to Gmom the next day (she had made the reservation) and were properly apologetic and all that crap, issuing refunds and free night coupons ad nauseam. And a few days after that, they emailed a copy of their pest company report, predictably denying any bedbug issues but admitting the presence of some “carpet beetles”. Well, I appreciate them sharing the report and all but I gotta say that I’m still not convinced and I don’t think they actually examined the critter we captured and showed to the front desk staff.
SO, needless to say the next morning came very early and as for my little family pod, we reluctantly decided to skip the main ceremony and let the little genius continue to get some much-needed rest. We did attend the post-ceremony graduation party and it was a lot of fun, particularly when my niece “unwrapped” a very exciting present: a car! K thought that was just about the coolest and most exciting thing she’d ever heard of, and I’m pretty sure she will not forget it, and thus expectantly hold it over her parents’ heads until her own high school graduation. Sigh.
So with that dramatic report out of the way, I’m happy to say that the Vegas phase of the trip was tons of fun and very smooth sailing with no buggy or incompetent parenting episodes. We bowled, we saw movies, we gambled, we swam, we played a lot of cards in the sumptuous top-floor suite that K2 & family occupied, and generally a great time was had by all. The young guys (uncle bubba, my #1 nephew and #2 nephew) camped out in the 2nd suite bedroom and turned it into an X-box blazin’, Dr. Pepper guzzling, stinky man cave. They loved it.
FOUR LAYERS!
The guys went to see Cirque’s new Elvis show one night, and the next night the girls went to see Menopause: The Musical. Which was, um, quite an experience and has given me a slightly worried perspective on my future hormonal event horizon. (Is it too early to already be experiencing the whole brain collapse thing? ’cause lately….) Seriously though, the show was quite a laugh and a lot of fun to see with Gmom and Aunt D (K2′s mom).
Speaking of Gmom, she brought some serious magic to the table and managed to somehow make an amazingly elaborate cake in a hotel mini-kitchen for us birthday folks! Totally awesome. (and delicious!)
All in all, a trip (and birthday) to remember!
Once More into the Fray
Nothing really world-shattering over here, so please don’t be looking for bloggy brilliance today. Just a super quick update / mea culpa [while I wait for pizza delivery - haha] before the insanity of My Last Semester of Grad School overtakes me and sucks out my brains. This is somewhat of a follow-up to the “survival” post, but yes, I am still feeling pretty anxious, overwhelmed, and hella burnt-out. Unfortunately I was not struck by any major academic epiphanies during the break, despite many sleepless nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to plan things out and avoid full-blown panic attacks. However, I did mentally work out a rough set of project plans (sexy they are NOT); for our purposes let’s call them “A” and “B”. I was banking on plan A because it was the least painful to execute but I just realized (now 4 days into the semester) that it was only a pipe dream…I won’t risk putting anyone to sleep with the details but suffice it to say the timing just wouldn’t work out. So back to plan “B”, which is (I am doing some serious sacrificial praying) hopefully going to be feasible with a minimum of pain. So. Now I just have to work out a million details, file my grad papers, line up a bunch of research, write a literature review, and start figuring out the details of execution. Joy.
So all of this has kind of put me into full-blown freak-out mode the last couple weeks. Uncle Bubba has been acting as my ad hoc unofficial therapist/sounding-board on the go (mostly because he is the one that is always available via phone/text/yahoo lately — sorry UB!). Aside from the academic challenges, I am seriously worried about the reality of student loans pressing in upon me; my ability to find better-paying work one way or another; and getting our general current finances in some kind of order because quite frankly, 2009 and 10 kinda kicked our asses and the ducks are coming home to roost. It’s all a mess right now, but operating under certain constraints makes it hard to plan for improvement. I think this will all become a little clearer once I have escaped from grad school and can get my head screwed back on properly for other important life-details.
We did succumb to one little pre-semester fun hurrah; since we minimized Christmas expenses and whatnot this year…we took a little MLK weekend trip to Vegas, just the three of us. It was actually quite a fun trip, althought very different from recent Vegas adventures because Gmom wasn’t there this time to offload some of the kid-duties. So a lot less drinking/gambling/related shenanigans, but more family-based adventures. K had a great time.
Have to put a shout-out to my awesome hubby for all his recent support, patience, and general steadiness in my life at a time when it feels like everything else is wobbling on its axis. Over the last couple days he has been painstakingly working on our @#$)(#!& master shower, so that I can finally be reunited with blisteringly hot morning showers which have more water pressure than a dog peeing on a bush. He also took on the Dad-ariffic task of taking the little genius out to buy her Long-Awaited-Tap-Shoes. She is THRILLED and tomorrow’s dance class ought to be a TOTAL hoot. Oh and he has lately been playing frequent victim customer to K’s “barber shop” ministrations. All this during a week when his dear daughter jokingly suggested replacing him with 1) a puppet or 2) a robot. (!)
