That Blurry First Day

You all know what I'm talking about. That blurry first day.

Whether you had to leave in the middle of the night and travel the whole length of the entire East Coast or if you got yourself a mega-power nap while sitting in your truck in the parking lot of Downtown Disney to wait for the rest of your crew to arrive because you had an attack of 'excitement overload', jumped in your truck and got there at 3:00AM...we all know that blurry first day.

But just in case you haven't been to Disney or it's been a while, let's discuss that blurry first day.

Your sleep amount total is irrelevant. Every-bodies first day is blurry. Trust me on that.

If your going, you're excited. That goes without saying but I said it anyway.

I guess I like to type.

If your a Commando you have to keep making high pitched squealing sounds from time to time to release the pressure from your skull or your head will explode.

Brother and I were talking on the phone while I was sitting in my living room. The crew was there too, watching TV. While Brother and I were talking Nikki looked over at me and clenched everything on her person then squeaked. "EEEEEKKKK!"

"What the hell was that?" Brother asked. "Did you just kill a small animal with your boot?"

"No, it's just Nikki decompressing. She'll be fine now for another 20 minutes." I told him.



For us, that blurry first day actually starts around 1:30AM. Brother was almost in Disney by the time we left our house because he freaked out and left Tennessee way earlier than he was suppose to. I lost that race but I did give it a shot. His head-start was much bigger than mine but I was traveling at 500 miles per hour so I thought I still had a chance.

Cheater, cheater.

Brother was suppose to go to work that day then go home and sleep for a while and leave around midnight. Instead he took the day off from work and went four wheeling with his friends.

Brother got his truck stuck on a hill and crushed his drivers side door. He had to cut the tree down to get his truck off it.

Why? Because that's what adults with ADHD do. They take their only ride to Disney and beat the crap out of it just before they are going to leave. Yes, he could have driven his Harley if he totaled the truck but he wanted to take his truck just in case the kids wanted to get away from the old people for a while. They couldn't drive the car rental because they are under 25 and there was no way I was letting them take the Harley no matter what Brother said so we needed the truck.

Neither one of them could drive Brother's Harley anyway. Nikki is too small to reach the peddles and handle bars at the same time without sitting on the gas tank and Curt just learned how to drive Del's snowmobile. He just mastered jumps last winter, we haven't worked him up to Harley's just yet.

(Am I'm really hoping Curt's mom didn't just read that and freak. Love ya, mean it Jean. We make him wear safety gear, don't worry. We are firm believers in brain buckets.)



Brother has gotten better containing his excitement over the years. When we were kids and he got excited about (actually anything, including but not limited to the color of the grass) a Disney trip he would take things apart. Want a piece of toast? Too bad, the toaster would be in a gazillion pieces because Brother got a hold of it and couldn't help himself.

It drove my parents crazy because they had to hide anything that could be taken apart and watch his every move around the things they couldn't hide (like the TV and stove) especially before a Disney trip. Brother would have made a great caveman, he could make tools out of anything so hiding the tools was useless.

When he would drive me crazy, which was often because I was a little princess damn it, I would help him find something to take apart so he would quit pestering me for a while. My parents hid a lot of things in the dryer and the freezer. I grew up believing an alarm clock stayed frozen until ready for use.

It was kind of cool to watch him take something apart too. He could dismantle anything down to it's bare wires. Once he got it back to a pile of raw materials something would distract him like a squirrel and he'd be off trying to find out where it live.

He would also completely take apart his matchbox cars and build them into new cars. He would take those cars and line them up under my dad's truck tire so he would back over them when he left. Those were his crashed cars.

You have to have crashed cars in your collection.

And the insides of 'Baby-Alive' is horrifying to little girl. Make a note of that, okay?

The kitchen table, the bathroom sink, the deck of our pool (where ever he was standing at the time that he discovered something that he could take apart) would look like the tin man came by a threw up on it.

The most memorable thing(s) Brother took apart before a trip was not one but two of my dads trucks.

My dad was a truck driver and his trucks were his entire business. Dad had gone somewhere in my mothers car when Brother thought he should find out what made dads trucks run. Maybe he could fix them and make them better! The reason I remember it so well was because I got dragged along in his brainstorm.

Hey, I was just following orders. My mom told me to watch my little brother and I did. I watched him as he filled both of the trucks gas tanks with water (in his defence we both thought there was gas in the cans and we thought you could water down gas to make it last longer like Kool-aid), open the hoods on both trucks, rip out and strip every single wire including taking the battery cables off the truck because he had already thrown the batteries on the ground (he learned real quick never to take the battery itself apart).

He was explaining to me that if we put one of the trucks into neutral we could push it under a tree. He could use a come-along, attach it to a branch and lift the entire engine out and get it on the ground. It would make it easier to take the engine apart that way.

Well, that certainly made sense to me.

We were still sitting under the hood on the engine and both covered in grease, arguing about which one of us was going to steer the truck once we started pushing it when my dad pulled into the driveway.

He got out of my moms car, looked at Brother and I for about a solid minute, turned around and started walking down the street.

He never spoke a word. He just turned and left.

He had too. He was going to kill us both if he didn't. I think he would have used me to beat Brother senseless if he didn't walk away.

And as a parent now, I don't know why he didn't go with that. It would have been all I could do to control myself if my kids did that to me.

As 'punishment' Brother had to spend the weekend helping my dad put those trucks back together. Brother was tickled about it because he was spending time with dad. My dad used to say if he stopped walking short, Brother would walk straight up his back. It was never a bad thing for Brother to have to do something with dad.

I didn't have to help because *pointing both thumbs at self* 'princess'.

That was just before our first trip to Disney. We were about 7-8 years old. Brother was never so excited about something and didn't know how to handle it other than taking something as big as his excitement and completely dismantling it.

He was two trucks worth of excited.

As he got older he knew so much about how and what made things work that he could pretty much do anything he wanted.

You want a car that can shoot flames out the back? Go see Brother. But be careful because even Brother set something on fire once.

You want to install a cruise ship horn to your truck? Give him a call. Bring your own ear protection though.

Anything you can think up to do, Brother can figure out how to make it happen. Not only can he now fix anything, he can invent anything too.

Seriously if you are a parent of an ADHD kid and/or you have another kid that doesn't have it, don't sweat it. They are going to be okay. I promise.

Not all of us are looking at your kids thinking they're rotten little brats. Some of us know first hand that when these ADHD kids grow up, they're going to be the people you're going to want to hang out with because they are going to be the most fun. Your non-ADHD kid on the other hand is going to learn to live without appliances.

And you might want to make your ADHD kid afraid of needles. Just saying.

Brother rescued his truck from the tree and got home around 6. He decided sitting on his couch for 20 minutes was plenty of rest and left for Disney.

I managed to finish packing 15 minutes before we left our house. If they could figure out a way to bottle ADHD, I might get stuff done faster.

I don't know what freaking idiot keeps booking us on flights from airports in the next state over that is a stinking hour and a half drive from our house when there is a perfectly nice airport 20 minutes down the road but oh no, that's not good enough because they either don't have direct flights or the flights cost more than my truck did, then on top of that books a flight that leaves at 6:00AM knowing I have to get there exactly 2 hours before because I am a terrorist and I'm taking down a plane full of Disney-nuts with a tube of mascara and my boot...

Oh, wait it's me. I'm the idiot.

Pardon me, I just ranted all over myself.

I keep doing it because when I get the green light to plan a trip, getting to Orlando on the very first flight and leaving on the very last flight out sounds like a fabulous idea.

At the time.

This next paragraph will impress the sweet hell out of you. I wish I could say I came up with it but anyone that knows me (and if you are reading this than you do) knows that this isn't just over my head, it's in an entirely different galaxy. I emailed my friend Mush and asked him how to say this. If your are math savvy, you'll get it. If not I still love ya, mean it because I didn't understand it either I just knew what I wanted to say and went to a professor for help. Here it is;

The planning part of my brain can only think of how many days we are going to be there and how that equates into each crew member plus what they like or dislike and the amount of hours I have to please everyone. If days=x, and number of crew members=y then hours=24x and total crew hours=24xy. Factor in the number of attractions (attractions=a), and we get z=24xy/a+4sin(y)-18arctan(q^2) / (number of fastpasses) = 0 (where z=sanity).

