Trip, Trip, Tripping Down to the Beach OR On Entertaining Your Only Child on Your Mini-Vacation OR Entertaining Yourself on Your Mini-Vacation - Part I

We went to the beach.  HIM had business.  (HIM gets to go very interesting places like Hawaii and Italy and Monterrey, CA, so I suppose I should be suspicious.  But that takes too much effort.)  We tagged along.  On the three hour trip to the beach locale, all went well until the last hour, whereupon Cressy, our 7 year old daughter began to tell knock-knock jokes.  Then some more knock-knock jokes.  Then some more knock-knock jokes.  (I can clearly remember the first time Cressy told a joke.  She came home from pre-school and she was so excited.  "Mom," she said animatedly.  "I heard a joke today."  I was like, "Okay."  She was all atwitter.  (That's a fancy word for ants in her pants.)  She couldn't wait to tell the joke.  It was going to be the best joke in the solar system, no the universe.  She was going to tell me the funniest joke ever.  She looked at me seriously, trying to keep her face straight, and she said, "Why...did the chicken cross the road?"  I believe I had to bite my lip in response.  "Why," I said neutrally, "did the chicken cross the road?"  And then Cressy blasted out the answer, as if the reason was the most important thing she had ever said, "TOGETTOTHEOTHERSIDE!!"  Then she cracked up, and laughed until she turned blue.  Mothers will understand that we have two responses.  We can laugh uproariously and pretend that this is the funniest thing ever spoken.  Or we can say politely, "Haha, I've heard it before."  But I didn't want to ruin her joke, so I laughed.  I wish I'd gotten the joke on digital so I could show it to her first prom date.)

But back to the trip, Cressy would say, "Knock-knock."  I would say, "Who's there?  Please let it be peace and quiet."  Cressy would say, "Huh?  No, it's a watermelon, Mommy.  What joke were you thinking of, dumbass?"  (No, wait, that last part was just me.)  I think my brain shut down about thirty miles from our destination.  It seems to be a blur.  Either that or I was able to spike my iced tea with something alcoholic.

ANYWAY!  We arrived and immediately sucked up the fancy, schmancy hotel room.  (They had a robe in the closet with a monogram.  The robe had the monogram, not the closet.  But maybe the closet should have had a monogram.)  Cressy looked in every drawer and fingered all the towels and said, "Look, Mommy, little soaps."  Apparently, she did not know that soap came in miniature form.  We admired the view of the port from the 17th floor window.  I admired the view from about five feet away from the window as I seem to be somewhat bothered by looking straight down out of a tall, tall, tall, tall window.  (The glass does not seem strong enough to hold back a Fat Woman, if you ask me and let's just say, I'm going to err on the side of the safety of the Fat Woman.)

So we threw HIM out the door at his place of business and went to the beach.  We had a beach blanket, a beach umbrella, sun block, and all the accouterments.  We were ready for sun and surf.

I made the mistake of using the GPS again.  (You would think that based on the last time I used it I would have known better.)  It was supposed to be about 28 miles to the beach.  It got to be about 40 miles before I said, "This is getting ridiculous."  I saw some water on the GPS and headed off the beaten track to find it.  Hallelujah.  We found the ocean.  It was bigger than a breadbox and wet.  I.e., it had to be the ocean.  Also there were signs that said, 'Ocean this way.'  I took them at their word.  Fortunately we found a park that was right on the beach.  And since it was a Wednesday morning, it was pretty empty.  Yea!

After toting everything out to the beach, we set up.  (It wasn't exactly an equatable arrangement.  I think one of us might have been carrying more than the other.)

I looked at my cell phone map and discovered that we had managed to get to the ocean, but it was about thirty miles away from where we were supposed to be going.  (Damn, #$%^@!! GPS.)  But hey, it might get us back to the hotel.  In any case, we enjoyed the beach and I only got mildly fried...on my forehead.  Hey, I put the super duper sunblock on, but it was less than effective when I was sweating from carrying everything.

