Category: Outings

I can’t stand this effing cough. Somehow, in the middle of this heat, I ended up getting a cold–which has proven to be one of the worst ones this year (although I should knock-on-wood because it could be worse *knocks*). It’s those dry, nasty coughs that make your throat itch so much you feel like you’re going to barf. And my nose! It won’t stop running. Grr.

So let’s see…Saturday was spent in town, like all day. We picked the pictures up at Walgreens which turned out really nice. We went to see Gramma at the nursing home, then went to Target, where I was going to pick out either a bedset or rug–my Mother’s Day gift from Mom. No such luck at the Target at Las Tiendas. They were out of the duvet cover that I wanted and I didn’t like any of the rugs. Well, I liked some, but I had to find something that would match our awkward green floor and the beige futon cover I want to get for the futon and nothing matched. We went to Ross, where we only found about a thousand Mexican tourists, as usual. I tell you, they need to declare a day, like Tuesday, a day that tourists can come and shop over here, and for a few hours only. I swear, I can NEVER find a parking space at the mall or Las Tiendas because someone with a license plate from Mexico is in them. Blah.

We went to Kohl’s afterwards, where the kids behaved horribly. I was trying to look at the rugs and candleholders and the kids were running around. I was afraid they’d knock something over so I gave them a designated place to sit. Of course that didn’t work out–they were crawling and kicking eachother. I grabbed them by the hands and pulled them up and started walking out the door. All I was doing was holding their hands and lecturing them when Jaylen starts screaming, “Ow! Stop! YOU’RE HURTING ME!!” You can imagine the look on people’s faces. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone dialed CPS. I look around and smile and hiss down to Jaylen, “Quit saying that! I’m not doing anything to you!” and smile again as we passed other people that were scowling and shaking their heads at me. Darn child–he sure knows how to make me hurry out of a store. Please believe he got a pinch on the arm when we got to the car–which he hates more than an actual spank on the butt.

We went to the Target that was down the block and I found the perfect rug there. Two actually, but the other one was mostly red and super bright and Mario would have hated it. We got one with earth tones and it was perfect because it matched the floor tile perfectly. We decided to make Gramma a corkboard scrapbook for Mother’s Day, so we got the supplies for that.

I stopped by Mario’s work to show him my new rug (hah, sounds dirty) and he loved it. He asked John to drive the Sentra back home and wanted me to pick him up after work since Albert and Jannett had invited us to watch the fight (de la Hoya against Mayorga).

I got ready that night, took clothes for Mario and we went. The fight was showing at Jannett’s parent’s house and they couldn’t get the channel to work. Turns out the idiots at Timewarner screwed up and didn’t put in the order correctly. Jannett called her cousin and we went to watch the fight at his house. It was so awesome the way de la Hoya kicked Mayorga’s arrogant ass.

What did we do Sunday. OH YES, now I remember. It was my brilliant idea to take the living room apart and rearrange furniture. We took the old, blue rug out, put the new one in and moved the desk and computer and all the crap on it to the other side of the living room. Of course, with computers come wires and that was just a mess. It took us all day to arrange everything. And we still didn’t get to center the entertainment center with the rug and futon since the turtle’s tank is on it and it’s heavy.

Can’t remember much from Monday and Tuesday. The usual happened. Except Eenan went on a field trip to a ranch that day.

Tuesday evening was spent with Mom at Michael’s looking for more stickers and embellishments to put on Gramma’s gift. Eenan had a Mother’s Day program on Wednesday afternoon. He was great–his class danced to a hip-hoppish song and sang a cute song called, “My Mom”, or something like that. All the other classes did such a good job too. They had two mariachis sing for us and then we had cake.

Mario and I rented movies last night, but he spent too long talking to Chris outside his house so by the time we got home I was falling asleep. After about 30 minutes of watching the movie I went to bed. Hopefully we can watch one of the others today. I rented Like Water for Chocolate, woo!