One day I might actually get it, but I've always been lousy at math. No that's not true, I'll never get it. All I know is that z always equals 0.

An explanation of the formula from Mush:

It actually starts out correct (up to total crew hours), but then goes off on a huge tangent which makes absolutely no sense and comes to sanity=0.

So that my friend is the mathematical explanation of why I plan my trips the way I do.

Thanks Mush. Love ya, mean it!

I had real Spanish in my last story and now complicated math in this one.

Delswife-entertains and educates with help from www.lodgeboards.com.

Anyway, we did the plane thing to get to Orlando and it was pretty much exactly the same deal as any other trip I have ever taken. The crew went through the line, I got the VIP treatment because I pissed off the TTA at some point in my life, we got on a plane, I did drugs and sleep the entire way.

Nothing really interesting happened (oh yeah, except for nearly giving myself a stroke but that only lasted about 5 minutes, it wasn't funny and I'm still upset about it even today) until we landed in Orlando. We got off the plane and made it to the other side of the airport on their fake monorail thing so fast we beat our luggage. We went outside to grab a quick smoke and let Brother know we had arrived. I lied to him and said we would meet up with him shortly. I didn't really believe that myself because right out of the gate, I screwed up in a big way.

For someone who hates to talk on the phone, I'm on it a lot huh?






The airline apparently called the car rental place and warned them I was on my way because I had to convince them that I did NOT fly all the way from Maine to Orlando just to steal a compact car.

The new Mustang? Yeah, maybe. If I was them that would concern me too. I'd really like to get my hands on one of those.

But the crew was going to number 5 for this trip and there was no way for us to fit in the new Mustang even if I could have gotten my hands on one so I rented a compact.

But I'm an idiot. (Haven't I covered that?) I had printed out my car reservation back in Maine but left it sitting on my kitchen table with our flight conformations and boarding passes. It turns out that forgetting your boarding passes is not a big deal. You just stick your credit card in their machine and it spits out new ones.

It doesn't give you return flight conformations though. When we were back in New Hampshire and I realized I didn't have our boarding passes I was just so desperate to get us to Orlando I didn't care if they were going to let us come back or not. I think that's why I really don't have much to say about getting on the plane. When I opened my backpack and noticed that my paperwork was gone, I actually had to sit on the floor to rip my backpack apart because I thought I was going to pass out.

Total over-reaction? Absolutely. I'll admit that. But I wanted to see Brother and get to Moose Meet so badly that when I thought for a minute it wasn't going to happen, I was completely devastated. I thought I had just ruined every-ones vacation.

I knew even while ripping my backpack apart that I had left the paperwork on my kitchen table. I remember taking it out of my backpack to make sure I wasn't traveling with deadly mascara. I knew I forgot to put it back in.

I just looked, it's still sitting on my table. I might just leave it there until after our next trip as a reminder.

I honestly don't know how other airlines handle that kind of stupidity, I mean come on who prints out their boarding passes and leaves them behind so their cat will be aware of their pending plans? Southwest fixed everything with no trouble at all. By the time I walked to the counter to explain to the lady what I did, I was shaking. I was ready to drop to my knees and beg her to let us on the plane.

If they didn't let us get on, that would have been the end of the trip right there. There would have been no way for me to buy 4 more tickets and still be able to eat for 5 days.

So because I couldn't prove that I didn't fly from Maine to Florida for the sole purpose of stealing a compact car I had to stand in the airline line to get a permission slip saying it was okay, I made plans to eventually go home and not live in a stolen compact car with 3 other people plus luggage. It ended up taking nearly 2 hours to get out of the airport.

I honestly can't remember ever having to show them a return ticket. First days are blurry, remember? I must have handed them my passporter before and just let them take what they wanted out of it.

Meanwhile over at Downtown Disney, Brother was having a stroke. I knew this because he was calling my phone every 47 seconds.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Attempting grand theft auto and failing miserably."

It could have been so much worse though. Del charmed the car rental girl so when she saw us come back with the permission slip she let us get into the front of the line rather than stand in it again, so it turned out okay. I couldn't help but feel awful though. Because of my stupid mistake the crew was left in limbo for a couple of hours.

See what happens when your not organized? I was kicking myself because I didn't use my passporter this trip. Like I said before, I don't know the passporter people, I'm not a passporter salesman I just know what works and what I like.

I learned a lesson. Thank god everything was fixable but if I had left the park tickets at home with the cat, we would have been spending some quality time together in the condo.

We like each other, but not that much. Being that close to the Mouse House and not to be able to go? My two ADHD's and one Commando would have murdered me in my sleep, I'm sure of it.

Here's something I learned about car rentals that I did not know.

Sometimes the rental places run out of cars in certain sizes.

It's true. It never occurred to me that it might ever happen, but it did. I always assumed that if they took the reservation they were planning on having the wheels. I looked at my reservation as a promise that I could have a car.

Del, Nikki, Curt and I walked to the car rental parking lot and there were 2 compact cars sitting in the lot. One car had someones luggage sitting next to it and the other car didn't have any keys but we didn't know that at the time.

I really thought I had finally lived long enough that people wouldn't really shock me anymore but I was wrong. There was this guy that shocked the living hell out of me. This guy, let's call him Jafar or as Genie called him; "Señor Psychopath" was in the parking lot yelling his foolish head off and waving his arms in the air. He was flipping out big time.

You know, my crew and I may be the blue collar of Disney, but we have tons more class than 'Señor Psychopath' did. Anything we do that draws attention to us isn't meant to hurt any-ones feelings for crying out loud.

'Señor Psychopath' was an older man and very well dressed. Nice suit, shiny shoes and nice 'old guy' jewelry. You could tell by looking at him that he had a leather chair and an electric pencil sharpener in his office back home. If I had to guess (which I do actually. I don't know 'Señor Psychopath' and that makes me happy) I would say he was very late 50's to mid 60's.

We saw the luggage next to one of the cars so we started walking towards the other one. That's what you do. You take whats left over.

'Señor Psychopath' yelled at us as we got closer to the car. "Don't even think about getting into that *bad word* *bad word* car!"

Wow. Okay, what crawled up his ass? If something had crawled up his ass does he think we had something to do it? Like stuffed a snack in there?

"I'm telling you for the very last time that I want an acceptable car NOW!" He was screaming at the parking lot kid that must have been about 22 years old. "I told you people what type of a car I was willing to rent from you. That car has no keys and this one doesn't have the features I requested! You have 30 seconds to correct this situation!"

'Señor Psychopath' was totally going off on that poor kid and the kid was doing his best not to tell the guy where a better location for his genitals would be.

"I'm sorry sir. As I have said we are looking for the keys to that car or another car will be here in about 10 minutes. We are checking cars in now, it won't be very long." The kid said as he walked over to me. "Did you rent a compact too?" He asked.

"Yeah. I am going to be killed by that man now because I did?" I asked.

"You're going to have to wait until they finish checking in some cars. It will be about 10 minutes." He said.

"Yeah we heard. It's cool, we can wait." I said and shrugged my shoulders. "What else can you do? Crap a car?"

"You know what? Seeing where you're not going to be a bitch about it, you're getting an upgrade. Follow me." He said and started walking to another row of cars.

'Señor Psychopath' freaked out even harder when he saw that. I'm shocked that he didn't have a hernia right there and that his balls didn't drop put of the leg of his pants. I'd never seen someone so pissed off about something so minor.

He could have taken the car he had his suitcases leaning against. It's just a car. Who cares? I like cars as much as the next girl and have honestly driven tons of them. Hell, he could have had my upgrade if he hadn't yelled at us. I just wanted to get to Disney, I could care less how it happened.

Anyway, the kid sarcastically asked me if I had any special requests about the car. I saw how 'Señor Psychopath' treated him so I didn't take it personally.

