packing heavy

Everyone is getting ready for our family vacation next week. Most of them have been packing for quite a while. Back in February, someone bought a couple of bulk packs of paper towels for the vacation. Same with toilet tissue...I think 48 rolls. And just last week my sister said that she thought she needed to buy another box of laundry detergent--she didn't think one box was enough for the week! Have they lost their minds? At least I know that if I forget something, someone in my family will have packed it!

wiggling, dark forces, and promises

Promises to children should always be kept, don't you think? My little friend, Matt (7) asked me a few weeks ago when we would have a day of fun. Busy as I am, I told him let's wait until school is out. 8 days before the last day of school, I got a call from my dear little friend. He wanted to hold me down to a date.

Today was the day...and boy did we ever have fun!

We went to see Star Wars. He was so excited. We got to the theater early so we decided to grab some pizza. He was not dazzled by the likes of "Spaghetti and Meatball Pizza" and "Barbecue Chicken Pizza" that appeared on the kiddy menu. Nope...just plain cheese would do for him. We colored-by-number in the book they gave us while we waited for our tiny pizza. When it came, I showed him how to fold the slice over and eat it that way. He really liked that idea a lot.

I am not entirely used to how 7 year olds act. I thought that maybe they sat up straight at the table while eating. Not my friend. He reclined sideways on the booth...at one point kicking his feet up into the air. He squirmed and wiggled. I did remind him that this wasn't particularly appropriate behavior for a restaurant. For about 2 minutes he sat up nice and straight. And then the wiggles got him again.

The wiggles attacked during the movie too. Especially during the slow parts. We made a game of drinking our soda with every mention of the word "force". Unfortunately, that meant a couple of mid-movie trips to the bathroom. I worried the whole time I waited outside the men's bathroom that he was okay in there. But not for long because he really wanted to get back to the movie. (I didn't hear any handwashing, that's for sure!)

He was so excited during parts of the movie that he squealed with joy. At other parts I looked over at my sweet friend's face so full of wonder that it looked like he could just bust wide open like a watermelon.

So, I played a little hooky today because I'd made that promise to my little friend...and I'm so glad I did.

please make up this room

When one is travelling, one takes certain things for granted. For instance, if one books a room in a national hotel chain, one might expect a reasonably clean room. It would be unreasonable to expect your bed to be turned down and a mint on your pillow for anything less than $175/night. But one would be reasonable to expect clean.

This was not the case for the room we reached after travelling by car 8 hours for a cousin's wedding.

First of all, it was not a hotel. It was most certainly a motel. I'm not a fan of the motel experience. But I was trying to keep an open mind. The lobby seemed tidy and clean. They gave us our room keys and directed us to our room. As we approached the room, even before we opened the door, we could smell cigarette smoke. The room was dark, smelly, and dirty. Moldy and mildewy and dirty. We could not sleep here. We called the front desk and told them such. They told us that this was the only room left and that we would indeed have to sleep in this ashtray. Luckily, a few minutes later they rang back to say that they indeed had one other room.

This new room was a little better. It was not an ashtray...just dirty and moldy. The ceiling had been patched up but not painted. Everything was old and dirty. I complained to my sweet husband. He complained to me.

And then we decided to drop it. I thought of it this way...I camp every year with his family and this is almost the same. I did not want his family to see me as some sort of diva so I decided then and there that I was happy to be in this stinky, dirty room. If anyone asked how I liked the room, I would smile pleasantly.

All night I felt things (imagined, perhaps) crawling all over me. I did not sleep well. We got up in the morning and got ready quickly. We were not comfortable. He had some sort of rash on his leg. I was tired and itchy.

We went for doughnuts and coffee at a nearby spot. While I was enjoying my coffee in the brightly lit coffee shop, my sweet husband tried to tell me in a nice way that I had over-applied my makeup. It was so dark in the bathroom that I couldn't see what I was doing. I ended up looking like Tammy Faye. Tammy Faye...motel. This is not who I am.

Now here's where the story sweetens. As we were out driving around the area, we got a call from his family asking if we would like to move with the rest of them to another hotel up the street. Yes! Yes! Yes...we would. So we did. And it was a clean and pretty smelling hotel. And the rest of the weekend went happily ever after.

Oh, and the wedding was nice.