Spent today scrapbooking. I’d like to continue but these damn boogers don’t let me look down for more than 5 seconds at a time. And I still have to make dinner and clean up the living room (scrapbooking stuff EVERYWHERE) and wash dishes. Blah.

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I’m going to have a wonderful, unemployed week of scrapbooking come this Sunday. Since Mario left with Chris around 4 this afternoon to fish and ride the ATVs, I spent the day reading (Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is proving to be quite a good read! Just got two more chapters to go!), cleaning up a little, made dinner, washed dishes, and went to Mary’s to spend some time with little Matthew, Mary, Yazmin and my boys. When I came back over here, I checked my e-mail and found a most lovely coupon from Walgreens, where I could get 5 5×7 prints for free! So I went ahead and did it and it came out to a whopping $0.27–no shipping cost since I’ll pick them up at the store. I’m planning to frame and hang those chosen pictures, and since I hadn’t gotten my 20 free prints yet, I uploaded 36, got the 20 free and the rest came out to $3.08–beautiful! I can finally use up at least half of those scrapbooking supplies in my plastic drawer.

I can hardly contain myself *squeal*. I’m a dork like that .

Last night was the first night in about 3 days that I had to cook. Having Mario home this week has been such a relief and just…wonderful. He cooked burgers outside on Tuesday night, bar-be-cued Wednesday night, and made hot dogs for us Thursday afternoon. I love having him around to hug and cuddle when I please–it’s nice not having to wait till 9p.m., or whenever he gets home from work, to hold him. I love that we can watch movies and take junk to storage (still getting ready for remodeling) when we feel like it. He goes back to work tomorrow, and in a way I feel sad, as if my vacation’s over, too.

In a way, my vacation kind of is over. Gotta get on the ball. I have an appointment with the Career Services Department at school to revise my resume and check what jobs they can hook me up with, if any. I’m hoping I can get something good .

I finally spoke to Jessica M. yesterday. We had a long talk–catching up on just about everything since our last conversation, which was right after I had Jaylen and she found out she was pregnant with her second little girl. That’s what I love about Jessica–we lose touch sometimes but when we get back in touch it’s like there wasn’t a break in our friendship at all. It’s hard to come by friends like that. I hope we can get together soon and have some coffees or something.

Part of the conversation Jessica and I had was about jobs. She’s making an amazing amount of money where she’s working and I kind of want to go there too, but they want you to be available all the time and I just can’t. I’ve got Eenan, who needs to be ready for and taken to school by 7:40a.m. If I were to apply and they were to give me their latest shift, I’d be getting out of work at 1a.m., getting home about 1:45a.m. and sleeping for about 4 hours if I’m lucky. I just can’t function on such little sleep. But we’ll see. If I become desperate enough I may just go there. The bad thing is, John wanted a job there, too!

We went to Jorge and Maggie’s last night and talked about jobs and politics. When I sit down and really think about it, it hits me that we’re actually adults and have the responsibilities of adults. When the hell did that happen?? And there’s no slowing down either. By the time we know it, we’re going to have a freaking mortgage! If all goes well, of course.

It’s almost 12 midnight. I really want to finish up that book before I fall asleep, so I can start on my new one (Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman). I love that the library’s down the street :).

Yeah. I’m enjoying this free time. For now.

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So we’d planned on leaving for our Mini Vacation at South Padre Island on Friday after Eenan got out of school. After dropping him off in the morning, I started looking up numbers and info online and got prices for Schlitterbahn. When Mario woke up, I asked him about the hotels. I started calling around and our worst nightmare happened: All the cheapy hotels were sold out! And even then the cheapy ones were expensive. All the ones that were available were $150 and up–that’s expensive for us seeing as how we stay at Motel 6’s every time we’ve gone on vacation. Shoot, even Motel 6 in Florida was way less expensive than the one at The Island.

We gave up and I silently curse my bad luck while I cleaned the bathroom. After we’d both calmed down, Mario told me to call The Surf Motel since it was one of the least expensive ones that was available.