"Just needs to have gas in it and I'm good." I said.

"Oh, give us a good one." Del said and the kid pointed us towards something. I'll ask Brother later what it was. It did pass the crash test later though so it wasn't a lousy car but it just didn't really have any punch to it which was probably good or I would have crashed it sooner.

I called it 'slow mcpokie'.

I had to drive it with my right leg wrapped around the gear shift so I could get my boot out of the way. I did okay but it was a major pain in the ass. I crashed the car because I didn't have my boot around the gear shift (because someone had a fit about my boot being on his side) and there really isn't enough room in the drivers side for it.

I really didn't think to look at where the gear shift was when we loaded into it. I have a system to driving with my left foot and have been doing it for over a year now in Maine weather. My gear shift is on my steering collum though.

When my system gets screwed with, I crash. I need to stop listening to people telling me how to drive. People panic when they learn I drive with my left foot. They keep saying that is dangerous.

I need my right foot to be out of the way, period. It's useless to me in the drivers side. I can't use my right foot, live with it.

It's like trying to drive with your carry on luggage next to your feet. Doesn't work.

So apparently I do have a special request in my car rental choice but it wasn't worth making an ass out of myself over.

I backed out of my spot and slow mcpokie let out a beep. I threw her into park, got out and looked behind me. When I got back in her I said “A mile! I have a mile. What the hell is your problem anyway? You want me to go give you to 'Señor Psychopath'?”


Curt leaned forward and asked Del who I was talking to.


“She’s having an argument with the car about what’s behind her.” He told Curt and continued with “She's going to drive this thing like she stole it.”


“No, I'm going to drive it like I rented it.” and with that I stomped on the gas peddle with my left foot.


I can blow the engine, I just cant scratch the paint while doing it. If I stole it, it would be the other way around. See the difference?

I've driven go carts that were faster than this car but at least we were in a car and not still standing in the parking lot shitting bricks next to a car with no keys.

He was an idiot.

We pulled out of the parking garage and headed for Downtown Disney to meet up with Brother.

Now either Florida changed their highway and moved the tolls over to the side like an exit or I was a lot more blurry than I thought and found a new route to Disney. I don't remember the tolls being way off to the side of the road like they were.

Didn't matter, we found Downtown Disney so it was fine.

I had Brother on the phone when we pulled into the parking lot. Brother told he was parked in the back 40 because we needed a little room away from people. He instructed me to park 'slow mcpokie' in front of his truck.

Brother had a surprise for the little Commando and vehicle set up was required.

It really wasn't hard to spot a pick-up truck with a crushed door at all. You would think it would be, huh? Del kept telling me to ask Brother for some kind of a landmark so we could find him because apparently he thought the parking lot would be just chock full of trucks with crushed drivers doors.

I was shocked and surprised that his was the only one.

Brother has always been hard to find in a crowd, you know? He's almost invisible.

I did as my little brother said. I parked 'slow mcpokie' right in front of Brother's truck.

And turned around in my seat to watch Commando Nikki.

Brother was standing next to his drivers door when the crew started to make their exit from the car. He looked at Nikki when she got out, smiled and leaned reached into his truck.

**HHHHHOOOOOONNNNNNKKKKKK!!!**


Have you ever stood directly in front of a TRAIN WHISTLE when someone blew it??

It

will

part

your

hair!!

I knew Brother had a train whistle on his truck and was going to show it to Nikki and I had to share the information with Del before we got there because I didn't want to start our vacation off with a dead husband.

The three of us were really looking forward to scaring the ever-loving hell out of the Commando. We even had a good giggle over it. We thought she would learn the true meaning of payback by two of the 'original' crew members.

Pul-lease. Brother and I have spent a life time doing things to each other and paying each other back for stuff. That's basicly what our entire relationship with each other is. Nikki was OWED.

When they got out of the car and Brother blew the train whistle, (killing all the birds flying over-head by the way) Commando Nikki did something that put the fear of God into all of us.

She didn't jump. She didn't scream. She didn't do anything that we had expected and hoped for.

She lit up like Christmas....

and then smiled.

One of those slow, gradual, evil smiles. Much like a villain realizing they had a new power.

"Well, that sucked." Brother said.

It only sort-of sucked. The reaction we were all hoping for from Nikki, Curt did. It didn't occur to any of us to watch how Curt would handle it.

Curt, like Nikki was not in the 'know'.

Have you ever see a cartoon where the character gets electrocuted and it's hair stands straight up on end?

Curt.

Have you ever seen someone clutch their chest like they got shot?

Curt.

Have you ever seen someone turn as pale as a ghost and start laughing because if they didn't, they might cry?

Curt.

Have you ever seen someone so shocked over something that it literally knocks the wind out of them?

Curt.

Curt, I'd like you to meet my little brother Bob. Bob-Curt.

There. Now Curt has met all of my brothers and survived. He is now officially broken in as a crew member for life.

It's probably lucky for us that Nikki was there with us because Curt loves her and wouldn't leave her behind. I have to believe from his reaction that if she wasn't there, Curt would have been nothing more than a blur and a memory.

"THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVAH!! I WANT ONE!" Nikki screamed and pointed at Brother's truck.

Now THAT sucked.

So if you're keeping track, we have gone from a whistle, to an air-horn, to a train whistle.

Does anyone have a cruise ship horn I could borrow for a minute? I've had just about enough of these people.

We all did the hug and handshake thing depending on gender and relationship. For the record if Curt had wanted a hug, Brother would have hugged him.

"Dude, you're going to want to ride with me." Brother said to Del so he got into Brother's truck so we could head over to Cypress Point.

I have the worst time finding that place so I was going to have to follow Brother's truck. I have no idea what is up with that either, I'm usually pretty good at finding places. I did it for a living at one time for crying out loud. That was pretty much my entire job, finding places.

Del? No problem. Doesn't matter where we are, he can find Cypress Pointe.

Unless he decides he wants to play with a train whistle before starting our vacation.

Like a good wife/sister/mummah when Brother pulled out of the parking lot, I followed with the kids. I was looking around to see if anything looked familiar from our last trip and for a few minutes, it did.

Then we took at turn down a road I had never seen before.

"Where is he taking......." I started to say just before my coronary.

*HHHHOOOONNNNKKKKK*

There WAS a large group of people walking together to enter a restaurant on the corner. When the sound of the train whistle cleared (because it is really that kind of a sound, it needs to clear like smoke) those people were either on the ground or in Pennsylvania.

Okay, yes. It was funny as hell. Some people did laugh, other people were just grateful they were alive and flipped us a 'California Howdy'.

Del eventually lead us to Cypress Pointe once they got that out of their systems. We pulled up to the front door and Nikki and I went in to see if it was okay if we left the train whistle in their parking lot while we headed to the parks.

This was our second stay at Cypress Pointe and it was the second time they knew they were dealing with a princess.

"Where are you from?" The girl behind the desk with a name tag that said she was from Jamaica, asked me as she looked up my reservation.

"Maine." I said.

"Oh, where is that?" She asked.

"As far North as you can be from Orlando and still be an American citizen." I told her because it's true.

Look at a map sometime, we are almost Canadians. Are we the part of the world that the Canadians didn't want? 'Eww. No thanks. You can keep that area America. We don't want to have anything to do with that.'

And according to some of the friends I met at the meet, we have our own language.

It's a wicked piss-ah that they think we are retah-ded.

"My, you must have made quite a journey to get here. What time did you start out?" She asked as she started to get 2 parking passes ready while Nikki ran back outside to get the license plate numbers off the vehicles.

"1:30 AM but right now it feels like 3 days ago." I said fighting the urge to lay my head on the counter.

The last time I did that, I fell asleep.

It wasn't the sleep part that was embarrassing, it was the sucking drool sounds I had to make when I woke up that made me want to end my life with the ball point pen sitting on the desk.

The girl was looking at her computer screen and found my reservation.

"Would you excuse me for a minute?" The girl asked and walked away to a back room.

