You ever notice that a vacation that includes any sort of travel is never ever restful? It's always running around like a chicken with it's head cut off to get everything squeezed in that you want to do. I try to never ever vacation outside my home for these reasons. I am a total homebody. Of course every decade or so I end up doing it anyway for whatever stupid reason.
This time around it was to escort the child home from her summer in San Diego. Now mind you I have not taken a vacation from my work since I started there. My plane left for San Diego last Saturday. I had to be at the airport at noon. My boss was calling me at 10:30 am on a Saturday I was leaving for the airport, expecting some results from things I had running on the instrument Friday night. I had already gotten preliminary results at 5:30 pm on Friday night that were basically the same exact answer she was going to get when I went in on Saturday morning to look at the results. When I should have been preparing to get on a freaking plane. I haven't left them for 3 years, this was the first time. I'd like to look at it as job security. All I could really feel though was bitterness at the audacity. I earn them almost $40,000 a week. A week. In the testing I do. They can get the freaking Hell over me leaving for the first time in 3 years.
Moving on....
So I am now in San Diego and was finally getting to see my daughter after 3 very long months. She was sooo glad to see her mommy and vice versa! I'm pretty sure she'd be happier to see her daddy though. I am staying at my friend's house on their couch so while I take the kid during the day I send her back to her grandmother's to sleep. If her daddy were here he'd be sleeping on his mother's couch and she wouldn't be saying good bye to him every night. You may think that this should not be traumatic since she's sleeping anyway but she's 8. She'd rather be sleeping with me. We fly back to San Antonio on Thursday so I'm only here for 6 days, 2 of which are essentially travel.
I told very few people of my arrival in America's Finest City. Mostly just the ones that would be pissed if I didn't tell them. The others can blow. Yes, as a matter of fact I am warm and fuzzy, not.
So here's how the itinerary is going/has gone so far (please note that my father paid for me to come out here, he gets priority):
Saturday: Jas and Alison (my friends putting me up for this trip) were in San Francisco for work, my dad picks up my kid early (her grandmother had left this past weekend for a quilting trip in Palm Springs), entertains her for all day, then picks me up at the airport with her (she's super excited). We find Jas & Alison's house and drop off my and the kid's stuff (she's staying with me for just that night). We go out to dinner then go back to the house to sleep. Amazing what you can get done in 3 hours.
Sunday: Brunch with dad, pick up Jas and Alison from airport, take them home, go out with Alison and the kid to get groceries for dinner, make/eat dinner, take kid back to grandmother's house, come back, collapse. Trip is starting to make me very tired.
Monday: Get kid, stop at a nursery to look at plants (yes, it's an obsession), drive ~20 minutes north to a pho restaurant to eat lunch with co-workers from old San Diego job. Hi Donna, love ya babe, congrats on closing! Drive to exotic pet store (was slightly disappointed), drive to expensive tourist toy store in Old Town(kid was happy), drive back to Jas and Alison's. Please note, I am driving Jas' HUGE Queen Mary truck. Some big ass towing capacity Chevy that I have problems seeing over the steering wheel but can reach the gas pedal and brake so it's ok. It is lifted though with no step bars. Did I mention I'm 5' short? Fun stuff to watch. Also it's the only 'car' Jas and Alison have so I try to keep my borrowing of said vehicular to a minimum. They also have a pair of motorcycles though so it oddly works out ok.
Dad comes and picks us up and takes us to his fav place in the whole world. He essentially lives at O'Brien's Pub. Everybody knows him there and he takes the kid there too when they visit. It's licensed as a restaurant but it's like Cheers and he's Norm. My kid has been there this summer, she loves it. Not for the beer. There's a Hello Kitty store next door and she waits patiently until dad takes her over there and buys her whatever she wants, smart girl. But wait, it gets better. Apparently everybody there loves my dad. That translates to the kid. So one of the other guys there has been known to be taken next door by the kid and get squeezed out of $. I had heard about this and had just figured he'd had too much to drink. Not so. That guy was there this afternoon when we stopped. And he conversed with the kid about Hello Kitty stuff. She went over with my dad and he bought her a bag of loot. Then later this guy takes her back over and buys her another bag of loot. Yeah, she loves this bar. My kid, she's good.
After dinner we go to another nursery. Kid gets a plant. Surprised? No I didn't think so. We then go the book store because you know me, I'm already done with the book I started reading on the plane. Yes, the kid got a book too. Seeing a trend? I'd say she was spoiled but she behaves so well that it really is a moot point.
Future plans? Yeah. Tomorrow is the pick up kid early (9:30 is early) and go to hairdresser's to get my hair cut. I get my hair cut like once a year and my hair stylist here in San Diego I've had since 2000. I miss her so. I'll probably have her trim the kid's hair too. Then dad is picking us up and we're driving up to see my grandmother and aunt up in North County (45 minutes north of San Diego). This is going to be an all day affair. I also plan on visiting another exotics pet store and picking up some stuff I can normally only get on line. I hate paying shipping and this place happens to be someplace we pass up whenever we go to the aunt and grandmother's preferred restaurant up there. We may even get to go to a nursery up there if I don't totally run out of steam. It's a possibility since just writing this is tuckering me out.
Wednesday is my odd day where I don't have plans with dad. I am going to lunch with another old (met in high school) friend of mine. After that another old hs friend will be returning to town so I've set aside the afternoon with her. I don't know long that will last though so dinner is still a bit in the air. I do know that late that night I need to go to Chula Vista to pick up 3 poison dart frogs I put a deposit on. Yes, I am going to smuggle them on to the plane after showing them to security. It's much safer for them to be in my carry on luggage than to be shipped and they are smaller than a person's pinky nail so they are no chances of trauma to anyone on the plane. Unlike peanuts. I was on a flight that was delayed because someone with peanut allergies insisted everything with peanuts had to be removed from the plane. That included any that other passengers already had on them. Can you be more obnoxious?
Tired yet? No peace for the wicked and I am still missing squeezing in at least 2 sets of friends that I can think of. I haven't been able to book Darryl and Denise (our paintball friends) and David and Alena (their kids went to preschool with mine). Not enough time in the day...
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