vegas

If I tell you about my bridal shower/bachelorette weekend in Vegas, you'll shake your head and call shenanigans on my story, but it's true. In bed by 2am on Friday night, midnight on Saturday and eight on Sunday. Eight at night, that is. Not eight the next morning. By eight each morning I was up and showered and out the door.

Because the rules of Vegas apply in the blogosphere, I'll just tell the story of my weekend. The other three girls are on their own.

Believe it or not, I'm not one for revelry if I'm not within stumbling distance of my front door. I get kinda anxious if I don't know exactly where I am and have a good escape plan just in case of fire or terror or weather related disasters or tiger bites. I had a good time on Friday night, despite my three-hour plane delay and winding up in the middle seat on a five point five hour flight with an especially bad case of the JimmyLegs. We went to the MGM Grand to tear it up a bit at Studio 54 but I ducked out with the other East Coast girl around 1 or 2 Vegas time. It was way later on our clocks. Of course the other two ended up winning hundreds of dollars at the tables in our absence but such is life for a girl like me.

Saturday was the shower at the Stratosphere, a few hours poolside, and dinner at Rao's in Caesar's Palace. I had a drink at a lounge in Treasure Island but excused myself because I was feeling awful. All coughing and phloemy and gross and teary eyed and jetlagged. Not cute. Why be miserable when you can go home and catch Christopher Walken on SNL? For a minute. I think I was asleep by the end of the first sketch.

I was up on Sunday morning before the last of our party-goers got in. I jumped in the shower and walked up and down the Strip a few times (with an iced latte and wearing shorts and flip flops. Take that Chillydelphia), stopping into New York New York to see a man about some roasted nuts and over to the Bellagio to check out the gardens. I had lots of fun watching the yokels stick their noses to the glass at the schmancy stores in that shopping concourse.

"Well, I'll be! Looky here, Ma! Prayda! Channel! Hermays! Gushi! I jest doan-fer the life-a-me unnerstand why anyone decent and godfearin' would go ahead and pay alls that money for a pocketbook. I could up and buy us a new combine mashine fer the price of that there sissy-lookin' suit."

Or you know, whatever it is that people from Middle America say. Or wherever they were from.

Sunday went by in a lazy blur, I spent it bumming around town and by the pool while the other girls um, well, I guess they were at church. Sure. The other girls were at church while I was taking some much-needed guilt-free me-time. While out, I put a dollar in the penny slots machine at The Flamingo, lost it, and quit gambling. One dollar is one dollar too much to spend on gambling if you ask me. I have enough addictions. What the hell do I need another for?

Later in the afternoon, I spent some quality time taking a walk with the Bride-to-Be who I haven't seen in about a year. We collected tons of Vegas Trading Cards from the Mexicans working the Strip and stopped at Fatburger, my all-time favorite restaurant in the whole world. Rumor has it that there is one in Atlantic City, but it is really in my best interest to not find out. But if there is and you go, I'll take a Boca with cheese on white with egg no onion.

Please.

After burgers and sunshiney exercise we needed a nap so we crashed in the best bed in the whole wide world. Seriously. My entire body and soul was restored by the downy wonderness that was available to me for my sleeping pleasure. There was a First 48 marathon on A&E and I got to feel really smart because the other girls are non-CrJ people and they ask all sorts of crime and justice questions and I get to impress them with all the knowledge I bought from Temple U. that I never get to use in the real world anymore.

We ordered pizza (bad pizza. Thumbs down to Paradise Pizza, recommended by the concierge. While I'm on it, I'll just say that I forgot how gross bagels are on the west side of our country. And tomatoes are gritty and mealy and terrible. How do you people live? What do you do when you are jonesin' for a veggie creamcheese, cuke, and Beefsteak on a toasted asiago bagel? Do you just starve?) and stayed in bed until dawn. Then I got up walked around some more, went back to the condo, got to the airport, jumped on a plane, walked down to find Dave who I thought was driving in circles around the airport until I was standing outside but instead was greeted by my little boy who ran all the way across baggage claim screaming "mommy! mommy! mommy! mommy! big hugs mommy! i missed you mommy! i kiss you mommy! i love you mommy! airport mommy! stairs mommy! cars mommy! airplanes mommy! let's go mommy! i love you mommy!".

Then we got in the car and went to the diner and ordered some food but Jake puked all over me (what's with all the puking all of a sudden? we didn't puke before, why now? why Jake? why me?) before the food came out so Dave took Jake to the bathroom to clean him up while I apologized profusely to the people at the next table over who were nice enough to give me their napkins while I somehow salvaged the corn and banana and French bread that is really really good and begged a bleach rag off the busboy to take care of the booth and asked the waitress for our order to go and then it was my turn to go to the bathroom to clean off my pukey pants and Jake had to come because he can't be apart from me for more than two seconds and I had to ask him not to touch the toilets while I rubbed chunks off my jeans and got little papertowel bits all over myself and then we went back home and ate out of styrofoam and my food was good but Dave's was gross so he ate Jake's omelet and Jake ate pears but he calls them peaches and he couldn't get them on his fork and he whined and laughed and cried and asked for a bath and then opposed his bath so vehemently that I actually listened to him and only did what was minimally necessary to get the puke smell off and then I took him out of the bath and he felt really hot so I gave him some Tylenol and took him to bed and he was finally happy and then I was happy and I couldn't help but take a nice deep breath and think about how glad I am that life is back to normal.