Uh oh. Now what did I screw up?

Nikki had come back with the plate numbers while I was waiting for the girl to come back. We were talking about moving our luggage to Brother's truck and locking it up while we went to the parks.

"But Mummah. The train whistle is on Uncle Funny's truck." Nikki said and again, I had to make an effort not to end my life with the ball point pen on the desk.

The girl came back and I was a little worried about what was going on.

I was also very confused why I could understand her perfectly. Lesia said something to me at the meet and I had to get Tricia to translate it.

They thought I was kidding when I said I don't speak Southerner.

I'm fluent in English in a Jamaican accent though.

News to me too.

"Do you require a handicapped room?" She asked.

"No. I just can't climb 5 flights of stairs at the end of the day. The room doesn't matter, it's just the location of it." I said.

Crap! Are we not getting a room because they thought I needed a handicap room and were out of them? When I made the reservation on-line there was a little box and it asked if I had any special request, I had written 'First floor if possible please. I'm a gimp and the boot hates stairs. It makes butt stick out when I go up them and I hate that.'

Oh I am just so freaking funny, aren't I? Had I just smart-ass my way out of a room?

"Would you be okay with a 5th floor room if it was near an elevator?" She asked.

I said yes because I didn't know that every time the crew and I squashed into the tiny elevator that Brother would jump up and down in it because he was trying to kill Del.

See, it's not Del that has a problem with heights. It's me. Del jumped out of planes for beer money, he could care less.

Wait! Maybe Brother was trying to kill me?

I am SO telling mom and that just got added to my 'payback Brother' list!

"If you would like, we could put you in a room right now." The girl said.

If I could have reached her, I would have hugged her. She was letting us check in 4 hours early.

"I would like!" I said as Brother came in to see the lobby of the place.

Another girl behind the counter looked at Brother and smiled. "Good morning sir! Can I help you?"

"Sure." He said. "I have to change a tire on my truck. Can you operate a jack?" Brother said then shook his head when he saw the horrified look on her face and said "I'm kidding. I'm with them."

I really think that girl was ready to figure out how to work a jack. I think she no-habla jack-ola but was willing to give it a shot.

Now other than Cypress Pointe and one very bad stay at another off site hotel, I've always stayed on Disney property. Disney service is the best but damn, these girls were really giving the mouse a run for my money.

The girl behind the desk gave me our parking passes (which to us, translates into 'train whistle permission slip') and room keys. Brother, Nikki and I headed out the door to meet back up with Curt and Del.

Note; I was the only one with a clue as to where we were going. That made me a powerful princess and messing with me a that point should have been second-guessed.

Everyone jumped into a vehicle because we were staying at the 'Grand' Villa's, not the 'plain' villas and needed to drive across the street to get to it.

'Cuz Cypress hooked up their princess with an elevator. I take it they didn't want my butt to stick out either.

Really not a very pretty sight and I hardly blame them.

I had the kids in the backseat and had just started to pull 'slow mcpokie' out of the driveway and into the street...

*HHHHOOOOONNNNKKKK!!!!*

DAMN IT!!

Before my brain could register what had happened, I stomped on the gas peddle and shot across that street even faster than a baby shitting rockets (which by the way, is the reaction you will have if you think you have just pulled out in front of a freaking invisible train and you're about to die so in case it hasn't happened to you yet, now you know you will get the hell out of the way) and looked into the rear-view mirror at Brother and Del who were laughing their asses off.

Nikki was giddy, laughing along with them and Curt was totally clenched and chanting something...it might have been some kind of prayer. Curt, did you find religion on that trip? I think he might have ended up on the floor too. I was blurry, it's hard to remember.

Fine little brother. You want to play?

Let's play 'European Vacation'.

We did about 47 laps around the hotel before I parked the car. 'Oh look kids! Big Ben...Parliament!'

Nikki, Curt and Del became unwilling hostages in this game. Brother started it, I was finishing it and they were just along for the ride.

That's life with a little brother. Sorry.

I drove around a few times watching Brother in my rear view mirror. At first he kept throwing up his hand and 'eye-rolling' at me like he was saying 'Fine, be that way. I have gas, I'll do this all day.'

Then a few laps later he started doing that wide-eyed, crazy-person look. 'Park the car so we can go to the parks before I get out and club you to death with Curt!'

I could see Brother and Del talking to each other while we did our laps. 'Dude, I thought YOU knew which building we were in! She's the only one who knows were we are? What do you mean she has the park tickets? We can't even ditch her?'

Let the record show the only -ONLY- reason I parked the car was because Nikki was almost to the point of shredding the seats in the car apart with her fingernails.

"Mummah! Please! Park! The! Car!" She cried from the backseat in a cartoon character kind of a way.

If Brother and I hadn't accidentally taken hostages, that could have gone on for hours; either until I got bored with it or until one of us ran out of gas. It's happened before so I know this to be a fact.

There is no one particular story attached to that knowledge. Brother and I grew up riding things and torturing each other. It's what we do and it's a risk you take when you hang out with us.

Now I know that staying off site is a bummer because we all want to be surrounded by the Disney magic every single minute that we are there. However I had to choose between the 'Disney magic', which would have required 2 rooms at a value resort to do and $30 more for the weekend or a place that is a condo.

I could get up in the morning and make myself a cup of coffee in my own kitchen instead of standing in a food court having skin-to-skin contact with strangers who hadn't had their coffee yet. Who needs that? I certainly don't.

*Points thumbs at self again* 'Princess.'

We had a living room and a balcony along with two full size bedrooms and bathrooms. We could spread out and get comfortable without being 'asses and elbows' on top of each other.

And really the longitude and latitude of where we sleep doesn't really matter to us. We were only in the rooms long enough for a short coma or long nap (Commando's don't allow a full night of sleep), and to have a place to shower and change clothes anyway.

Commandos get pretty ripe by the end of the day and need to be hosed down.

And Nikki just read that and screamed 'Mummah!'

One day I hope to own DVC. I don't see it in the cards for a while so staying off site is going to have to do for now. We call the the ghetto version of DVC.

Now this was the second time we have stayed at Cypress Pointe. You may be wondering what the difference is between the plain villas and the grand villas.

Only one thing. The bathrooms in the grand villa have doors. You don't have to sleep in the same room with the toilet. I don't know who designed the plain side (they're the newer ones too) but it sort of freaked me out to have the toilet in the same place that I was laying my head down for the night.

But I love the place and I could live with that one little oddity. Del wasn't that crazy about it though because if I needed to use the toilet, I threw him out of the room.

This side, the Grand side, was going to make him very happy. He wouldn't keep getting evicted.

There was a lot of unpacking and settling in to be done. Nikki and Curt had actually hung up clothes in the closets, Brother used the drawers for his stuff and Del and I unzipped our suitcases.


That’s the extent of our unpacking. We work hard all year at our jobs, our vacation is extremely lazy.

Well, as lazy as you can have it when you are traveling with the ADHD & a Commando. If there is any area we can find to be lazy, we become contenders in the 'Extreme Lazy Olympics.'

It's like any other kind of Olympics, just a lot less work.


The only suitcase we really unpack is the one Del calls the hospital bag. It only has ‘bathroom-type’ things in it, my blow-dryer, toothpaste, deodorant (if I remember to pack deodorant), junk like that. It’s a very small suitcase (or very big purse depending on if I don't want to carry it and need to describe it to one of the guys. Don't tell them it's almost a purse, okay?) and takes us a day to completely empty.


No. I have no idea why he calls it a hospital bag. I don’t travel with urinals or IV poles and have no intention of ever doing such a thing.


Now in the time it took Del and I to unzip our suitcases, Brother, Nikki and Curt were finished doing their thing and were flipping out because we had wasted 10 minutes of their lives in the room and not standing in a line for a ride.

Mostly Brother and Nikki, Curt just kind of stood next to them making sad puppy eyes. 'Please, can we go now?'

The weird thing about Curt is that he doesn't call me anything. If he wants to say something to me which isn't often because I scare the shit out of him, he waits until he has my attention. I've told him 100,000 times he can call me Robin but he just won't do it.

