Yep, aside from my crazy food revelations, I’ve been pretty quiet. We went on vacation, a week spent on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. In the past I’ve tried to gather up guest posts, but this time, since I’ve been posting infrequently anyway, I just let it slide.
I’m pleased to announce that we completed all of that driving with no one vomiting at all!! Woo, hoo! If you know our history, you know that that’s a significant accomplishment. I had both the girls put on those accupressure bracelets as soon as they got in the car. I think that they really help. As long as you’re wearing them immediately. If you wait until you start to feel yucky, all hope is lost for you.
We hit quite a bunch of traffic on the way down south, finally ending up at our hotel in Norfolk, VA, near midnight. At that point I was driving and Cute W was navigating, and it was getting a little snippy, I must admit. The girls had both been sleeping in the car, so they roused themselves enough to take a little tour around the hotel, because that’s part of the fun, of course. It was a downtown building, so it had some fun architectural elements, like a big, semi-fancy staircase instead of fire stairs, and a door that opened directly onto an old iron fire escape over the city street, where it sounded like pretty much everyone in town below was having a better time than we were. Not that competition was stiff.
We got to bed pretty quick, but somewhere between 1 and 2 am, the fire alarm went off.
Actually, if it were up to me, I’d probably miss it entirely. One of my most marked talents is my ability to maintain sleep, and this alarm wasn’t nearly loud enough to rouse me (not like that other alarm, back when M was a new baby). I would have missed the alarm entirely if Cute W hadn’t woken up, gone out into the hall to investigate, and reluctantly shook me to say that we should probably get the kids out. Apparently, there had been a small fire upstairs from us, quickly extinguished, but it was enough to empty the hotel and bring in the firefighters. Here’s my blurry picture of the fun:
Soon enough we were all sent back to bed, but after five minutes, it was clear that M wasn’t sleeping anytime soon. She’s pretty phobic about fire, so the hullabaloo had her revved up. I took one for the team and brought her down to the lobby, where we’d be able to escape quickly if the smouldering embers decided to catch again. Luckily, there was a comfy couch. Unluckily, there was another guest who’d been one of those folks having way more fun than us an hour or two ago. During the brief evacuation, he’d apparently lost his friends, and he was in no state to identify his hosts or what room he’d been in when one of the hotel staff found him stumbling through the halls barefoot. He slumped nearby and shifted his gaze every few minutes, alternating between what I can only presume were efforts to stop the ceiling from spinning and efforts to place me–was I his friend, maybe? Eventually, M simmered down sufficiently for us to head back upstairs, and as soon as we went to the elevator, our drunk friend decided it was time to take the elevator, too. Which meant that I decided a bathroom trip was in order, and M and I ducked into an alcove, where I decided that at 12 years old, it was high time she learned that females don’t go into elevators with random creepy guys.
Soon enough we were headed to the beach. I just looked back at my vacation photos, and one of the few I took was this one:
Okay, come on. That’s funny. You probably weren’t planning to drink or bathe in the toilet, so it seems excessive to add the sign. But it raises the question, why do I take photos in toilets while on vacation? This isn’t the first time, after all. I think it’s because I’m not particularly great at remembering to take photos at all because I’m so busy doing other things (or, in the case of lounging on the beach, not doing anything). And then I get that 90 seconds or so to myself to sit down alone, and I think, “Oh, my gosh! I should be documenting this trip!” It’s pretty silly. But we got some great family photos (thank you, Cute W!), and if I find any that work for the blog, I’ll get to work on that soon.
And, yes. The actual beach vacation was wonderful. I’m a little sad that I’m not still at the beach. But we’ll try to embrace the fun as it comes, right?