We got a double-bed room with a kitchenette for $89. Pretty good deal. They only had Saturday night available so we decided to leave on Saturday morning instead of that afternoon. It would give us more time to clean up the house and pack our junk. So I did laundry, cleaned up, and we packed (Mario actually helped me this time!).

When we picked Eenan up after school his teacher walks him to the car and she says, “Oh, he’s so excited about his trip! He’s been talking about it all day!” Mario and I look at eachother, worried. He’s definetly going to throw a fit, or cry when we tell him we’re not leaving till the next day. So we break it to him. His eyes get watery but we tell him, “We’re starting our fun weekend today–we’re going to Mr. Gatti’s!” He quickly wipes his eyes and cracks a smile and starts asking us about our plans.

We ate, and ate, and ate at Carb Heaven Mr. Gatti’s. It was SO good–never get tired of that place (even though the pizza has so much grease it causes both Mario and I to get an upset stomach ). I ate so much pizza, brownies, chocolate pizza and these buttery, icing-covered sticks I probably gained 5 lbs. that afternoon.

After we played games with the kids for about an hour, we got tired and ended up winning tickets for them from this spinning game so we could get their prizes and leave. Mario and Eenan went to the truck and Jaylen and I went to this shop, Melissa Guerra, that I’ve wanted to visit since I started seeing their commercials on TV. I saw an old friend from elementary/middle school who works there. That place is so nice–I love all the little knick-knacks and jewelry! Since I needed a potato brush, I bought one of those in the shape of a potato and a little pig-shaped molcajete.

We went to Wal-Mart that night so we could get snacks, drinks and sandwich stuff for the trip. I took the opportunity to find a new bathing suit, since my chest was busting out of my old one. As I expected, not one darn bathing suit top fit me. Medium was too small from the chest but perfect for my torso, and XL was fine on my chest but the rest was enormous on my body. They didn’t even have cover-ups, so I gave up. I figured we could stop the next morning on the way to the beach.

I stayed up pretty late that night hunting for the kids’ sand toys outside, finishing up with packing, washing dishes and checking things off my obsessive-compulsive induced list. I hate forgetting things so I make lists. Lots of lists.

And then the fun began.

I’d set the alarm for 7a.m. since Mario needed to take a shower and I always need extra time to get myself and both the boys ready. We got up 30 minutes after the alarm went off. I get ready and start checking things off the second list I made and when the kids are ready (and grumpy) and Mario’s out of the shower we start putting everything in the truck. Mom and Mary are here to see us off. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing, but I looked into Mario’s rats’ cage and notice that Tailwhip’s just laying there. I think, “Oh, no,” and sure enough, he was dead . I give Mario the bad news and he gets a Ziploc to get him ready for his burial. I’d just fed the rats the night before, and he was fine, so I didn’t understand why he died. And it was so weird that it happened just a few days after Spike died.

I go outside to give the cats food and water and I find EMOcat (John named him so because he was a screamy little emo kitty) just laying there as well. I thought he looked a little lethargic the night before while I was getting the kids’ sand toys together, but I thought it was because he’d been asleep. So there I go, with another Ziploc bag and a Wal-Mart bag to cover him up. John ended up burying them for us since we had to leave. So, so sad :(.

We leave and pick up ice at Aziz for the cooler. We decide to get some breakfast at Burger King and I ask Mario if he can stop at Target since I needed a bathing suit. He ends up saying something sarcastic like, “Sure, we’re late anyway,” and that just sets me off. The stress from rushing, the animals dying, being behind schedule, and the headache I was going to get from crying my eyes out because my big boobs weren’t going to fit into anything just got to me. I yell, “We’re already late, it’s not my fault! You think I want to look for a frickin’ bathing suit that ‘s not going to fit me anyway?!” He realizes just how crappy I feel about everything so he calmly tells me to finish eating and to take my time. And then I go into Target.