One time he called me Wobin but I think it nearly killed him to do it and I'm not sure that he is over it yet.

We left the room and got into the elevator that Brother kept jumping up and down in.

I added it to the list of payback owed to Brother.

It's quite a list now.

"Are you driving?" Del asked when we got down to the car.

"Am I going?" I asked him.

"I am NOT riding with you if you're going to drive with your left foot." Del said.

"How did you get here?" Brother asked Del with an eyebrow raised.

"Oh my God man. You have no idea. I was shitting Twinkies the entire ride." Del said and that wasn't only not nice but a physical impossibility. I didn't have any near misses or anything on the way over. I had no clue why he was picking on my driving.

Okay, the kids and I were nearly killed by an invisible train but he wasn't there for that. We lived so we were ahead of the game, right?

"Okay, we will see you when we get back then." I said and started walking to the drivers side.

Del growled. I love it when he growls because it is so cute. "I'm riding in the back then. Someone else is going to have to ride in the seat of death."

"Do you do something other than drive with your left foot?" Brother asked me.

"Sometimes I talk on my phone, smoke a cigarette or have a drink. Sometimes I do it all at the same time. It depends on if I think I'm going to get caught or not." I told Brother.

Brother looked at Del. "That scares you? Hell man, I've seen her do worse things than that."

"Dude! She has her right foot in the passenger side of the car!" Del said like that was going to be our seal of death right there.

"And is she blindfolded too?" Brother inquired. "Remember that?" Brother turned and asked me.

Once. Once I did that and it was on a dirt-bike. Brother was on the back with his hands over my eyes telling me when to turn.

It only takes one tree to smarten you right up from ever doing that again.

And neither of us have any idea how the side of my mothers car got that big dent in it. It was simply a coincidence that it was the exact size and shape of our front three-wheeler tire.

Apparently how it works is the ADHD kid builds the jumps but it is the responsibility of the non-ADHD kid to plan the jump out.

Lesson learned there.

Brother got in the front seat because I guess he figured if I was going to do something that was going to kill him, I would have done it by now.

The only real possibility there was for danger and it was only a danger to me, was if a pretty girl pulled up on my side of the car. More than once Brother has shoved my head out of the way so he could lean over and say hi to her.

I have beeped the horn of a car with my forehead more times than you want to think about.

While I can never find Cypress Pointe, I can always find Disney. Explain that.

We pulled up to the gate I put the parking lot person on Brother's side of the car to give him something to do. He did three things, he paid, he flirted with the girl then he got his heart broken.

It wasn't the girl that broke his heart because she flirted back, it was the information he got from her that broke his heart.

The Halloween party for that night was sold out.

I didn't get tickets for that party because I didn't know how tired everyone was going to be when we got there and thought I could buy them at the gate if everyone felt up to going.

What the hell was I thinking? I know better than that. If there is a party, we want to be there!

The park was still going to be open for several hours so we kept going anyway but we were very sad about it.

We pulled into the parking lot and we got out of the car. Brother and I were talking about 'No offence but...'

'No offence but' is something Del says ALL the time. You know when he says it your either going to laugh or cry. But it's okay because he said 'no offence but' first. It's his permission slip to say whatever comes out of his mouth.

We were walking to the tram when Nikki stopped cold in her tracks and started laughing.

"Oh my gawd!" She said, laughing so hard she was bent over.

What?

The crew and I stood there and stared at her. What else could we do? We didn't know what was so funny and she was laughing too hard to tell us.

What?? We want to laugh too! Doesn't it drive you crazy when someone does that? It drives me nuts.

Gasping for air, she held one hand to her throat and used the other hand to point at Del.

Okay? Could we buy a vowel?

"What did you do?" I asked him because whatever it was I must have missed it.

Or I have lived with Del long enough that I don't see his 'ism's' anymore. Like I don't see the dust in my house any longer.

"I didn't do anything." Del said looking at Nikki like she had lost her mind.

And really until she clued the rest of the crew in on what the hell was so funny, that's the only conclusion we could all come too. She finally caved under the Commando pressure and lost it completely.

Had our Commando broke? That would suck, we need our Commando.

Now Nikki was laughing so hard she had tears streaming down her face and she was still pointing at Del.

If she wasn't going to tell us what was so funny I was going to have to slap her.

"Why are you laughing?" I asked her. I even grabbed her arms and shook her a little.

Just a little, no phone calls need to be made.

Del who is no stranger to being the center of attention suddenly started getting very self conscious because he was being stared at against his will. It's one thing if he's doing something to get your attention but if your staring at him uninvited, he doesn't like it.

"What?" He asked Nikki and started power-wiping his nose, his eyes and around his mouth.

"Come here." Nikki managed to get out.

"No." Del said and started walking quickly to the tram waiting spot to get away from Nikki.

I looked at Curt because he might have had something to say about what was going on and he had no way to get my attention. He certainly wasn't going to utter my name because I think forgets it.

Hey Curt! Curt! Curt! Curt!

See, I know his. I've even given him clever nicknames. Right Wobbles?

My future son-in-law, the hunting veterinarian said nothing. He just shrugged his shoulders.

We all caught up with Del who was waiting for the parking lot tram. Nikki was trying to control herself but couldn't look at Del without losing it again.

"Come here." She said again and motioned him to lean his head over with her hand.

What is it? Is it a bug? PLEASE DEAR GOD DON'T LET IT BE THAT!

"I don't want to." Del said, leaning his head back away from her and looking at me.

I have to protect Del from the kids. If I don't step in there is no telling what they would do to him.

I looked at his head and it looked fine which was good because if there was a bug on his head, he would have been on his own.

With my luck, if it was a bug and I tried to help him, it would fly off his head making me scream (because for some reason my central nervous system thinks that helps somehow) then I would end up swallowing the damn thing because my mouth was wide open.

I've swallowed bugs in Disney before. I was in Epcot with the crew talking on the phone with my mother when a bug flew into my mouth. I think it was a love bug AND it's possible that it was actually two love bugs because they are always connected together, making it a murder-suicide. It never made the newspapers so I'll never know for sure.

"Come HERE!" Nikki said with a lot more force.

Del leaned over and squinted his eyes waiting for whatever she was going to do to him to get over with.

Nikki took a little piece of hair from the side of Del's head and tucked it behind his ear.

CRAP!

Crap,crap,crap,crap!

"No offence but... dude! You have a mullet!" Brother said and started laughing.

NO! No, no, no, NO!

Del's head snapped around to look at me.

Look honey! A squirrel!

"You! You and she when, and I said but you! Yeah, don't mullet! But you! And she said 'don't worry' and you watched and now there's a mullet? There's a mullet? You let her mullet me? Why? What did I tell you when? Then I trusted you and look! Mullet? A mullet??" Del yelled at me while using both hands to pull on his own hair.

"I wasn't aware Del could speak in tongues." Brother said still laughing.

"I think the mullet has taken over." Nikki said and the crew all laughed. "Excuse me? Does anyone here speak mullet?" Nikki called out to the people standing around us.

We love to involve total strangers in humiliating each other. It's a 'crew game'.

"It wasn't a mullet when you got your hair cut by the hairdresser." I said because I didn't mullet my husband, he mullet-ed himself. I would never deliberately mullet anyone, let alone the guy I hold hands with in public because if I don't he yells 'I know her' and points at me.




"So it just sprouted into a mullet? Why? Was it the shampoo?" Del asked looking at me like I was full of it.

I took a slow deep breath to explain the evolution of a mullet to a grown man.

"You got you hair cut 3 months ago. I told you not to try and trim it yourself. I told you we had welfare hair* before the trip and we were in need of a qualified professional." I said dieing inside a little because I realized that he did in fact, have a mullet. I didn't see it until then.

*Welfare hair is when your roots grow out, your ends are split and you try to trim it yourself because you can't or won't go to a hairdresser. Apparently on a man a perfectly nice haircut develops into a mullet over time when they are left alone with scissors.

