I have two kiddos who have been barfing since 5am. A stomach flu in the summer is just WRONG.
WRONG.
So instead of dwelling on the negative, let’s talk about what is RIGHT in the summer.
Traveling.
I went to Las Vegas with Brad a couple of weeks ago – he had a business trip and I got to tag along since his mom agreed to fly up here from Atlanta and take care of our young ‘uns. (Thanks, Gigi! We love you!!)
We haven’t been to Las Vegas since Sloan was a baby, and the last time we were there, we noticed The Cosmopolitan being built. That’s where we stayed this time around, and I have to tell you, it’s tits. I love that place. It’s one of the few places in Vegas where you can feel good about climbing into your hotel bed even though you know a gazillion people have slept (and screwed) in it before you. My body sort of freaked out as soon as we left and collapsed into a bad cold, which sometimes happens to moms who know they will have 72 hours away from their children. Or 72 hours away from anyone asking anything of them, for that matter.
Our accommodations rocked. I will definitely stay at the Cosmopolitan again.
Our room, a lovely view of the bed linens and nightstands. We had a balcony overlooking the Bellagio fountains to the left, and a small kitchen behind me which we didn’t really use, but how great is it to have a refrigerator and a microwave when you stay in a hotel? Next time I am definitely bringing microwave popcorn.
What you can’t see in the bathroom is the beautiful European glass shower and the huge bathtub behind me. The bathroom has a large cut-out that is open to the sitting area of the room, with a shade you can draw down if you like. I took a bath every day, and actually browsed some of the books they had on the coffee table in our living room. One of them was a dictionary of fashion – very interesting and a great bathtub friend. I wanted to take that book home, but suspected it would somehow end up on my bill, tripled in price.
Our sitting area had an amazing blue couch and silver wallpaper, as well as a beautiful leather sitting chair. We also had a desk and work area off to the left. You should have seen the second kind of wallpaper in the toilet room, it was so damn pretty that I wanted to take photos of myself sitting on the john.
Have I mentioned I love the Cosmopolitan??
Even though I was sick, the trip was a blast. I took lots of cold medicine.
I slept.
And ate.
And hung out at the pool.
The Bamboo Pool was my favorite. It had a very shallow shelf where you could lay in four inches of water, which made it easier to pretend that it wasn’t 105 degrees outside. If you are a morning pool person, you last quite well until about 2pm, when the inferno of Vegas begins to make you feel as if you are burning in a fiery pit of hell. You also start to wonder if your skin will just melt off your face by 3pm in a puddle of sweat.
It’s all good, because the hour of inferno coincides with the time of day when the younger, hung-over people straggle into the pool for their time in the sun. And the old ladies like me exit the pool deck to go take a bath and a nap in their air-conditioned room.
There is a lot of good people-watching to be had at the Cosmopolitan pools. You have your Europeans, your hipster couples, the aging dudes on a guy’s trip, some strange Jersey couples vacationing with their parents, and a smattering of twenty-something girls in tiny bikinis. I watched many people laying on their loungers, greased up for maximum sun damage, puffing on cigarettes in the 105 degree weather.
This reminded me of one particular spring break back in high school. I was shoved into the backseat of an old Volvo and had to sit on top of a bunch of camping gear for five hours while we were on the road. I had a sunburn and cornrow braids in my hair, and then after eating a bunch of mushrooms was basically lighting one cigarette off the other, puffing madly and staring at the same Glamour magazine cover for four hours. I would try to toss the soon-to-be-done cigarette out the sunroof (since we had no air conditioning) and it would immediately fly back into the car and into the face of my unfortunate backseat partner, Dan. Finally he screamed at me,
“WHY DON’T WE JUST LIGHT YOU ON FIRE???”
Which is how I felt about those people smoking cigarettes by the pool in Las Vegas during the month of June.
Brad got so busy with work and answering his phone that he could barely make it to any of his sessions over at The Palms. That’s OK because I’m sure the Palms has NOTHING on my beloved Cosmopolitan, and Adrienne Maloof is a mean little troll with a McDonald’s in her hotel. The only thing he really did go to hear was Tony Robbins, and Brad said I would have been VERY impressed with Tony’s extensive use of swear words in his 200-miles-an-hour speech. This fact alone, that Tony Robbins (world-renowned motivational speaker and coach) throws out lots of SHITS and DAMNS and ASSHOLES made me very happy.
I’m sort of making it up that he said “asshole”.
Brad just mentioned that he swore a lot.
I really, really wish that he had said “smelly, hairy asshole”. Just because I would love that.
One of the best moments of the trip was when Brad and I drifted back up to the Bamboo Pool around 5:30 in the evening, to sit in the water and drink a margarita. We ran into this guy up there in the pool -
- and I know you can’t really tell, but he had a kick-ass sunburn on his back, which we noticed when he stumbled out of the pool to find the bathrooms. And then we laughed really, really hard because he had a slanted sunburn line all across his back from standing in the pool for hours as he drank beers and talked to every person within listening range.
We couldn’t help pointing out the hilarity of the sunburn line on his back to him, since his buddy had noticed it too as he climbed out of the pool. As we were all laughing, and I was trying to snap a photo of the debacle, he smiled and yelled out,
“WHAT DO I CARE?? I HAVE A WIFE AND SIX KIDS AT HOME…AND I’M IN VEGAS!!”
My thoughts exactly, drunk sunburned dude.
