A Fabulous Vacation! in A New Beginning

Thursday evening we got back from our vacation. We had such a fabulous time!! In a way, I wish we had stayed a few days longer, but ya know, sometimes (oftentimes!) when you hit a peak of “FABULOUS,” anything that happens after that is on a downhill slide! :o) So I’m gonna say that the length of our vacation was just right. Besides, we had stuff we need and want to do at home, and Carrie has to be free of company so she can do some work SOMETIME!

We were at Carrie’s four nights and three full days. I had such a good time! This was truly the best mother/daughter time Carrie and I have had in years. Like she said, nearly all the times we’re together, there’s someone else around. Like when we went at Christmastime, Joey and Stephanie went with us. That was super-fun, but it also meant there was no mother/daughter time. When Carrie and Max come here in the summer, we take Max everywhere we go. And that’s fun too, but again it means no mother/daughter time! But this time, whenever we were at home, we two were pretty much on our own because the men and Max were doing other things. We did so much laughing and gabbing! It was “just like old times.”

We went places every day. Sunday we went to Eastern Market in Detroit and to a holistic fair at the Gibralter Trade Center in Mt. Clemens. Monday Joe & I went with Carrie to drop Max off at school and then we went walking along the St. Clair River, which is very pretty. Tuesday we picked Max up from school and went to Lake Huron. Wednesday Carrie and I dropped Max off at school and went to a very cool coffee house for breakfast.

Carrie and I also watched two movies, “Horrible Bosses” and “A Dog’s Purpose.” I LOVED “A Dog’s Purpose”! I cried three or four times! :o)

But ya know, I usually have some challenges when we stay at other people’s houses. (Do we all??) Like geez, THE SHOWER. Carrie & Al have their own bathroom, and we use the bathroom that Max and Jake and Dom use. This time, thankfully, I had remembered to bring a washcloth, because Carrie’s house never seems to have any. They all use these puffy things, whatever those are called. I hate them! I’m like “how do you ever get all the damn soap rinsed out of them?????” So, this time I had THE WASHCLOTH. But on the first night I couldn’t get the shower adjusted so as to get enough water pressure!!!! Arrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!! I was sure I turned the damn thing every way it was possible to turn it! Luckily I didn’t need to wash my hair that night, because I most definitely could not have gotten shampoo rinsed out of my long hair with the trickle of water I was getting!

By the next night, somebody-who-can had adjusted the shower and there was WATER, yaaaaay. But I couldn’t find any shampoo!! (I’d wanted to bring my own, but there wasn’t room in our bathroom bag once I put all our pills and ointments in!) Five plastic bottles in there, and not a one was shampoo. And the first two body washes I tried, apparently Max had turned into water squirt bottles, but finally I found actual Axe body wash and used that for a good manly smell. ;o) But at least I had clean hair! :oD

Then, toilets! Carrie and Al currently cannot use their toilet in their master bathroom, so we ALL (at night) use the upstairs hallway toilet. It’s ok; I never found anyone else in there when I needed to go. The only trouble was, that toilet doesn’t really like to flush! :oO !! So anytime anyone pooped in it, it was an iffy situation. Thank God for plungers! They do have a downstairs toilet and a basement toilet, but who wants to go there in the middle of the night?! So luckily, it seems people don’t often poop in the middle of the night!

But then there was the issue of TOILET PAPER! Carrie was very low on TOILET PAPER! And, well, I use toilet paper, don’t you?! And I worry about running out of toilet paper! If there is only one roll left per bathroom, to me that is nearing a crisis situation, because Lord Knows, if anyone happens to get a bad case of the shits, one roll of toilet paper can be gone JUST. LIKE. THAT!! So I was very glad when we went to the store and bought a huge pack of TOILET PAPER! :o)

Beds can be an issue once a person gets older and a bit crickety. But I had had the foresight to bring my own pillows, and thus slept pretty well.

Carrie’s dogs were very entertaining. She has a one-year-old yellow Lab named Rigby and just recently adopted a four-month-old Australian shepherd mix named Skips. She and I enjoyed taking the dogs for walks many times per day. :o) Anytime I took my camera, we didn’t see anything. But on the days I did not take my camera, we saw a deer (that Rigby chased), a teeny tiny turtle only about an inch and a half long, and a BIG turtle that Rigby barked and barked at until Carrie finally managed to haul him away.

I could write lots more, but I’m up in the wee hours writing this and now I’m feelin’ like going back to bed. So this will be continued later.....g’night!