What I did on my spring vacation

[arliss]

No problems on the flights, and once I'd found the baggage carousel in Cleveland, I looked up and there was serasempre! With Aidan! gingerk was supposed to be arriving a half-hour after me, but we didn't know on which airline. So we asked around until we found out, and then we camped by that carousel to wait. Nearly a half-hour past her flight's arrival time, and passengers had come and gone, and there was no unclaimed baggage. I called her cell, and got a choppy, difficult to hear connection. With much repetition I was able to make out, "traffic jam," and "missed flight," and "missed that one, too," and "six o'clock." It was now nearly four o'clock, and katerinabead's flight was due in at 5:00, so we headed on to the hotel. Kara was enjoying having fiorituranotte all to herself, when we arrived. serasempre left Aidan and Kara with sj and me while she went back to the airport to meet Katie and gingerk. Kara knows an audience when she sees one, and she's a real charmer. She really loves people, and interaction, and I think we were all entranced by her curls and her grin and her eagerness to make friends. Aidan's a spectacular little dude himself, with a clear, fluting voice. Being told "Bless you!" when you sneeze is just heart-melty. And watching him bounce on the bed in his own particular style was fun. "Aidan, are you a frog?" "Quack, quack, quack, quack!" Of course! He looks much more like a baby duck than a silly old green frog. But Aidan was overjoyed to see Mama when she reappeared, and I don't even think he noticed the new adults. While we were waiting for Katie, cashmere arrived, with baby Owen, and the toddler-baby fun increased exponentially, as did the adult excitement at actually meeting these people we "knew."

Just after Katie's and Ginger's arrival, there was another knock at the door. It was charlotte_buff, who had driven in from WI with sail_aweigh. After another flurry of greetings, Deena needed to head out again to meet debg's flight. I went with her and Aidan this time, ostensibly to help schlep baggage or baby-wrangle, but really to bogart a little Deena-time for myself. debetesse, having driven in from Indiana, arrived around the time we were getting back to the hotel with Deb. This completed our party for the evening, and except for Debet and Katie, who were staying with Deena, we scattered to our respective rooms to get ready for dinner. sail_aweigh's reservation was for Friday and Saturday, so she bunked with Ginger and me on Thursday night, which was fun.

Deena had taken a poll and we'd decided on Cabbarras, Italian, for dinner. Our table was abuzz with laughter and talk, and the babies ate and drew and played, and charmed us all. Cashmere and Owen had a long drive home, so we were especially glad they stayed to eat with us. She's as warm and funny and as good a conversationalist in person as she is online, and Owen is charming, adorable, and determined. A pair to be reckoned with! We said goodbye to them and made our way back to the hotel. Not ready by far for bed, everyone congregated in 212 to laugh and talk until well into morning. It was exceedingly nice not to have to wander corridors and stairs or manage elevators when bedtime inevitably did arrive. Ginger and Sail and I were "home," at least for the night, and fell gratefully, happily, into bed and asleep.



I decided the room needed some decor, so I unpacked the blankie elenabtvs had made for me in the blanket exchange. It's red sari silk with metallic gold medallions and border, backed with black fabric and fringed at both ends with beaded fringe, and is gorgeous! There was a church group, we'd been told, and the hotel had run out of rooms with two double beds, so Ginger and I had been "bumped up" to a suite, with a king bed and a living room with a fold-out couch. There was a half-wall between the "bedroom" and "living room." I draped the shawl-throw over the half-wall with the red silk side showing. I'd brought ALL my tiaras, and I arranged them along the half-wall atop the shawl. I stood my copy of Deb's Famous Flower of Serving Men on the wall next to my copy of Finding Serenity and considered the room decorated in Bitch and Buffista spirit. Then, off to the Safari Park! We divided up among Deena's, Debet's, and Sail's cars. sj and Deb both need front seats, sj in Debet's and Deb in Sail's, Nicole in Deena's, with Ginger and me taking the back seat in Sail's car. We had a good chance to chatter on the drive, and to mention somewhere in there that a) we needed wine, and b)beer for Ginger, and c)Prosecco and raspberries for Deb, and d)ginger ale, cheese and fruit for me, and e)lots and lots of bottled water for everybody. Deena had picked up a 12-pack of bottled water the evening before, but there were only a couple of bottles left. I drink a lot of water, and so do other people. We made a mental note to ask Deena where a liquor store, and a grocery store might be. Just before we turned into the Safari Park's driveway, Ginger read a sign that mentioned liquor, wine and beer, so we thought we'd check it out on the return trip, unless Deena knew of someplace better.