Why couldn't it be a bug? At least we would be over the bug now and I would have had a snack.

I have worked hard over the years to get Del to stop doing things to his own hair. Our first anniversary we had made plans to go to Montreal together and the night before we left he let Nikki try out her hair lightening kit on him to see if she liked it and if she could do it.

That was a 'no' on both.

I went to Montreal with 'Patch'.

Then there was the time one summer that Del was hot so he went into the bathroom and spent 10 minutes with a buzz clipper. He blamed his hair for being hot rather than the temperature outside which was around 90 degrees. Mainers freak out in that kind of heat. We just don't know how to live in it.

If it was winter and he was hot, he would take off his hat.

It was too hot to wear a hat so he shaved his head.

Look at Maine weather sometime. We only hit 90 degrees three times a year if that, EVER. It just doesn't happen.

He ended up totally bald with a tail in the back because he didn't complete the balding. It was a partial balding.

Because of one hot day I ended up with someone sporting an E-5 haircut with a 'blue collar' beer belly.

I finally convinced him if he ever wanted 'maritals' again to leave his hair alone.

Or so I thought.

Del and I are together almost 24 hours a day. The only time we aren't together is when we are at work and even then I spend my 1 hour lunch break with him because I work around the corner.

I think because I see him ALL the time that I didn't notice that he had been trimming his own bangs because they were in his eyes. Apparently he would trim just a tiny bit off at a time and I didn't see it.

And that is what he explained to the crew.

"I just wanted it a little short in the front. I wanted it out of my eyes." He said as we all loaded onto the tram.

"What about the back?" Nikki asked.

"I want long hair so I left that alone." Del said.

"Dude, define mullet." Brother said.

Del spoke in tongues again. "It's not a mullet! I have it a little long, well okay. It's just a little short...screw all of you." He said as he crossed his arms and turned his face away from us.

When we got onto the tram Del, Curt and Brother were sitting in the seats that face backwards. Nikki and I were facing them.

Then the tram left and the wind picked up.

This angered the mullet.

The mullet parted in the back and Del looked like the weird guy from the Wendy's commercial with the red braided wig on.

The crew almost fell off the tram because they were laughing so hard.

"I'm suddenly in the mood for a square hamburger." Del said and we were all rolling.




We got off the tram and headed for the Monorail. I stopped at the ticket booth just to double check to see if the Halloween party was really sold out or if it was just one of those ugly rumors going around like Walt's frozen head is buried under the castle.

It really was sold out. What a pisser.

We got on the Monorail and the crews mood took a slight change in direction. Up until then we were playful and happy. The minute we were asked to stay clear of the doors in both English and Spanish, the crew came totally unglued from excitement.

Del gets louder when he's excited. Del is normally a loud person but that is because he is deaf in one ear and married in the other. That's why I say louder. He doesn't even know he's doing it.

"I'm going on Magic Mountain first!" He nearly screamed.

Brother's face lit up like fireworks. "Magic Mountain? There's a new ride and I WASN'T TOLD?" He started yelling. Brother was holding the rail so tight, I was surprised it didn't snap in half.

"There's a new ride? Robin! Why didn't you tell us that?" Del yelled.

At some point during Del's first or second trip to Disney he renamed Space Mountain to Magic Mountain. "No, he means Space Mountain." I tried to explain but I don't think they were listening to me. They weren't even listening to each other at that point.

"What? What is it? What didn't she tell us?" Nikki demanded to know.

See what happened there was Brother only heard 'magic mountain', all Del heard was 'new ride' and Nikki thought she had been left out of something again and that pisses her off to no end. None of our kids wants to be the last to know anything and it's a constant job now trying to keep them all in the loop without one of them finding out who knew what when.

Does that make any sense to you? Could you explain it back to me?

"No! Splash Mountain! Wait! What are we going on first? Nothing that goes backwards because it will mess up the mullet! Are we going to eat? Casey's hot dogs on me!" Del yelled and we all started laughing, including a couple of kids that were in the car with us.

Accidental hostage situation.





Del started to go into over-load. He was talking faster than anyone could register what he was saying, let alone answer.

Curt laughed. I don't know if he had anything to say because I had to keep one eye on Brother.

The last thing I wanted to see was the guts of the Monorail. I'm positive it was all he could do to keep from taking it apart. I know he was eye-balling everything in the monorail car and building tools in his head.

Nikki clenched, squealed and decompressed at a rate that made me afraid of losing cabin pressure in our monorail car. I didn't see anyway for an oxygen mask to drop out of the ceiling so I was worried.

The monorail pulled into the station and we were asked to please take small children by the hand and to watch our steps.

We weren't traveling with any small children of our own and I was not crazy about the idea of being arrested for taking someone else's small child right at the start of our vacation, so I held Del's hand.

I'm not looking for a criminal record, I'm looking for some magic.

And why is Disney promoting kidnapping?

Wait, maybe that's what a child swap really is and all this time I misunderstood? We were suppose to trade small children in the monorail to see if we could find one we liked better? I mean, I've had those days. Haven't you?

If that's the case, it's probably a good thing my parents didn't know about that when we were little kids. There is an excellent chance Brother would be speaking Spanish and I would be wearing a kimono.

Plus finding an opportunity to try out a new brother or sister would have been very tempting to both of us when we were little.

And when I'm in front of him and his train whistle in traffic now that we are adults.

Maybe I'm over thinking the monorails message. Maybe it was just a real 'Disney' way of saying 'grab that brat and get the hell off'.

Every-time I get off the monorail the first thing I always look at is the clock hanging in the middle of the station.

That clock to me means it's time to be a kid again.

So I turned and slugged Brother in the arm. "We're here!" I said because that's what kids do.

Brother smiled and finger-flicked me in the forehead, right between the eyes. "I know!" He said because that's what kids do back.

Why did I NOT see that coming? I mean it's not like he tripped me and I didn't see him stick his foot out, he had his hand in 'flick-position' and directed it to my face where I keep my eyes. I should know by now there is always payback.

MOM!

Brother was inventing his own game on the way down the ramp of the monorail - 'boot around the world'.

That's right. The boot had it's own paparazzi. I told you it's very famous.




I was grinning like a total idiot and I knew it. I couldn't stop it though. I was trying to be cool but the more I tried to play it off as just another day in Disney, the more I smiled like a fool.

A smiling fool with a red mark on her forehead.

Not scary, right?

There were just too many things I was excited about on this trip. The biggest thing was Brother was there and could actually enjoy Disney this time. He was the only one he had to make happy on this trip. The only gift shops he would be in were the ones that were a part of an exit from a ride. I promised him that.

I looked over at Brother, who was also grinning from ear to ear and saw the little boy that he really is. For one instant, just one little heartbeat, I saw my dad there too.

We're home.















We each walked through the turnstiles and stopped to wait for the rest of the crew member to go through. When Del came through, he took my backpack away from me.


“I can carry it.” I said.


“No, I have it.” He said and started walking off with it.


“But I want it.” I said following him.


“I’ll give it to you when you want it. I’ll carry it.” He said.


“But I want it now.” I said in a voice that bordered on a whine.


“Oh, sorry. Here.” He said.


He handed me back my backpack and I slung over my shoulder and continued walking with it.


“Uh, no. Give it to me.” Del said and tried to pull it off my shoulder.


I picked up my pace and pretended that the backpack weighed 80 lbs. I even let it drop to the ground, turned around and dragged it, grunting while I was doing it. “No, it’s okay honey. *ugg* I have it.” I said as people watched.


“That is NOT cool.” Del said and grabbed the backpack out of my hands.


The only time Del 'lets' me carry my backpack without a fight is through security because of Del's fear of ‘things with strings’.

I think security is just looking for mouse traps. I can't seem to convince Del of that though. He seems to be permanently scarred from the time I hid tampons in the camera bag and had him 'show' them to the security guard. Yes, he screamed like a bitch when it happened but I'm very sure the guard wasn't confused on who they were for even in light of that.

