While on vacation, I kept on having this weird niggling thought in the back of my mind:

"When I am back home, all this pilgrimage of sorts and travel and new experiences will feel like a dream –one that possibly never happened."

I would go back to whatever it is we were doing, but the thought would tug at my conscious mind like a toddler hanging on apronstrings.

This morning I woke up to our light-flooded bedroom (good thing it actually has a western exposure) and I realized that, yes, all that traveling and all those experiences and all that life that felt like my life really isn’t.  It really was like a dream that never was.

Or maybe I’m still too sleep-deprived to know the difference.

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Note to self: red-eyes with more than one connection suck very badly.

Other note to self: do not let Monsieur Meow convince you that red-eyes are "actually really convenient because the baby will just sleep all the way through, and we’ll get some sleep too."

Maybe other red-eyes, but not the last one we took.  Ooooogh.

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On our way to California, the day we left behind here in DC was shaping up to be a very hot one.  In fact, our mini-exodus as a whole couldn’t have had better timing: we seem to have avoided those intensely hot days that reached well over 100 degrees around here.

We didn’t avoid the heat of the day completely, incidentally–  apart from our walk to the Metro, we just never managed to actually experience it outside of glass bubbles: when we landed in Phoenix (our first stop), the temperature there was 116ºF. 

In our flight to Phoenix, one of the people sharing our row was this goth-wannabe girl who was dressed entirely in black.  She had a heavy black jacket on and striped white and black kneesocks that ended in a heavy pair of combat boots,  and a black skirt, shirt, etc.   She had her hair braided in two thick skeins of wet hair and a whole bunch of very "dark" jewelry– an abundance of Jolly Rogers et. al. adorned her fingers and ears.

I think she caught me staring at her with a face filled with puzzlement more than once.  If you’re reading this, GothWannabe, I apologize for my obnoxiousness, but I guess I’m still honestly wondering what kind of masochist you have to be in order to wear that costume in the middle of summer.

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On our way back, we had to stop in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is evil– I can tell you that much even though we didn’t make it past the terminal. 

"Uh, why?", you ask, rolling your eyes all the while.

Because! 

There are slot machines AT THE TERMINAL!
You don’t even need to make it to the strip to lose money.  You can just step into the center of the terminal and flanked by the gates leading to good and wholesome cities around the world, you can finance your way to bad credit with lots and lots of quarters.

Of course, having just stepped off the plane, we all walked toward the slot machines (most popular game? WHEEL!  OF!  FORTUNE!) and were looking at them, chuckling and maybe rooting around for a quarter because come on!  Slot machines positioned in the same arrangement as those bouncy ball machines at the supermarket?  It’s a little too weird, right?

Within three seconds, a casino worker walked up to us and said, "Baby can’t be here in this area, okay?"

We were told that the gambling area is off-limits to all minors, including those who cannot actually operate the coin slots.  Too bad that the gambling arcade is designed, with its bright lights and happy sounds, to appeal directly to all the kids who couldn’t get their eyes off the fun.

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Hmm.  Am rusty and have toddler demanding attention (what’s new?).  Happy to be back.

23 Jul This entry was published on July 23, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under Soapboxing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.