The drive through the safari park was fun. Ellen and Deb, in the front seat, got mobbed, of course. The llamas, goats, elk, and other ruminants, including something that are probably muntjack, or miniature deer, are all little thugs. They know cars with their windows open have food, and they'll get as much of their heads and necks into the car going after the food as they can. The goats, shorter and less able to reach the window, will rear and brace their front hooves on your paint--but not scratch it. And if the llamas don't like the type or amount of food you're providing--or maybe if they appreciate it, I'm not sure how one tells the difference--they'll spit. Llama spit full of carrot fragments, all over the upholstery, and Deb and Sail's jackets. Even a bit in the hair. Ew, thanks. Still, it was fun, with Ginger trying to get a photo focused enough to snap, and the mugger-llamas jostling one another away from the window. And there were a couple of camels, some ostrich and some emu, some bison, an albino zebra among the more mundanely striped herd, and a solitary dromedary, a huge, placid-seeming animal. Also on the grounds were cages where caraculs and servals spend their days, though we were told they're turned into a larger enclosure to move around during the nights.

The saga of Deena's keys locked in her car trunk is told elsewhere. We felt so badly for her--obviously stress was playing unfairly with her. But Nicole and she seemed to be having a nice chat, and the babies were being driven through the park in Debet's car. Deb needed to meet stephl, driving in from Cincinnati, and so we needed to mosey back to the hotel. We made loose plans to meet for dinner, and left them there decompressing and waiting for the car-trunk-opening-guys, while we started back. Immediately after turning out of the Safari Park's driveway, we saw the sign for beer-wine-liquor, and Sail hooked a fast left into the parking lot. Niiiice grocery store. We picked up a 36-pack of water, I grabbed a couple of boxes of raspberries and a bag of grapes, we found the wine section, and a stocker who was glad to talk to someone who appreciated his department. Prosecco and beer obtained, I grabbed some cheddar and some whole-grain rye crisp, and others picked up stuff they wanted. One stop shopping, baybee! Back in the car and we were off to Cleveland.

Um. Except for the last bit, the street that led to the hotel... Um? I have a new cell phone, and I have yet to enter all the numbers and names from the phone book from my old cellphone. Which I carry, on a list folded, in my purse. So I whipped out the list and the cell phone and called Nicole, riding shotgun with Deena. Where are we? Where do we go from here? Set straight, we motored on until we found familiar territory, and sighted the hotel. Unloaded the stuff. Steff arrived safely. Everybody--but Deena, Nicole, sj, Katie, and the kids--wound up in 212. We nattered on giddily, and sj arrived, saying the rest would be down soon. So we kept nattering, until it got to be really half-past or more past hungry. We called their room extension--no answer. Someone ran upstairs and knocked on the door--no answer. I whipped out the list and called Nicole's cellphone--no answer. So we decided that since none of us really wanted to get in and out of a car again that evening, we'd walk across to the Max & Erma's we could see from the window, and eat there. And so we did, and it was good. We got a call--the others thought we'd decided to order in, and they'd gone ahead and eaten at the Mexican restaurant. The babies were cranky and needing their beds, so they were heading for home, and they'd see us in the morning.

Sail moved her stuff to her room, and it was kinda sad to see her go. Debet decided to stay with Sail, rather than trek out to Deena's, and Deena's excellent DH brought Debet's suitcase in, and brought Kara with him. She was the belle of the ball before Ginger broke out the presents, but once the sparkly tiara and earrings and the beautiful blue bead necklace and fuzzy blue purse were achieved, she was simply stellar. AND she knew it. Adorable creature. The grownups had raspberries in prosecco--the kitchenettes in the rooms had two coffee mugs and two glass tumblers per room, so we collected enough to have one for everybody. Steph had brought a wonderful, nummy red wine and a nice white, and some of us tried those, too. There was beer for those who prefer grain to grape, and there was much talk, and laughter, and more talk, ranging from the deep and philosophical, the political and economic to the silly and goofy. Just like...our usual conversations, only in an extra added dimension.

But as all things must, the evening ended, again in the early morning hours. After spending time on the phone with support, I'd managed to get my laptop to talk to the hotel's wireless network, and throughout the day people had used Ginger's or mine to check their email or to check in at b.org or lj, to post a bit about the trip, or to squee about Minim's brand new baby girl, or to post pictures. By the time I had the chance to check in, my brain was too full of sensory overload to sort any of it out to post. So I checked email and tried to catch up a little--but I couldn't concentrate, really. And Ginger and I had long, long talks, and wound down enough to sleep.

Tomorrow would bring the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Deb's reading.