There must be some kind of special test for security guards to see if they have a fear of feminine hygiene products before they can have the job. Del can never have that job because he'd spend the day screaming into peoples backpacks.

That would upset the little children, they would cry then the parents would have to go back on the monorail and see if they could trade them in for less tramatized kids.

Circle of Kotex?


Now, other than the stupid attack I had when I threw $40 dollars in it once (because it was change from something I bought and I was too lazy to put it in my wallet in my front pocket) and got robbed while walking through a crowd of people leaving Fantasmic, there really isn’t anything of any real interest in my back pack. There is a comb, a pen, and an amount of wintergreen lifesavers.

What do I mean by 'an amount' of wintergreen lifesavers? Well, it depends on the time of day you look in my back pack. Early in the morning it’s an embarrassing amount so when someone asks me for one I have to get it, around noon it’s a shareable amount when they can open the backpack and get it themselves and by evening it’s a small amount and nobody is having any.


I like wintergreen lifesavers, okay? What's not to like about a wintergreen lifesaver? Peppermint? Yeah, those are nasty.

I knew a bunch of people from the lodgeboards were going to be in the area and I didn't want to miss meeting any of them. The problem was, I don't know what half of them actually look like so I had to keep making eye-contact and crazy-person smiling at strangers to see if I knew them. 'Hi! Do I know you? Are you my friend?'

The crew is hard to over-look. If someone was looking for us, we're pretty hard to miss. I think that makes us the human form of the train whistle. The thing that bums me out is that people have spotted us in the parks but were too chicken to come over and introduce themselves.

It never fails when we get back from a trip. I get a emails from people who say 'I saw you guys in the park!'

I usually email them back a week later because I am really bad at email. I really have to think out what I want to say to the person not to freak them out more (they were too scared to come over and say 'hi', how are they going to react to an email? That's a lot of pressure.) or completely humiliate myself but saying something really freaking stupid.

That last part is really, really hard for me. There are a lot of people out there that have stupid emails from yours truly.

And I know that's weird because I can sit here and tell you every detail and embarrassing moment of our trips. Send me an email? Total brain block.

Email cripples me. It's my krypton. It's almost as bad as making a phone call.

Anyway, Tricia had called me when we were in the monorail and told me she, Susan and Rawley were in the park. I called her back to let her know that we had finally made it. We were near the Emporium and they were over at Casey's hot dogs and I expressed to her that we would be walking straight up the middle of Main Street. "Right up the tracks. In the middle."

You know, because they might over look us.

The crew and I started walking up Main Street when we spotted our favorite Disney photographer ever.

We totally scared the crap out of this poor girl. We were really excited to see her and she had no idea why. I mean, we met her for 15 seconds 2 years ago. Was it possible she forgot us?





See, check it out. I wrote this 2 years ago. http://lodgeboards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25408


As we made our way in the direction of the Haunted Mansion, there was a park photographer, meekly smiling at people. You could tell she was a little on the shy side.

Rumor has it that after a park photographer takes a certain amount of photos Disney lets them keep their cameras. This is what we were told by a CM and wanted to help out his sweet, shy girl keep her camera.

She took a couple shots of us, and then we took one of her. Isn't she just adorable? She was earning her ears.


"Oh my GOD! It's her!!" I screamed and when Nikki saw who I was talking about, she screamed too. "Holy cow! It is!"

Poor girl. She looked around to see who we were talking about. She couldn't believe it was her we were excited to see.

"We remember when you were just earning your ears." I tried to explain to her but I could tell just by the look on her face that she was totally freaked the hell out.

I also don't think she believed me for a second. If anyone plans on going to Disney, could you take a look around for her and tell her that the Delswife crew is super-sorry for scaring the holy hell out of her while she was trying to work? I zoomed in on one of the pictures we took of her (because we took several. That's not scary or anything is it?) and her name is Mickie (can you flipping believe that??) and she's from Pottsville, PA.



Tell her; love ya, mean it. Wicked sorry for the screaming. And the pointing. And the hugging. And the picture taking.

God, do you think she even works there anymore after that?

Even though I know she was just praying that we would get lost, she took another great picture of my crew.



Not to worry though. Karma hadn't taken a day off that day. We scared the piss out of Mickie and Karma was unhappy about it.

Now because the crew and I don't travel physically attached to each other, we were a little spread out. Not enought to lose each other but enough that they didn't hear me making plans to meet Tricia and Susan at the end of the street. The only thing they knew was we were headed for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride because I had to check out Captain Jack Sparrow before we did anything else.

*Sigh* Captain Jack. Damn, HE was a brilliant idea. Bravo Disney, bravo! (picture a middle-age, chunky chick with a boot, standing and applauding like a mad woman in your head)

As we walked to the end on Main Street, I saw a woman standing near Casey's who had her back to us. I've seen a couple pictures of Tricia and none of them were of her backside, so I have no idea why I thought that it was her backside.

"Nikki, yell 'Tricia'." I said to Nikki who only had a chance to open her mouth and take a deep breath before...

**SCREECH!!!**

I thought the train whistle was loud. I stood corrected.

So now the order is; whistle, air horn, train whistle, Tricia & Susan.

Brother, still want to play?

Tricia and Susan spotted us and reacted to it before I knew what was happening. I was still thinking the backside I was checking out was Tricia's so when they came screaming towards us from a different angle, I was completely unprepared.

At first I screamed because there was screaming going on. I didn't know why there was screaming, I was busy crapping crackers and remember, I don't run. So screaming is my only defence because my boot doesn't double as a force field or machine gun.

Then I was screaming because I realized it was my friends and I was thrilled to see them.

They were screaming, I was screaming and the crew...

was G-O-N-E.

I'm not kidding. Strangers (to them) came running straight at me, screaming at the tops of their lungs with their arms out and my crew, my beloved family shot off out of there in four different directions like fragments of a hand grenade.

Danger? Every man for himself! Forget the gimp, she'll only slow us down!

Okay, yes. We did clear out Main Street of people with all of our screaming. But those people had no idea what was going on either and probably didn't care if I lived or died. They were most likely only concerned with their own living or dieing.

The only one who gave a tiny little rats ass about what was going on was the Disney photographer at that end of Main Street. He dropped down to one knee and prepared his camera for that CNN/MS NBC/FOX NEWS shot he thought he was about to get.

When Tricia and Susan didn't turn out to be crazy suicide bombers, the crew slowly came back.

Hey Brother! Did you notice if there was a line at Space Mountain? And Nik, did you grab fast passes for Splash while you were over there?



THANKS SUSAN!!!

Love ya, mean it but that was not cool, crew.

When Christmas Trees Attack!

When I was a kid growing up we didn't celebrate holidays, (for religious reasons) we went to Disney World instead. As an adult I celebrate a few of the holidays in my own way but I really have nothing to compare them too.

To me putting a tree inside MY house and dressing it up is really funny. Now don't get me wrong, I think Christmas trees are beautiful and I love looking at other people's trees. For me to have a tree is just weird, like if you decided to start parking your car in your dinning room on leap days.

You don't want to park your car in the dining room that and I don't want a tree.

My friends tried to tell me I HAD to have a tree; I couldn't have Christmas without one.

Well, we wouldn't celebrate Christmas; we'd celebrate 'I love you day'. We have our own rules for 'I love you day' and the trees can stay outside with the birds and bugs. But if you'd like I could haul your mailbox inside for you. Wouldn't lights and tinsel be pretty on that too?

My friends stopped trying to convince me over the years to get a tree and started looking forward to seeing what the kids and I had dressed up in place of the Christmas tree. It's a running joke with my friends about what would be next. I never needed to bring in something from the outside; I had plenty of things inside my own home to dress up.

For a few years we had a 'Not Christmas, I love you day' playpen. I put all there presents in the playpen the day I bought them, because I didn't do the Santa thing either. I had some blinking lights and that furry tinsel-on-a-rope stuff and hung it on the sides of the playpen.

