What Do JUNO? (Get it??)

"Some people using this medicine have engaged in activity such as driving, eating, or making phone calls and later having no memory of the activity."

-Ambien Side Effects

Perhaps I should have paid more attention to this information.

When I travel, I often take Ambien to sleep. Otherwise, I toss and turn, sleep a few hours and never really relax. Especially if my husband is snoring in his usual buzz saw fashion beside me. When we were in Pensacola a couple of months ago, I took an Ambien one night and lay down on my bed to read for a while. The print began to blur and then...that's it. That is all I remember. I assumed I just fell asleep.

The next morning, I asked Liz and Cory what they thought about "Juno". I had already seen it and they were watching it as I read. Liz paused, looked at me quizzically, and said "Uh. You watched it with us, mom."

Turns out, I had done more than fall asleep. I got up, went in the living room, had a conversation and laid on the couch with them to watch TV. Then I wished everyone a good night and went to bed.

I have no memory of this.

I guess it's a good thing I didn't take a drive. I could have ended up back in Kentucky.

And that would have been a lot more annoying that watching "Juno" twice.

Check out my Herald-Leader post today: Ya Gotta Have Friends

Can You BELIEVE It?

So, I went to Pensacola last week. It was fabulous. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. But I just can't believe how INCONVENIENT everything was.

I actually had to STEP OUT the door of my bedroom to really see the view. I could see it through the door. But I had to step out to really experience it. Can you believe it? STEP OUT. A whole step. What an inconvenience.

Then I actually had to WALK DOWN THE STAIRS to get to the beach. No elevator. No cabana boys to carry me as I reclined, sipping a frozen drink. Geez. SO. MUCH. WORK.

I had to cross a few yards of sand to get to the beach. A few yards. Can you believe it?

And I could actually see some people sharing our beach. I could SEE them sitting right near us. Well. Sort of near us. OK. They were not that close, but they were IN SIGHT. The nerve!

Sigh.

I managed to persevere. And it was all worth it. TOTALLY worth it. Just to see HIM play in the sand and dance in the waves.

I would have walked miles and miles and miles for that.

Maybe it wasn't QUITE so inconvenient after all.

Check out my Herald-Leader blog post today: Special Grandparent Books and sign up to win a free book!

13 Is NOT An Unlucky Number

Well, we are at "Da beech" as my grandson calls it and it is pretty darn fabulous. I would show you, but my camera and my laptop had a disagreement and the laptop won. It spurned the advances of the camera and refused to allow any penetration whatsoever.

Get your mind out of the gutter.


We have two beach houses right on the Gulf of Mexico on Santa Rosa Island at Pensacola and the sand is sugar-white, the water is pale green and navy blue, the sky is a hard, bright azure and all is right with the world.

There are 13 of us here in the two beach houses. One house is light blue and one is pink. We are making frequent treks the few feet between the two houses to visit, eat and share the wi-fi connection. Last night, we had a big cookout and had wonderful steaks cooked on the grill and played a board game together after dinner.

As we played, I looked around at my mom, who was born in Pensacola and has been bringing us to the beach since I was a baby, and my sister and brother and all the kids and my little blonde grandson whose hair is turning blonder every day in the hot sun and thought "13 is not an unlucky number. It's a lucky number. The luckiest number IN THE WORLD."

Second Day In Paradise. Or When We Decide To Do Nothing But Eat And Lie On The Beach. Every Day.

Dreams Resort and Spa in Puerto Vallarta is located on the quite wonderful Bay of Banderas. Most of the other hotels in Puerto Vallarta are located in the hotel zone, which is near or in downtown Puerto Vallarta. I did not want to be in downtown Puerto Vallarta in the crowded hotel zone. I wanted a lovely, secluded hotel. So, that's what I found. And that's what we had. Here's the newer club tower, where we stayed. It backs up to the Sierra Madre mountains. Our room was just about in the middle of the tower.

The mountains come right down to the water on both sides of the beach. This makes the beach at Dreams very, very private.

The left side of the beach.

The right side of the beach.

The beach is completely secluded. If you don't want to go anywhere, you don't have to. If you don't want anyone to bother you, they won't. If you want to spend every day either planning your next meal or lying on the beach, you can do that.

So that's what we did.

We sat right here. Every day. And talked about our next meal. What we should order. Whether one of us should go get some more coconut ice cream. Whether we should apply more sun block. Or not. Whether we should take a nap now. Or wait until later. It took a great deal of time to make these decisions. Pretty much all day. Every day.

It was wonderful.

Don't Pee On My Parade

Flash Back Friday

"... that's right, I stepped up ... she is my friend and needed help ... if I had to, I would pee on any one of you ..." - Matt LeBlanc (Joey) on Friends

No, this is not another post about someone peeing. This is about someone peeing on your leg. Or, not so much.

Have you ever been stung by, like, five gazillion bees at the same time? No? Well, I have. OK, maybe not five gazillion.

It could have been four gazillion. Anyway, it felt like five. It happened when I was about 10 or so and we were at Pensacola Beach. My mom and I were swimming together, out past the breakers, parallel to the beach. And, in hindsight, really, what was she thinking? Sharks, riptides, enraged jellyfish? But she had been going there since she was a girl and nothing like that had ever happened. Until that day.

I was just swimming along in my little bikini, happy to be with my mom, swimming along without a care in the world. Then I swam over some scratchy seaweed. At least, it felt like scratchy seaweed. I thought "Hmm...some scratchy seaweed." And kept swimming. Then, I paused. Paused and tread water. Hey. That kinda hurt. That kinda hurt...a lot. And it's hurting more and more. I cried for my mom and she got me to shore. Where we found dark red, raised, painful, swelling welts all across my belly. Which were becoming more painful every minute. I had not swum across some scratchy seaweed but right over top of a Portuguese Man 'O' War which obligingly dragged it's poison filled tentacles across my belly.

My baby brother shrieked "Rub sand on it! Put sand on it!" Of course, we ignored him. I don't recall whether peeing on it was actually under consideration, but I doubt it. Instead, they rushed me to the emergency room where I was examined, given some pills for the pain and told to go home to bed.

And where they told us that we should have rubbed sand on it.

Apparently, my brother had heard some adults who lived in the area talking about jellyfish stings and what you should do for them and he soaked it up like a little sponge. And then tried to tell us.

I'll never forget the sensation of swimming over that jellyfish. And it was more than 40 years ago.


Next time, I'll listen to my brother.