All hail the power of my psychic ability.

Usually, I go to conventions and go to lectures all day and read books all evening and don’t talk to anyone.  It is absolutely lovely.

I predicted that this vacation would consist of me going to lectures all day and then having to deal with the husband being miserable because he had to deal with Z and his family.  I’m so freaking smart.

The Good

I ate lunch every day at my favorite restaurant in the Gaylord in Orlando.  I will miss this place because the convention is moving.  It has 5 tables of great food for your choosing.  I ate my weight in marinated olives and peppers, artichoke hearts drizzled with balsamic vinegar, an amazing tomato bisque, flavored rice, cucumber and tomato salads, pastas etc.  I always forget not to go on Sunday.  They have a bigger spread but take most of the vegetarian stuff away to make room for huge hunks of dead flesh and then charge more.

The conference was pretty good.  The lectures weren’t as practical this year as I like so that got frustrating.  I’d go to something called, “How to deal with X” because yes, X is a difficult problem.  The lecturer would spend the time discussing in detail all the reasons why X was a problem and then conclude with “and those are all the things that you need to think about when you have to deal with X.”  I’d be sitting there thinking that I knew all that when I started and was really looking for something a bit more helpful.
This is where Freckles would have hung out if she was there.

These dogs were having a very bad day.

These signs were all over. You have to understand that every surface is covered with advertising. I kept trying to understand what these were selling. They didn’t make any sense. It took me two days – 2 DAYS – to understand that they literally meant, “Don’t take your lunch and go across the street and sit on the golf course while you eat it.”

We did go to Universal. It was me and the husband and Z and the husband’s brother.  We went on the Hogwarts ride first.  Only a 5 minute wait!  Anyway, she got off the ride crying because she claimed that her hands were burnt by the slightly warm air that blows on you at one point.  We rode the baby coaster and then I went on the big roller coaster.  We took the train to Diagon Alley and we rode the Gringotts ride.  Again she was very angry and came off it yelling about how terrible it was.  After we finished there we did Men in Black, which she was ok with, but then she got very angry that there was a Simpsons section of the park.  That was completely inappropriate in her mind.  She refused to go on any rides so we left her sitting on a bench and went on the amazing Krustyland ride.  She refused to go on any of the kid’s rides in the park because they were Simpsons themed and she didn’t like the Simpsons.  This started a trend.  We ended up leaving her outside of the next four rides.  Eventually she decided that she wasn’t having any fun like that and that we weren’t going to give into her demands and she decided to play along.  She rode the rest of the rides and we went back and rode Gringotts and the Hogwarts rides and she enjoyed them both the second time.

The Bad

The husband got a really nasty cold.  He had taken Z to Magic Kingdom which seemed to go well until they were in the parking lot and she decided that her day wasn’t “magical enough” and attacked him.  Good times.  I took the next day off the conference and took her to Animal Kingdom because he was too sick to go anywhere.  I figured after so many days in a row with her he needed a break.  She was absolutely perfect for me.  It was almost creepy.  She acted like a normal 12 year old.  I think she knows that I don’t care one bit about her feelings so I can’t be manipulated so she doesn’t try.  I think she could sense that I wouldn’t hesitate to use the “This isn’t my child, officer, I don’t know why she is following me” defense.  We got back to the hotel and she immediately got nasty with her father.  I banned them from speaking directly to each other and that seemed to work well all through Universal day.

They spent time with the husband’s family.  Z was relatively well behaved because it was a new situation.  That lead some people in his family to blow up his phone with texts about how she doesn’t have any mental problems at all and he is just exaggerating and he should be happy that he has such an easy child to raise.  The term “cake walk” was used.  Wow, it is amazing that he got all those schools to kick her out just to feed his delusion.

I had a mental melt down about halfway through.  Usually I read lots of books during this trip.  I started out well with reading Violinist of Venice on the plane.  I read A Fall of Marigolds over the next few days and then I hit a wall.  I couldn’t settle into anything that I had brought to read.  I decided I needed something absolutely mindless so I downloaded
Top Secret Twenty-One (Stephanie Plum, #21)Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich

from my library account and that helped. I downloaded another chick lit book that I got halfway through before deciding that it was just way too stupid to be read. I think that was the point where my brain kicked back into gear after days of lectures fried it.

I ended up finishing two more books on the trip home and I partially read bits of two more that were just too heavy for that week.

A photo posted by @dvmheather on