Bedbugs, Brain Collapse, & Birthdays

Long time, no type.

Mainly, I’ve been riding the wave of gleeful post-homework life and spending very little computer time doing anything that requires significant cognitive processing. Not to mention that the last few weeks at work have been tremendously busy, and insanely stressful what with top-down administrative reorganizations, severe budget cuts, and the like. So needless to say, I haven’t been in much of a bloggy frame of mind.

However, I feel the need to issue a report on our grand vacation in early June; a whirlwind trip that started with my #1 niece’s high school graduation and ended with a crazy 5-day stint in…..you guessed it…..Las Vegas. The Vegas leg of the trip was a long-awaited family celebratory extravaganza to ring in a host of decade-centric birthdays (ahem, yes, I wasn’t the only one with a milestone this year.) One of my nephews, my brother, and my dear hubby all hit “decade” birthdays between mid April and mid June. So naturally we all felt the need to hoop it up in sin city.

But before I get ahead of myself too far, let me reel back a bit and describe the first segment of the trip. My dear eldest niece, so lovely in body and spirit, was graduating with honors from a tremendously rigorous International Baccalaureate-affiliated school the first weekend of June. I was very excited to attend, particularly to hear her speak at the graduation ceremony. However, seeing as said ceremony was scheduled to begin quite early in the morning, at roughly a 2-hour drive from our house, we opted to drive up the Friday before and meet up with GMom to share a hotel room.

Considering that we also had to plan ahead/pack for the Vegas trip, get the pets settled, load the car, feed the kid, and a million other things after an already-long day of work, we didn’t get out of town until almost 8pm, which put our arrival into a rather late-ish timeframe. After unloading our overnight gear and securing a late night snack courtesy of the only open business in the area — Circle K — I started prepping the little genius for bed. I left her in the hotel bathroom to marinate in the shower for a few moments while I went to unpack her jammies and get the bed ready. Upon reaching for a pillow, what did I see but a tiny little bug on the pillow!

Now, not that I travel all that much, but you’d have to live in a deep cave anymore these days not to be aware of ye olde modern hotel bedbug epidemic. Being a bonafide bug-o-phobe already, of course my mind leapt to the possibility of bedbugs, although the little specimen was very tiny. I asked FF and Uncle Bubba (also sharing the room) to give it an eyeball, and in the course of examining that and other pillows, they located a much larger and more suspicious looking critter, which we caught in a plastic cup. At that point, with frantic smartphone image Googling underway, we felt rather alarmed and certain that we hit the unlucky jackpot of a bedbug-infested room.

And honestly, the front desk wasn’t all that much help…they offered to move us to a different room, but that wasn’t very reassuring considering that all of us had horrific images of bringing home our very own bedbug buddies to our respective domiciles, never to be pest-free again. This was particularly unsettling to FF and I, considering that a few years ago we suffered through an epic, almost yearlong flea war at our old crappy apartment. And believe me, we tried everything, to no avail. Moving out WAS the final solution.  So needless to say, we are pretty particularly picky when it comes to bug issues.

So our troops did a quick huddle and we decided to relocate to another hotel (by this time nearly 1am), yet unfortunately the only affordable place reasonably nearby was a 30 minute drive away. Ugh. However, despite our collective exhaustion, this seemed a better option than potentially offering ourselves up as blood donors to the native fauna. The little genius was taking everything in stride pretty well, despite some confusion and tiredness. We repacked our overnight gear and shuffled back down to the van.  Unfortunately however, during the baggage and kid-loading insanity, we managed to lock a) the kid b) all our stuff and c) the keys, snugly in the van.

Oh shit.

So yes, friends and neighbors, we stood outside a bedbug-ridden hotel in a sleepy small hamlet at 1am shouting instructions through a closed window to our frantically crying daughter on how to escape her snug, safe, 5-point carseat harness with the child-resistant latch so that she could unlock the van for us. Totally not one of my proudest moments. Fortunately the little genius is a trooper and she calmed down and persevered enough to get us out of the fiasco. After that, we hit the highway and about an hour later we all collapsed into an exhausted slumber.

So the management did call and talk to Gmom the next day (she had made the reservation) and were properly apologetic and all that crap, issuing refunds and free night coupons ad nauseam. And a few days after that, they emailed a copy of their pest company report, predictably denying any bedbug issues but admitting the presence of some “carpet beetles”. Well, I appreciate them sharing the report and all but I gotta say that I’m still not convinced and I don’t think they actually examined the critter we captured and showed to the front desk staff.

SO, needless to say the next morning came very early and as for my little family pod, we reluctantly decided to skip the main ceremony and let the little genius continue to get some much-needed rest. We did attend the post-ceremony graduation party and it was a lot of fun, particularly when my niece “unwrapped” a very exciting present: a car! K thought that was just about the coolest and most exciting thing she’d ever heard of, and I’m pretty sure she will not forget it, and thus expectantly hold it over her parents’ heads until her own high school graduation. Sigh.

So with that dramatic report out of the way, I’m happy to say that the Vegas phase of the trip was tons of fun and very smooth sailing with no buggy or incompetent parenting episodes. We bowled, we saw movies, we gambled, we swam, we played a lot of cards in the sumptuous top-floor suite that K2 & family occupied, and generally a great time was had by all. The young guys (uncle bubba, my #1 nephew and #2 nephew) camped out in the 2nd suite bedroom and turned it into an X-box blazin’, Dr. Pepper guzzling, stinky man cave. They loved it.

FOUR LAYERS!

The guys went to see Cirque’s new Elvis show one night, and the next night the girls went to see Menopause: The Musical. Which was, um, quite an experience and has given me a slightly worried perspective on my future hormonal event horizon. (Is it too early to already be experiencing the whole brain collapse thing? ’cause lately….) Seriously though, the show was quite a laugh and a lot of fun to see with Gmom and Aunt D (K2’s mom).

Speaking of Gmom, she brought some serious magic to the table and managed to somehow make an amazingly elaborate cake in a hotel mini-kitchen for us birthday folks! Totally awesome. (and delicious!)

All in all, a trip (and birthday) to remember!

Public Service Announcement

I feel it my public duty, to chocolate-craving, PMS-suffering women everywhere, to pass along this recipe, emailed to me today by sister in law Carole. 

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Five-Minute Chocolate Cake for One

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (MicroSafe)

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well.  Add the egg and mix thoroughly.  Add milk and oil and mix well.  Stir in chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix thoroughly.

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.

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I figured this would be a fun project to try with K tonight, so we whipped it up after dinner.  We did not use chocolate chips this time, but might try that in the future.  Anyway, I would suggest mixing the batter in a small bowl first and then pouring it into the mug–it was a bit hard to stir in the cup.  Also, I figured our gimpy microwave wouldn’t get the job done in 3 minutes, so I let it go 3 and a half, and it was just ever so slightly overcooked (just a tiny bit tough).   While cooking, the batter rises perilously close to the edge but it never overflowed.  We paired it with some slow churned chocolate ice cream but my preference next time would be vanilla bean with a little Hershey’s chocolate sauce topping everything!

Top view

It doesn't stick to the sides! BRILLIANT!

With chocolate ice cream!