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Monday, February 09, 2004
recap of our vacation
Ways In Which My Fabulous Vacation in Florida Totally Ruined My Life:
- My house sucks now. My best friend (with whom we stayed in FL) has, well, the most awesome house I think I have ever been in personally. Or at least, the most awesome house I've ever been in where I wasn't being paid to wait tables and clean up for an enormous Christmas party where the hostess nearly had fisticuffs with her two daughters-in-law over which of their four exhorbitantly elegant and expensive sets of family Christmas silver they should use. So, the most awesome house of any normal human being I've ever known, how's that? And it's not that Susan is wealthy, it's just that her house is laid out exactly like the ones in all those dream-house blueprints I invent, and it's all bright and airy and clutter-free and just plain wonderful. Anyway. I came home from that house, where my entire family of four was made to feel perfectly comfortable and at home and just generally all happy in many ways, to my now-hovel. Mind you, I didn't mind my house terribly before we left. I kind of liked it, except for the 1970's dungeon atmosphere brought about by the dark knotty pine walls and cruddy wall lighting. But now my house is depressing and I hate it, because I Have Seen Perfection.
- I am a total slob. This is somewhat related to item 1. Too much stuff and nowhere to put it, combined with a severe case of slothfulness, combine to make my house a virtual eyesore. As a family, we have now begun the process of un-hoveling ourselves, but it's a slow road. My housecleaning mantra is now, "What would Susan do?" And aside from the instances where I realize that Susan would put the item in question neatly away in one of her five-zillion-more-than-I-have cupboards, it really does help. So this at least we're working on.
- My long-standing love of winter is in jeopardy. Now, I fully realize that, having lived in California since birth, I've never actually experienced winter, but I have always enjoyed our paltry 45-degree-high-for-the-day semblance of that season. Not anymore. The weather in Florida, well, it just excelled. It started out at about 68 degrees on Sunday and went up throughout the week until it was a brilliantly sunny eighty-degree day on the last day we were there. It never got cold at night; we could be outside at midnight in t-shirts, which won't happen until sometime in May here. We got off the plane in sixty-degree Sacramento, drove an hour and a half, got out to eat, and almost died, because the sun had gone down and the temperature had plummeted to all of 48 degrees. It was all I could do not to get directly back in the car and return to the airport. I'm acclimating to it again now but it's not easy.
- I have minivan envy. We rented one for the week and I was fully smitten. Now I drool watching them go down the road, thinking of all that open space, of the way-back seat, of the capability to carry two small families at once. I'll get over it, but that's not easy, either.
That said, there was one annoying thing about Florida. Can you say, "tolls"? My goodness, it was like driving back and forth over the Golden Gate Bridge for seven days. And I just know that all the locals, who knew which back roads were quick and which ones would add two hours to your travel time (and that's if you didn't get lost) and could thus travel unimpeded by the dreaded "exact change" sign (what happens if you don't have exact change? Do you go to jail? Do you face a firing squad? I shudder to think), laughed raucously in their cars watching the hapless tourists pay for their highway system for them.
Also, I magically managed to gain five pounds over the course of the week. This came as a total shock to me, because I thought I was eating really reasonably, considering that I was on vacation. Can I just blame all that on Chick-fil-A right now? Actually we only ate there twice, so maybe the weight gain was water. (yeah, that sounds good). Or maybe it had something to do with the nightly bowl of ice cream, and the Olive Garden trip and the stop for fries at Denny's (which was a harrowing experience, really, from a personal safety standpoint, for this bucolic rube; that Denny's was not in the best of neighborhoods) after watching Phantom of the Opera, and so on... no, it couldn't be that, I like the water idea much better.
Things I did for the first time on this trip:
- Placed a call on a cell phone, alone and unaided. Yes, you read that right.
- Valet parked.
- Had a real honest-to-God girls' night out with my best friend while our hubbies watched the kids (and the Super Bowl); we went to the aforementioned production of Phantom and had The Best Time.
- Saw the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
- Traveled east of the state of Kansas.
- Flew in an airplane.
- Watched VH1 Classic. (this really belongs in the list at the top of the page, because I now have to daily talk myself out of calling and ordering digital cable RIGHT NOW).
- Rented a car.
- Bought something at an outlet mall. (not as exciting as it is made out to be, in my opinion, but whatever makes you happy...)
- Saw a swamp. Several small patches of swamp as a matter of fact.
- Experienced eighty-degree temperatures during a rainstorm.
- Ate at Chick-fil-A. I love their kids' meal goodies.
I know there are more things for that list, but it's hard to think of them right now what with having to croak (I am so congested and sniffly and sinusy right now, it's not even funny) passionately along with Christine on my Phantom CD, and with my son asking me every three seconds if he can play Starfighter yet (a week without it wasn't a problem but he'd love to be able to make up for lost time). I give up, the computer is his for now. ;-)
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