I took the babies out of the playpen first. The blinking lights and that furry tinsel-on-a-rope stuff graduated from the playpen to the 'Not Christmas, I love you day' macramé plant hanger for a few years. It was a pretty big plant hanger with a good sized basket for the gifts and it hung from the ceiling.

The blinking lights and that furry tinsel-on-a-rope stuff graduated again from the plant hanger to the 'Not Christmas, I love you day' over-stuffed chair for one year. My living room was too small for anything else.

The final year BD (before Del) we decorated the entire living room ceiling. We hung snowflakes, ornaments and the blinking lights from the ceiling so it looked like you were under a Christmas tree. Even my friends got involved in that.

So after all those years of not having a tree, you can see I did not have a lot of Christmas tree experience.

And the trees were mad at me for it.

My friend invited the kids and I over to her house one night because Mr. & Mrs. Clause we stopping by to visit her kids. My kids never believed in Santa but thought it would be fun to watch her kids meet them because they were little kids.

And it was fun, especially when Santa asked my son to sit in his lap to tell him what he wanted for Christmas. He was horrified and said he would rather sit in Mrs. Clauses' lap 'Thank you very much.' There was no way he was sitting in some strange guys lap, and was a bit offended to even be asked to do such a thing.

He kept an eye on that Santa dude the rest of the evening.

So I was sitting on the floor in front of my friends' tree. I kept looking back over at it because it was so pretty with its blinking lights, tinsel and tiny little glass ornaments. I was fascinated by it. Every place I looked there was another cute little thing hanging from it wishing me a merry Christmas. I kept wondering how it stayed up, did it suction cup to the floor? Did she somehow bolt it down? There was a dress around the bottom, so I couldn't tell, but I took a mental note to ask her later.

I didn't need to take notes, I found out all by myself.

I was mostly watching the kids and son's freaked out reaction to the lap-sitting proposal but I kept glancing at the tree behind me.

Did that ornament just get closer to me? Nah, it couldn't have.

I was looking at Commando Nikki, who was facing me when her eyes got really big. Before I could turn to see what she was looking at….

*Wham, bang*

I was suddenly looking out from inside the tree. The tree waited until I had looked away and jumped me.

I panicked. There were blinking lights everywhere and I was totally convinced the tree was going to try to electrocute me. I stuck my hand up to hold the tree up; still panicking thinking the tree was also trying to crush me.

Yeah, all 20 lbs. of tree. People are crushed to death by Christmas trees every day.

When I put my hand up inside the tree to prevent my inevitable crushing death, I found out that Christmas trees don't come already assembled, the branches are put into holes on the pipe thing inside.

That I cut the skin between my thumb and finger on.

Now the tree was biting me?!?

Nobody was helping defend me from this brutal attack, they were busy laughing at me while I was busy screaming 'Get it off, HELP, get it off!'

I was going to die by electrocution and crushing and Santa got a kick out of that.

Jolly jerk.

The branches kept coming out of the pipe thing inside so I thought I was winning the battle. I almost had the entire tree torn apart before someone finally came and helped me. When I emerged from under the attacking Christmas tree, I crawled to the other side of it and I had tinsel in my hair and an ornament stuck in my sweater.

To which my friend almost wet her pants laughing at me about.

She was getting a rock for 'I love you day.'

They set the tree back up and had turned it on its tripod leg thing to balance it out. (Oh! That's what WASN'T holding it up!) I was still sitting on the floor, but now I was facing the tree so I saw the second attack coming. I started screaming but this time I put my legs up in the air and covered my face.

Then the tree stabbed in the butt with a branch.

I won the battle, but the tree defiantly won the war.

I didn't want to play anymore.

Stupid, mean, attacking tree.

So I developed a fear of trees. It lured me into its trap with its blinking lights, tinsel and tiny little glass ornaments and beat the heck out of me. I still have no idea why nothing on the tree broke.

Or why that tree decided I was the enemy and must be destroyed.

Fast forward to when Del and Em became part of our family. Del thought we were nuts because we didn't have a Christmas tree. I told him the horror I had survived and he decided I would be safer with a real Christmas tree. Like all blended families, compromises must be made and we agreed on the Christmas tree for Em.

The enemy was about to cross the battle line. Del and Commando Nikki went in Dels' bucket truck; (he worked for the cable company back then,) to buy a tree. When they drove to the lot, the bucket truck got caught on the lights hanging around the lot and he almost took them all down.

He should have taken that as a sign.

So they bought the tallest tree in the place and brought it home. It was too tall for the living room and the top of it bent on the ceiling. I pretended to feel bad for them, the tree didn't fit, better luck next year.

Del whipped out a saw, cut some of the trunk and the top of it off.

Drat! Didn't know that was allowed.

I bet that made the tree good and mad; at least it wasn't me who did it.

He showed me the watering stand the tree was going to live in, a nice big wide stand so it couldn't drop itself on me and attack me.

Why did he think I was going near that thing? Those trees are dangerous!

As the days went by, the tree started to look more like the one on the 'Charlie Brown Christmas' cartoon that Em made me watch but Dels' was taller. I think I hurt his feelings when I started calling the tree Charlie but I didn't mean too. Del bought a few ornaments for it, but the kids kept putting 'unauthorized' things on it like stuffed animals and books.

You bring a tree into our house and we will dress it up the way we want to.

One day while Del was at work, the Charlie the tree started acting up. Every time the kids and I walked around the living room the Charlie the tree would make a 'Tish' sound.

Step, tish, step, tish.

It was driving me crazy so I called Del in his bucket truck. "Honey, Charlie the tree is picking on me." He told me the tree was already standing in the corner, so there wasn't much more he could do, but wanted me to explain to him what the tree was doing to me.

So I told him it was 'Tishing' at me.

He told me trees don't hiss. I told him I didn't say 'hiss', I said 'tish'.

He said I was out of my tree, so I held up the phone and walked closer to the 'tishing' tree. "No big deal, the needles are falling off onto the packages, have you watered it lately?" He asked.

Ahh, Lately? Didn't you mean ever? I was never informed on that.

And what do you mean the needles are falling off? The tree is shedding?

I have to water it? Why am I working for the tree?

Then he said the stupidest thing he could have said to me just before he hung up and abandoned me with my terrible 'tishing' tree problem. I had to go under Charlie the tree and give it water. I have to go near it?!? I thought maybe if I let the stupid thing die of thirst; we could get rid of it faster.

Apparently if you let them die a slow thirsty death, they fight back and become a fire hazard.

Well, that's a game I never want to play. Del wasn't going to be home for hours and now I was really scared of Charlie the tree. So I got the nerve up to water it because I was afraid that the static electricity from the carpet could cause Charlie the tree to suddenly burst into flames. I kept chasing the kids out of the now very dangerous living room.

Christmas trees really need to come with complete instructions for people like me.

In my 'non-Christmas tree having' mind, things had just gotten very serious.

I got a spray bottle first and thought I could mist some water over there so I wouldn't have to get to close to it, but remembered the lights blinking all over it. Probably not a good idea to get something electrical wet so I threw the spray bottle into the bathtub.

I don't know why I threw it into the bathtub, that's just where I decided I was going to keep it from then on because I was panicking, okay?

I went back to the kitchen and got a pitcher and filled it with water. I stood by the sink for a few minutes thinking about how I was going to get the water from the pitcher to the nice big wide stand holding the tree up without having to make contact with Charlie the tree.

There was no way, I was screwed.

But Del promised me it wouldn't fall and attack me. He didn't tell me that it was going to spit needles all over me though. While I was trying to get under Charlie the tree the kids came in the living room to ask me something and I started screaming at them "Get out! Flammable tree! Don't make static! Danger! Danger!"

Don't all parents scream that at their kids? Six months therapy and they will be fine.

I came to the conclusion Charlie the tree needed three feet of personal space and that was the only time I had ever gotten near it. By the time Charlie had his drink, I was an emotional wreak covered in needles thanking God I didn't die.

Of course after that whole mess, I wouldn't let Del turn on the blinking lights. Nope, no way, far too dangerous.

We have had a fake tree since then. It's up in the attic right now.

Waiting.