Vacation & other boring stuff

I rescheduled the appointment I had with my pdoc later this month to August. Upon reading through all my emails yesterday, I found out that they moved up the annual Windy City Rubber Ducky Derby. According to an email I got back in November, it was originally scheduled for August, but I guess they had to nix that idea and move it up.

Seems trivial to change my pdoc appointment just so I can watch them dump thousands of rubber duckies into the Chicago River, but it's something my sister and I have been taking our daughters to every year since it started, and we plan to keep going. We go watch that and if the weather cooperates, we head to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. I'm sure my pdoc is in no hurry to see me anyway, especially not after my last visit and the tearful telephone plea that followed.

I managed to make it through vacation without battling my brain about the medications. I was all too willing to take the Seroquel in hopes it would knock me out so I didn't feel the pain in my spine. Didn't work out that way though and I only snagged about 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

As I mentioned, vacation was long, tiring and emotional, but still we had fun. On the way down we stopped in Gatlinburg, TN so my daughter could see the Smoky Mountains. We went horseback riding through the mountains when we first arrived, which was just beautiful. We even saw a coyote along the path. He stopped and stared at us for a bit, and we did the same, but eventually he lost interest first and walked away.

It was stifling hot in Gatlinburg. The humidity was unreal. We tried walking around for awhile after we'd checked into our hotel, perusing all the local shops, but we quickly turned around and returned to the air conditioned comfort of our room. Turns out that even though there are tons of shops, there isn't much variety...it's the same dozen or so shops, just with different names. They all pretty much sell the same stuff. After the sun started to set, we went and sat on our balcony which overlooked a mountain stream.

We drove through Pigeon Forge on our way to Gatlinburg, but we didn't dare stop, unless we were forced to because of a red light. What an absolutely scary and overtly touristy place that town is. If anyone is familiar with the area, that place is the poster child for what I'd consider the ultimate "HORROR VACATION SPOT"! It's even worse than Wisconsin Dells. It boggles my mind that people would deliberately go to such a place AND fork out their hard earned money to do so. Everything about it screamed cheesy, over-priced, white-trash heaven.

The next morning we headed off for Myrtle Beach via the mountains. I'm not afraid of heights at all, but I was getting scared trying to drive through the Smoky's. I'd look up and get dizzy, or look off to the side where there was a huge drop-off and get panicky. I stopped several times under the guise that it was a good spot for the kiddie to take some photographs, but I was really just stopping so I could get my panic attacks under control before I passed out. I don't know why that happened. I'd driven that exact same route when I was in my late teens and didn't have a problem back then, except that I didn't know what the term "down-shift" meant and so I was smoking the brakes on my sister's car trying to get it to slow down.

The weather in Myrtle Beach was also stifling. It hadn't yet warmed up much in Chicago, so we were not accustomed to the heat and humidity yet. I felt like I was melting most of the time we were outside. We'd get up early in the morning to do things and then spend the afternoon indoors somewhere. Only got sunburned on my scalp though, cuz I was slathering suntan lotion on my skin constantly.

In Myrtle Beach we did a lot of stuff...lots of shopping (mostly bought stuff for the kiddie, but I did get two swimsuits and a pair of sunglasses for myself), hung out at the beach a lot, ate out at a different restaurant for dinner every night, took a four hour cruise out on the Atlantic, etc.

Out of everything we did, I think I liked the parasailing best. When I made the reservation before we left, I was excited to try it, but I had almost completely psyched myself out of doing it by the time the day rolled around for us to go. It was too late to cancel by the time I was scared shitless, so I had to at least get on the boat and in order to even do that I had to take a bunch of Valium.

They make you sign a waiver before you get on the boat that says you don't suffer from any of a list of ailments or conditions, including mental illness. I had several of them, but signed it anyway. I could understand not doing it if you were pregnant, had a seizure disorder or heart condition, but if you're screwy in the head? My daughter said it's probably because they don't want someone that's suicidal going six stories above the ocean and trying to get out of their harness so they could fall to their death. I'm deathly afraid of water, which is why I was psyching myself out of even going, so there's no chance in hell I'd try and commit suicide while parasailing.

The guys on the boat apparently pick the people that look the most nervous to go first. Luckily the Valium had kicked in and even though I was panicking on the inside, I looked completely relaxed on the surface. Up until they finally picked us to go (we were second to last out of about 12 people, two of which went up solo), I still wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it, but I'm glad I did cuz it was amazing. It's so peaceful and quiet once you're up in the air, not scary at all. We didn't see any fish, dolphins or sting rays, like some of the others had seen, but we did see a fairly large shark.

We were out on the Atlantic on our cruise when we found out that Michael Jackson had died. At first we thought my daughter's boyfriend was just yanking our chain, but I texted and confirmed it with a friend of mine. Most of the celebs that passed away did so while we were on vacation...Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, etc.

We tried to avoid TV as much as possible, because shortly after we arrived in Myrtle Beach, the whole scandal involving the South Carolina governor and his mistress in Argentina broke. We're like what the fuck? We just dealt with our own governor scandal that was constantly on the news, now we go to another state and have to listen to every station talking about another scandal? The governor scandals are following us around!