On the other family WIN front, we finally got the little genius in to see the dentist this week, which had been somewhat delayed for a variety of reasons. As first dental visits go, it was pretty positive and she seemed to enjoy it overall. For my peace of mind, I am so relieved to find out that the nightly teeth-grinding isn’t going to ruin her life, and her overall dental health is A-OK perfect right now. Hooray!
OK as exciting as all that is — on to the mea culpa. I had great intentions (and we ALL know where those are used for paving…) to get around to fixing the blog design layout and whatnot, and get some serious type-time in over the break, but somehow the allure of DVR and Wii frisbee golf and staying up all night doing nothing meaningful got the better of me. So. Maybe not so much on the redesign and playing catch-up, given that my next three weeks of academic/work life are probably going to be sheer hell, BUT I am planning to try to commit to one post a week this semester, because I feel a lot more sane and happy when I get some of the junk in my head OUT. Fortunately (?) you all are along for the ride!
So, onward and upward; on the road again; ready-steady-GO; once more into the fray….yada, yada, yada.
Pizza’s here!
Back again!
We’ve got to stop meeting like this…people are going to start wondering! Holy month-plus blogging hiatus! Ideally, I’d begin this post explaining how refreshed and relaxed I am, but meh, it wouldn’t exactly be the truth, so what the hell – I won’t waste your time.
Yes, we captured this 2 foot tall penguin in Las Vegas, NV.
Anyhoo, after my last confessional missive, I began a fabulous! sensational! post entitled “Essay on Marriage” to commemorate my upcoming 7th anniversary, but the writing proved more complex than I originally anticipated (how deliciously ironic!). So I had to put it on ice while we went on a whirlwind 2-week vacation. I’m sure I’ll be thawing it out of the draft locker soon.
Bowling with kids... a little frightening
Said vacation was a nice, if not entirely original, break. First, we did a 5 day stint in Vegas…after all, it is tradition on our anniversary. We ate some good food, drank some good stuff, did a little shopping, caught a couple movies (I really liked Karate Kid!), bummed around the pool, and generally had a good time. This time we did try something new though…we took K bowling, and it was surprisingly more fun than I expected. I’m sure it’ll become a regular Vegas agenda item now that she knows how much fun it is, and that there is a 24-hour bowling alley inside the hotel/casino where we usually stay.
From Vegas, we then spent a night in Kingman at the fairy-dust Hampton Inn, luxuriating in their ultra-comfortable environment. And the next day…a good ol’ Route 66 adventure! We ambled along to Peach Springs and did the Grand Canyon Caverns tour, which was very interesting, but not something I will probably feel compelled to repeat. I’m not really claustrophobic about caves…but there is still something just a little overwhelming about being in a rocky void 200 feet underground. After a post-caving dinner stop in wacky Seligman, we were on our way into lovely northern AZ to spend a few days with Gmom and Uncle Bubba, including a delightful July 4th steak-and-s’mores experience.
Enjoying the cool northern AZ weather with no hands!
Going against the norm, I actually took a wee break from my various electronic leashes this time too, although I did not maintain complete abstinence. I left my work phone at home, and only briefly glanced at work email ONE TIME in that 2-week period. It was rather blissful to leave it all behind for a while. I did bring my netbook of course, but barely used it, except to slip in a couple of episodes of LOST here and there.
After returning home, we faced a marathon of mundane unpacking, laundry, and pre-surgery appointments for FF. The hell season is in full swing, with temps running in the 110-115° range most days. I am so cringing in advance for our August electricity bill. The heat and residual vacation lethargy kept me from bothering with anything that remotely required intellectual focus (ie blogging, responding to email, paying bills etc) and so all my spare moments have been filled with an odd assortment of summer shows on DVR, and reading a few books FF picked up for me at the library. This summer has had a distinctly supernatural flavor, with lots of vampires, pixies, demons and the like. I breezed through Terry Goodkind’s “Law of Nines” on vacation because I have been pining for a new Richard/Kahlan book, but unfortunately this book fell quite flat in my opinion…very one-dimensional and forgettable compared to his other works. Sigh.
My little cowgirl!
Anyway, FF survived his wee eye surgery last week to straighten out his lazy eye. He apparently had a significant amount of scar tissue from prior childhood surgeries, and so he came out of surgery looking drastically, demonically bloodshot. At 2 weeks post-surgery, the redness is just now starting to clear a bit, poor guy. But in true FF fashion, he is quite stoic and takes it all in stride. He is looking forward to improved depth perception and peripheral vision once his brain sorts out the new visual field. I am looking forward to him being ready to drive again, because while I dearly love my daughter, I am getting tired of being the sole parent on transportation detail. Yeah, I know that sounds pretty self-centered and all, but… Kids are so lovable, but SO horrifying, too. Anyone who says otherwise is on much stronger drugs than I am.
And with that poignant thought, I will wrap this up, with other updates to follow soon. Ciao!