I tried on several adorable bathing suits that just didn’t work for me. I need to know where they sell bathing suits with underwires, because I don’t know how other women who have big boobs do it. I didn’t feel “secure” in those bathing suits at all. I imagined myself coming down the slide at Schlitterbahn and my top flipping over my head because those things are so loose. *shudder*

I decided to buy this tankini top and a bottom that had a cute skirt over it–yep, I don’t like showing skin AT ALL. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but at least I found something.

We still had to stop at the dealership in Harlingen to pick up our license plates, we freaked out when it started raining around Los Fresnos, and then, when we finally got to the Island, we had to find Schlitterbahn.

The park opened at 10, and we got there at 11:30. There was a huge line when we got there, but it must have been from some school because they let them in right away. We rented our locker, got the kids ready and then I got ready. As I walked into the girl’s bathroom I noticed all the skinny little teens and tweens were in these itty-bitty bikinis and flat chests and I instantly felt like I was 500 lbs. I thought, “Oh, hell no. I’m not wearing my bathing suit top”. I left my regular bra on and my t-shirt (which thankfully matched my bathing suit bottom) and I felt alright. Only for a few seconds before I realized that when I took a shower, I failed to notice my cactus-legs and didn’t shave…lovely.

Schlitterbahn wasn’t super exciting or anything, but there’s water everywhere so the kids had a great time. The water was freezing, though, but the weather was nice and cool since it was overcast. We checked out the big Sand Castle with the kids and they mostly “swam” in the kiddie pools and slid down the slides surrounding the Sand Castle. We got a little brave and even went on the water slides. They were so fun! Jaylen loved them. It took a while to convince him to go with me. There was an Arabic man with his adorable little boy in front of us and he noticed I was having trouble with Jaylen. He talked to him and told him he and his little boy were going on, and when they got down they’d tell him how it was. When we saw them, he told Jaylen it was fun and his little boy didn’t cry, so Jaylen was excited. Eenan ended up liking it so much he kept going on all the slides all by himself (with Mario waiting at the bottom for him, of course). All-in-all, it was a blast.

We left at around 2, since check-in at the hotel was at 3. We can’t find the darn place. After driving from one end of the Island to the other, we decide to ask someone at Circle K for directions. When I ask this big, burly cashier where Gulf Blvd. is, he chuckles and says, “You’re on it.” He hands me a map with a look on his face like, ‘Damn tourists’ and points me towards Amberjack St. We finally find the place and are kind of taken aback by the little shack. We think, “Oh great, it’s gonna suck”.

While I’m checking in and give the attendant my $101.69, a lady asks what rate they had for the next day and he says, “$49”. He says since everyone goes back home on Sundays the rates are much cheaper. Price-inflating bastards.

We go around the back to the rooms and are surprised to see it was a pretty sweet place. There’s a deck with a bunch of tables and the kitchenette is fully stocked–everything from napkins and utensils, to pots and pans. Had we known I would have bought actual food to cook!

We unpack, have lunch (sandwiches, Pepsis and sour cream and onion Pringles) and decide to take it easy for a few hours–we’re exhausted from chasing the kids and the kids are exhausted from running away from us. Mario falls alseep and I read for a bit before taking a shower and then bathing the kids.

When Mario’s slept for about 2 hours I wake him up and we go to the shops. The kids are running rampant around the stores and don’t let us have 5 minutes of peace. After we threaten to sell them (and immediately feel like horrible parents, as we should) they start behaving a little better. We had fun looking around at all the shells, hermit crabs and funny shirts and hats.

Mario and I didn’t find the flip-flops we wanted in our size after scanning at least 7 shops, so we got a few souveniers for everyone back home and picked up some KFC. I hadn’t had KFC in forever, so it was delicious. Jaylen, Mario and I ate out on the deck and Eenan stayed inside because he wanted to watch Cartoon Network. The weather was awesome that night–it felt so good. We talked out there for a while, jamming to the music of the pack of teenagers that had the room next to ours.

