Okay, you're asking yourselves, wow, so how was that Christmas vacation to Florida, aren't you? You know you are -- just admit it. Now, ask me allllll about it. You know you want to, baby.

Overall it was nice, but now we're beyond broke. We're just hoping that we can get the refi signed tomorrow or Tuesday.

We did SeaWorld, Magic Kingdom at Disney World, drove by Cape Canaveral, went to the Manatee Center on Hutchison Island, went to the Tupperware factory, and hit the beach. Also of course, we visited at my parents. My brother-in-law, joined us in Orlando a few days into our trip and we drove him to a bus station the day after Christmas. He got leave from the navy base and Mike really enjoyed seeing and hanging out with him.

Things with my parents went pretty well until Christmas day. My mom turned into a mean old bitch on Christmas day. Well, she was stressed out about people who were coming to dinner (with good reason) and she took it out on me. Everyone was rather horrified, including my brother-in-law, who generally isn't horrified by much. I'd already cleaned up the livingroom on her behalf, thus, I was not in a huge rush to run into the bedroom and arrange blankets. I was enjoying my children on Christmas morning because I'm a rotten mother who hates my kids. (Hehehe) She just had a bitch fit because I didn't get up immediately and make my bed, but had the audacity to play with my kids. I told her to get off my ass. Naturally, she flipped out. I ended up in tears, tried to apologize and she was still ranting about it days afterwards; I kept reminding her that I had apologized. Yeesh!

Other than that, it was okay. I just realized where I get my control freakishness from.

For Christmas dinner, she had invited this one elderly gentleman (my deceased godmother's husband), and he asked if he could bring his son and his son's girlfriend. Then suddenly, we had girlfriend's sister, too. The son is a bit off -- and not fully crazy, just kind of creepy weird. He was making little passes at me, in front of my HUSBAND! He was talking about the last time we saw each other -- he was 13 and I was 5 and that I had said I was in love with him. But he said it as if, I'd be in love with him NOW, though, I couldn't remember him at all. As the liquor poured, however, he kept bringing it up!

Naturally, Mike wasn't really paying attention; He trusts me and fuck everyone else.
I told Mike about it afterwards and told him I felt like I needed a shower to remove the ick factor. He gave me a hug and offered to rub me down to get the ick off.

This guy's girlfriend was 22 years his senior -- thus, he's in his 40's and his girlfriend is 70. My mom kept saying that when he saw the girlfriend get out of the car, she thought that the elderly gentleman was bringing a date, not the son. When she discovered that that the woman was the son's girlfriend, she had a hard time keeping her mouth from dropping open.

After a few drinks, the girlfriend basically told me that he was basically a boytoy. Senile sister had to keep being told people's names, and insisted after she'd eaten a huge meal, that she was starving and needed to eat more. Well, between him and the senile sister who kept feeding the dog shit she shouldn't -- you couldn't write it funnier. Gah. Just puttin' the "fun" in dysfunctional, yessirree!

Highlights of the trip included:

• I got to pet a dolphin at SeaWorld. We bought food for them several times and tried to convince the kids to feed them and they simply freaked out, backed away and watched me. We fed them so much, that one of the dolphins just ran against my hand. It was just cool. I also pet the sting rays -- very soft beautiful creatures.


• We went to the beach and picked shells and I walked in clamdiggers out on the edge of the tide. Sitting and getting lost in thought watching the waves, while digging my feet into moist sand and dreaming myself away, was by far one of the best experiences of the whole trip. Russell loved picking shells with me and I really enjoyed every second with him.
• Genny dressed up as a pretty Christmas princess at the Magic Kingdom
She whirled in her Santa Cloak more than once.
• Seeing manatees. We didn't get to see any at the Manatee center -- the water was very churned up from a lot of wind, so you couldn't see in the water, but we had watched them at Seaworld, and honestly, I could actually imagine their fluid movements in the canal as we watched.
• Surveying hurricane damage -- geesh everything everywhere on the coast was just thrashed. Trees flattened, dead grass where the sea water had flooded up, railings missing and boarded windows on condos, the sand-filled swimming poools, the condemned trailer parks -- truly all of it gave me deep understanding of tsunami damage. It is truly unimaginable.

Things we would like to or did forget:

• Big fat cockroach in Mainstay Suites in Orlando. We poured boiling water on it and killed the thing. However, it had obviously lived there a while because it had a secret hiding place under the bathroom faucet that it scurried to. When I called the front desk, I was told by a very unperturbed clerk that they wouldn't be able to spray until we leave. Apparently, this isn't that uncommon there. Nonetheless, we'll be staying at the Comfort Suites instead next time.
• Left the suitcase full of presents in the hotel room and realized we'd left it at the airport when we didn't have time to go back and get it.
• Grandpa left his hat in our car and we forgot it in our room.


• The ever constant bickering between two children where and when ever we went anywhere, which has not ceased.

Things we learned:

• Christmas is too stressful a time to visit my mom.
• Disneyland is a lot BETTER and CHEAPER than Disneyworld.
• Cape Canaveral is very expensive for a government-run thing.
• The kids generally like animal stuff and the beach a lot better than Disneyworld, so we'll head more south, should we ever go to Florida again to warm beaches, Alligator Alley, and the Everglades next time.


• Some alligators are not aggressive, thus, there is a 7 foot alligator that lives in a pond by the Clubhouse at my parents' living complex, which the kids got to see with their Uncle Mark. I saw one on the side of the road in a canal by Cape Canveral.

The kids were pretty good. Ms. Thang was always tired and worn. That made things ugly a few times.

The worst part of the trip was getting home -- we left the airport at 130PM and got home at 1045PM -- snow all over the passes. when it usually only takes 3 hours.
Gen slept a lot on that part of the journey. She just sort of zonked. We fed her by the airport and then started driving. She slept for several hours, then we woke her up to eat again.

All through dinner she was saying she didn't want to eat because she was tired. I hand fed her and put her in the car and she slept til we got home, then dropped into bed like a stone. Russell hit his wall last night. He announced he was going to bed at 720 -- this from the child who begs to stay up nights. And when I checked on him, he was out like a light. The light sleeper boy didn't even wake up when I put covers on him.

Well, at this point we've got 2.5 feet of snow on the ground, and we're anticipating a big storm by noon. School's already cancelled for tomorrow. So all we've been doing is house stuff. We usually get a few inches and it melts away next day. We usually have had one storm that puts 8-10 inches on the ground that sticks for a few weeks.

We're buried. We can't find our snow shovel -- apparently it's under all the snow. Everyone is sold out of snow shovels. We paid a neighbor $20 and a jar of jam to plow the driveway. What's good about this, is that it will build our water table.

We've got all the stuff unpacked. Now, I have had to be just plain manipulative to get the bags back out in the garage and the floor vacuumed. I just might make it hard on Mike.

With all the walking I did, I'm sometimes having a hard time staying on top of my sugars. My mom was bitching that I eat too much. I wasn't eating lots of carbs. My mom's first dinner was chicken marsala on a little bit of pasta. The problem was that the pasta wasn't enough, so after dinner, I had to make some light micro pop corn. She was about shitting her pants. She hadn't made enough pasta (Mike and Mike's brother -- get real! You have to make a LOT of food for those two!) I told her that my sugars were low and I was hungry, so I had to eat. She was all suspicious and shit, until I told her that I'd actually tested my sugars.

Overall, I was a good girl and lost weight over the trip. Of course, now that I'm back and away from my mother, I'd like to eat in relief. So, I've filled the fridge with fruit and vegetables.