Our little angel.  Does she look like she
toted 50 pounds of beach crap from
the car?  No, she does not.  I'm getting
a burro for the beach next time.

There was sand castle making, body surfing, sea gull chasing, and much sand-in-the-pants-having-despite-the-fact-that-my-butt-never-actually-made-contact-with-the-beach.  Oh, the memories.  After dragging everything back to the car we went to get lunch, shower all the sand off, and pick up HIM from work.  Magically, the GPS worked on the reverse trip.  (Especially when I didn't make assumptions about it's directions.)

HIM and Cressy enjoying the pool.  I was
recuperating from too much sand and surf.

Cressy, apparently not having enough of water, wanted to go to the hotel pool.  (Can you believe this is an indoor pool on the third floor of the hotel.  I'm never staying in the second floor of this place.)

They also have a hot tub, which I'm now going to talk about.  (I guess it's not really a hot tub, but more like a spa/jacuzzi thing.)  Why?  Because HIM and Cressy were going back and forth from the pool to the hot tub.  (The hot tub was hot and also it had bubbles.  Nuff said.)  And HIM discovered a $20 bill inside the hot tub.  Here's a picture of the hot tub/spa/whatever you want to call it.


The site of the $20 discovery.

Personally, when HIM related the story about the discovery of the $20 bill, I went kind of like, "Eww," because I can't imagine why a $20 bill would be floating around

a hot tub, with a solitary exception that makes me want to go wash my hands with antibacterial soap.  Then it made me want to demand that HIM and Cressy go wash their entire bodies off with

antibacterial soap and possibly bleach too.  This is a nice hotel but come on.  How many reasons are there to have a $20 dollar bill in the hotel's spa/jacuzzi thing?  I mean, eww to the triple 'E,' uwww.

EEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!

(Just for emphasis.)

Well, hey, let's examine the possibilities.  A man was in the jacuzzi minding his own business when suddenly nuns from Central America came by collecting for dyslectic lepers with lazy eyes.  So he whipped out...his wallet.  Right.  Wallet.  Then he gave the nun some cash and one twenty accidentally dropped into the jacuzzi.

There ya go.  A perfectly respectable explanation that doesn't involve anything dirty.

The twenty.  It looks well used,
doesn't it?

Okay.  Another one.  Someone was innocently playing...poker while enjoying the luxurious comfort of bubbles from the hotel's jacuzzi.  The person suddenly filled an inside straight, king high, and the pot was up to $250 and thirty-three cents.  He leaped up in ecstatic joy and bills and coins went flying everywhere.  Everyone valiantly collected his winnings but one $20 got caught in the whirlpool's suction and stayed there until HIM came along and found it.  (Hmm.  I wonder what other things the hotel's pool cleaning staff finds in the jacuzzi.  Cure to cancer, map coordinates to the nearest inhabited planet out of our solar system, a rare twenty dollar, Confederate gold piece.  The possibilities are endless.)

Okay, I've got to give it another shot.  There was a lovely young couple innocently minding their puritanical business whilst bathing in the jacuzzi.  (They had very prudish bathing attire on and might have been quoting from the bible at the time.)  Suddenly, ninja vampire zombies popped into the room.  They said, "We want your wife for lurid reasons!"  The man said, "Never!"  He leaped from the jacuzzi and turned on the bubbles to high.  The ninja vampire zombies screamed, "NOT the bubbles!  Anything but the bubbles!"  The man laughed cynically and said, "We'll take your money, too."  The ninja vampire zombies threw their money at the couple and fled in terror.  And one of the twenties got left behind.  (Perfectly innocently but very cheesy and silly.)

See how this hotel decorated their hallways?
Strange things HAVE to happen in
any hotel that uses these kinds of rugs
in their hallways.

And this is where I have gone from merely plainly silly to controversially silly.  So tune in at the same Bat time on the same Bat Channel for PART II - How Fat Woman Conquered the Ninja Vampire Zombies and Became Their Queen.  Or maybe something like that.