At least I’m feeling a little more human now.
We went to Dallas yesterday to visit a friend. She’s not from Dallas, she’s from Ohio, but was in town for a convention. Since it’s a hell of a lot closer than driving to Ohio, we went up to see her while she was in the same state.
And we took the 9 month old and the 2.5 year old.
If you have children, you are shaking your head at this point and saying “What were they thinking? That’s crazy-talk.” And you’re right.
We had stayed in another location of Staybridge Suites once and it was really nice, what with the high speed internet access and kitchen and stuff. I booked us a room at the one in Dallas and we had high hopes. Well, when we checked in they told us that the net access was temporarily down and they were working on it. That was fine, we had dinner plans and they would have plenty of time to work on it while we were out. It never got fixed. And our phone was broken so we couldn’t call out.
We headed over to Pappadeaux and had a really excellent meal and the kids were fine and it was loud enough that if they hollered, nobody could really hear them. Then we headed over to downtown Dallas to see the skyline, since it’s one of my favorites, especially at night. I love the skyscraper that has the green neon all down the sides. While we were there we decided to look for the Grassy Knoll.
(pause blogging for a moment while I go upstairs to make some dinner for the 2.5 year old and the fridge breaks and one of the shelves falls and a bottle of Frank’s Hot sauce shatters on the floor and I use the F-word about 50 times)
If you’ve ever been to Dallas, I’m sure you were as underwhelmed as I at the JFK memorial. I took to calling it the Non-ument. It’s this granite slab in the ground surrounded by concrete slabs, and it is singularly ugly. We were woefully unprepared for the foray and didn’t know where the School Book Depository building or anything was. We stumbled across it by blind luck, then decided to go back to the hotel.
Still, the kids were doing well, no major blowups. The little one crashed out. It was only a matter of time. The 2.5 year old had not taken a nap all day, and she refused to go to bed. Nuclear wasteland ensued. Around 2 AM she went postal, complete with snot, spit, tears, blubbering, hysterics, screaming, the works. Past experience has shown that people staying in hotels do not appreciate wailing kids at 2 in the morning. She spent the next hour and a half crying. At 3:30, once things had calmed down, I climbed into bed and proceeded not to be able to sleep. I kinda sorta vaguely drifted off a little bit and then the little one woke up at 5:30, hungry. She went back to sleep and woke up at 6:30, hungry. She fell asleep and all was well.
Until 8 AM when the hotel fire alarm went off.
We canceled our visit to my cousin’s house and headed home. The kids were positively filthy from the carpet in the hotel room. It looked like they had been playing in a coal bin. And they refused to nap during the 3.5 hour drive.
Next time we go out of town, we’re dosing them with Benadryl.