What a little monster!
Well, It’s Back to the Grind Now
Doncha think vacations would be a lot more fun without the overhanging threat of returning back to the daily grind of bills, work, dirty cat pans, and vomiting children? Oh well, if I were independently wealthy without such crass daily concerns, what would I do with all my time?
Nevermind, don’t answer that. It would probably involve lots of traveling, champagne, and the full cast of the Las Vegas Chippendales. And that, my friends, is another post, for another day.
Anywho, the trip was mostly fun but overall had a little weird slant going on. For one thing, the day we arrived, FF started to come down with bronchitis from his bout with the evil laryngitis bug. He slept away much of the trip. For another, we didn’t stay in a hotel this time but rather the whole tribe shared a (mostly) fully furnished luxury vacation house. Which was a cool change-up and all, but I think maybe I’ll stick to the basic anonymity of hotels from now on. The jacuzzi was nice, yes, but crawling through the jungle and monkeying with valves, switches, gauges, each time we wanted to use it was a little really obnoxious. Also geez people, hire a competent damn cleaning crew next time, k?
Santa was good to me this year!
Gorgeously purple!!!
The upshot was that K and K2 kept each other marvelously entertained from morning to bedtime every day. It was so awesome to go from cranky, bored, adversarial child to “honey, have you seen our daughter in the last 6 hours?” It was also very nice to spend some time hanging with #1 niece, who is so radiantly beautiful in body, mind, and spirit. Talking to her at times made me wistfully long to be a teenager again for a few moments…but then yeah, not really.
Vegas was P-A-C-K-E-D. In fact, I don’t recall having seen it this packed in the last 5 or 6 years. Overall we hung out at the house with the tribe more than anything, but still fit in a little gambling, saw 2 movies, and FF, K, and I spent one afternoon cruising through a massive outlet mall. Viva la shopping!!! Oh and I killed a bottle of Grey Goose by myself in a short couple days but somehow never really attained spirit world status. WTF people? Guess I need to go back to tequila shots, as my tolerance seems to have officially built back up to that halycon level of college drinking days. Perhaps it is because I AM actually a student again??
My ridiculously cute new Coach bag!
Oh and we made a prerequisite trip to Cheesecake Factory at the Forum shops for Gmom’s birthday lunch, followed up by a night out on the town for the girls. Yeah, we’re back to the Chippendales again. Way too much fun to go into details.
We also made a special trip over to the Build-a-Bear Workshop at Planet Hollywood because K asked Santa at the last minute before Christmas for a teddy bear. Santa couldn’t find a perfect one so he instructed us to take her for a custom job in Vegas. Surprisingly, she opted for a CAT critter instead of a bear altogether, and of the approximately 2,395,134 outfits available, she chose a sparkley black flamenco-looking confection. Go figure.
Awwww
The cats survived the dreadful separation courtesy of fine TLC from friend RustyG. Their bid for retaliation consisted of crusting all three toilet seats in the house with layer upon layer of cat-litter-dust-mud-footprints, and making a total sandpit out of the laundry room. I even found some cat-litter-mudprints in my slippers! Really, Cookie, REALLY?
Yeah, I KNOW you 2 aren't so innocent!
Well, I guess that is pretty much the gist of it all. It was fun but way too short and here I am staring down the barrel of another semester of marvelously stimulating classes. It has been really difficult to get back into the swing of work this week too, probably because I didn’t keep tabs on email AT ALL this trip which is unusual for me. Thiscoming weekend will be a fabulously fun cleaning and un-decorating extravaganza. Double bleh.
Oh well, guess we better start planning the next vacation now, to keep a wee carrot dangling in front of my eyes.
Negotiations with George
Me: how about just a couple tasty adult drinks while on vacation? I mean seriously, Vegas without drinking???
George: hell no. Don’t even think about it.
Me: maybe just a beer?
George: I hear you thinking about that barrel of Guinness. NO ALCOHOL.
Me: sigh.
later, at a yummy buffet:
Me: come on George, I’ll skip the spicy curry if you won’t get pissed over the delicious tomato-basil soup?
George: bring me a slice of prime rib, medium rare, and hold the horseradish.
Me: sigh.
late night dinner:
Me: spicy chicken sandwich? think you could handle that? I mean, it’s not really THAT spicy…
George: imbecile! Try the $3.99 steak and eggs, over medium. Wheat toast.
at the kickass Peppermill restaurant for brunch:
Me: George, I know this is breakfast and all…and your most important meal of the day, but what do you think if I went crazy and got the spicy chorizo and eggs? Flour tortillas…
George: are you out of your MIND? order the damn french toast and there shall be no more nonsense from you about spicy/hearty/greasy vegas food for breakfast!
on the way home:
George (approximately every 90 miles or so): hey we are stopping for *yet another* potty break anyway, how about a skim latte?
Me: another one?
George: latte, latte, LATTE!
