Friday, August 9, 2013

Me & My Julie…

Okay so I am starting to get with my “Me Program.” One big installment of that happened last weekend Aug 3-4. I met my friend Julie (Ella’s Mom) in Ft. Payne, AL at a Hampton Inn. It was the mid way point between us. We met for one reason…well two actually…1. Sanity 2. Digital Scrapbooking. Oh yeah baby, bring it on! We had a delightfully quiet time. We arrived at the Hampton at around 11:45 and went in to see if a room was ready early. There were exactly 3 other cars in the lot. The sweet little old lady behind the desk, kindly, in a gentile voice, informed us that no rooms were available. I asked if we could sit in the lobby and wait and hang out…she informed me in her southern belle voice that the lobby was also unavailable. I looked at her quizzically and said, “Really? The lobby is unavailable?” It was deserted. So she pressed on and told me that they were sold out the night before and nothing was clean including the lobby. Yeeahhhhh riiiiiiiighhhtttt. So I said in my best funny voice, “Sold out? The parking lot is empty, where are you hiding all the people?” This was met with silence. Okay then. She smiled sweetly and suggested that we go get some lunch and try back later.  Alrighty then. So we headed to the the Ruby Tuesdays. We walked in to blaring loud music that made the restaurant feel more like a night club. An 80’s night club mind you, which is great, but still.  I am getting old people…it’s sad. I started dancing in my seat and when the waitress arrived I asked if we were in a club. Again, nervous silence. Yeaahhhhh, so our Ft. Payne brothers and sisters working the Hampton and Ruby T’s lack a sense of humor and sarcasm seems to confuse them. So we ate a good meal (while our ears bled) and then geared up to try the old lady back at the front desk again. It occurred to me I should have asked for the manager the first time, check, keep that idea close at hand. We walked back in and our sweet, and now slightly creepy, old lady greeted us with her poised smile. She let us know that a room was indeed ready now. I was so thankful. I inquired about her name. She pointed slowly to her right, arm fully extended with her pointer finger moving slowly from up to down like a plane landing, to point at the plaque on the wall that bore her name, Janice, with the words Acting Manager under it. Hmmmm, glad I didn’t pull the “what’s your name who’s your boss” card.  And I was pretty sure Janice is going to sneak into our room that night and kill us with a butcher knife. Bates Motel anyone?

So we brought all our gear in and just had gotten settled when there was a knock at the door.  It was housekeeping, she didn’t realize we had checked into our room early and it freaked her out to hear voices on the floor she was cleaning. She was very sweet and asked us if we needed anything. I inquired about toothpaste and she said she didn’t think they had that. Oh well, I’ll just raid Julie’s. Anyhoo, after that interruption we got right down to work. Julie fired up Pandora and we rocked out to Third Day, Tenth Ave. North, Toby Mac and many other good tunes. We both were making pages for our blogs of our trips to China. We churned out pages left and right…but mostly right. Then knock…knock…knock. Really?! So I go answer the door again…it was the same sweet housekeeping girl. She had gone down to the front desk to ask about toothpaste for me and informed me that they do have it, if I need it. So nice. Love that southern hospitality.  Eventually we figured we had to eat and ordered enough Pizza, cheese sticks and pasta to feed a small village, and it was delivered straight to our door! After gorging ourselves on pizza we were back to work. We had to dip into some good ole’ Michael Jackson and then we rounded out our night with Madonna. Ahhhhh, children of the 80’s.

My favorite quote of the evening was when I asked Julie about a page I had been working on, that admittedly I had been struggling with but thought I’d landed somewhere safe with it. When I showed Julie her response was this, “Well I it isn’t horrible. (my mouth fell open) I mean I don’t hate it. (slight choking sound in my throat) But I don’t love it either…” WHAT?!! Oh my word! I then laughed so hard! Can I tell you how much I love this woman?! I love her LOTS!! Not only can we scrapbook for hours together without feeling the need to talk the whole time or any of the time, but brutal honesty comes with this friendship too! So refreshing…and somewhat painful. So after much laughter on both our parts, I reworked the page. It looked better. Here are the pages I got done!

Hope Page 110Hope Page 111Hope Page 112Hope Page 113Hope Page 114Hope Page 115Hope Page 116Hope Page 117Hope Page 118Hope Page 119Hope Page 120Hope Page 121

Around 6:30 pm ish we heard a loud family across the hall. The TV started blaring, children could be heard and above it all was a screaming baby. Sigh. Seriously?! The volume of this family ebbed and flowed but about every 45 minutes the baby would scream. At 9:00 pm I got twitchy and looked at Julie and said, “I hate to be that person. But would you be willing to change rooms if they had one available? I drove an hour and half away from my home to get away from a screaming child in the night.” And I knew her answer before I asked. SOOOO, I called the front office and made the awkward request and luckily I found the one girl in Ft. Payne with a sense of humor. I begged her for a new room and apologized profusely for being that person.  She told us to come down any time that she just re-keyed us some new cards. I went down immediately for the new room cards and thanked her again. We were on the same hall at the end in the corner room, which the front desk girl said was the quietest room in the hotel and by the way it was bigger! Score! Friends we moved our junk at 9:15 pm and it was soooooo the right move! It was very quiet and wonderful! Good call! Back to work. I got as far as my photos would carry me on the blog and realized I forgot the coming home at the airport file…dadgumit! So I switched to photo organization, uploading and some blogging.

I slept well but woke up several times to turn over, the bed wasn’t great, but the sleep overall was. We woke in the morning and drug ourselves down to the complimentary breakfast which was actually pretty good. I got to introduce Julie to a cool waffle iron but unfortunately the batter was yuckie and the waffle, while cooked to perfection, did not taste that good. We got a glimpse as the giant family we moved away from and they were unique. They even had a Noah doppleganger, no truly. I even had to show the woman a photo of Noah to prove it…I think I scared her. Anyway, we ate and then went back up to the room to eek the last hours out of our playdate. We sat down and got comfy and there was a knock at the door. It was the same cleaning woman from the day before…we freaked her out. She was all like, I didn’t know anyone was in here and weren’t you down the hall?! God bless this poor gal. And so, Julie showed me how to use my camera. Bonus! And then I realized we had no pictures of our weekend. We took two cell phone shots and I took one of the room and our lovely view of the interstate. Then it was 11:00…dum dum da dum. Time to check out. Sadness. We decided to eat lunch because Eric suggested I do that via text (love that man). We went to what we thought was a Mexican restaurant, but it was a steak house instead. Great food though and we got to throw our peanut shells on the floor. We chatted and then said our goodbyes. Sigh. I miss her already. Thanks Jewels…great getaway!

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