I read before bed (I never finished that darn book–Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells) and fell asleep beside Jaylen, who was playing with my hair, as always. Mario stayed up watching a DVD and slept in Eenan’s bed. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more relaxing sleep. I didn’t even wake up to pee!

We woke up the next morning and got everything packed. We planned on going to the beach, then going back to the hotel to wash up and then go home, but we had to check out by 12 noon and it was already 9a.m. We put everything in the truck, I double-checked my “Don’t Forget!” list twice and turned in our keys.

Our first stop was McDonald’s since we hadn’t had breakfast. Worst. Service. EVER. It was packed so I thought I’d give them a break for getting my order wrong (gave me a McGriddles instead of a bacon, egg & cheese biscuit). When they took about 15 minutes just to give me my ‘you-only-have-to-microwave-the-damn-thing-biscuit’, they had officially pissed me off. And, oh my gosh, they have the cutest little gay boy working there! I instantly fell in love with his big, blue eyes. That’s the only reason I didn’t gouge out my cashier’s eyes for taking so darn long–I was too busy staring at the guy .

The kids had a blast at the beach, as always. It was nice and cool, too. The sand wasn’t even scalding our feet. We took our beach chairs, cooler, mat, and sand toys. The kids made sand castles, which got drowned by water several times, but they kept adding sand and pushing shells in.

Mario fed the seagulls Pringles that fell into our bag, I took a picture of seagulls “doing it”, I helped the kids with their castles, then Mario did; the kids played in the freezing water, I looked for smooth, flat shells for my scrapbook; and right before we left, we saw a blue jellyfish. I’d never seen one in my life:

It started getting hot, so we tip-toed as fast as we could to the car since the sand was scalding by then. And of course, as my luck would have it, I only sunburned/tanned on one arm. WTF?

It was a total pain getting the sand off of ourselves without actually showering down (we didn’t go to Andy Bowie park this time, but to a separate, free beach access), but with the help of half a case of bottled waters, damp towels from the day before at Schlitterbahn and the kids standing on the cooler we had minimal sand in the truck. Jaylen almost peed on the seat–he was an inch away! I ended up having to strip down in the truck and just prayed to God that nobody decided to pass by–which thankfully, nobody did. I hope

It was a nice trip. I wish it could have been longer but maybe next time. And next time, we’ll reserve our hotel much sooner!

We stopped by Wal-Mart, where Jaylen threw a fit because we didn’t get him some M&Ms and then to another shop where we got some necklaces and shirts. I liked that store much more than all the other ones.

I made sandwiches for us on the road since it was lunch time and we enjoyed the quiet while the kids slept.

We got home and took showers and later we went to Jorge and Maggie’s. We saw their new 2005 Accord, which they got in place of their Explorer. I still can’t believe Jorge actually let his Explorer go!

They ordered pizzas and we talked about work, finding work, crappy parents, genealology and other stuff. It always amazes me that we can find all these different things to talk about.

Today we took it easy, well, the morning anyway. We had breakfast, gave our first car payment, went to Target and returned my bathing suit top and I got a bra and an entertainment center for the kids. We need to put the cedar chest Mom gave me in storage and since the kids had their TV, game consoles/games, VCR & DVD player on top of it, we needed to get something to put all that stuff on. We went to eat at the New Wave Buffet and, oh my gosh, I stuffed myself to the brim. Even Mario was freaked out by how much I ate. I really have to stop doing that, stuffing myself. I can FEEL that I’m gaining weight. I feel…jiggly :(.

We picked Eenan up then put the entertainment center together and then went to Wal-Mart. And now, they’re showing Philidelphia? where Tom Hanks plays a guy with AIDS and I’ve never seen this movie before so, bye!

[edit: 12:56a.m.] After watching Walk the Line I realized I totally forgot to mention that April 30th, Sunday, was Mario and my “altogether anniversary”, which is how long we’ve been together in total. We’ve been together 9 years! I can’t even believe how long it’s been! [/edit]

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