Not my kind of beautiful

2004-05-31 - 7:53 p.m.

I'm back in Sacramento now. I guess it's good to be home. It's so comfortable here. But I already feel myself getting sucked in. There's stuff here that needs to be done. Not the stuff I need to do.

This weekend was great. Really and truly wonderful. My parents picked me up from Tigger's house right on time at 9pm, and then I drove them to the John Wayne Airport to pick up my brother. After we picked him up I drove us all to our hotel in Anaheim.

The next morning we got up pretty early and were in Downtown Disney by seven o'clock or so. We had planned to get beignets for breakfast, but the shop wasn't open yet. And it didn't have a sign saying when it would be open so we skipped the beignets and had breakfast at a bakery in Disneyland when it opened instead. After spending an hour in Disneyland we crossed over to the California Adventure park and spent the day there. First thing we did was to go on the new Tower of Terror ride. It was pretty cool, especially since I didn't know exactly what was going to happen once I got on it. We stayed in that park until it closed at nine o'clock and then crossed back over to Disneyland where we stayed until it closed at midnight. I didn't actually take very many pictures this weekend that didn't have my family in them, but here are a few from Saturday. This first one is me (my feet) on the Orange Stinger which is basically one of those rides with swings that go round and round only this one is inside a giant orange. The second one is just a picture of Paradise Pier.

We spent Sunday in Disneyland itself. We went on almost every ride and saw almost every show. We actually stopped a bit early to save ourselves a good space to see Fantasmick. We sat down at seven for a show that started at nine. Well, actually my brother and I ran around scoping out the eats in the area and then bringing dinner to my parents so he and I weren't sitting for quite so long. And really, there was plenty to keep us entertained even sitting there, and we were tired from running around all day for our second day straight so it wasn't bad. And we had great seats for an awesome show. We stayed that night until closing at midnight, too. Anyway, let's see, here are a couple of pictures taken on Sunday in Disneyland. The first one was taken while I was driving my snazzy purple sports car in Autopia. You can see the Matterhorn in the background. The second one is a picture of my dinner which I ate while waiting for Fantasmick. I had sausage gumbo in a bread bowl from a shop in New Orleans Square.

This morning we got up relatively early, checked out of the hotel and took my brother to the airport. Then we spent the rest of the day driving home. We left the airport at around 7:30 and got home at around 3:30. Traffic wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.

When we got home I pretty much took care of all the business that I needed to take care of after not being home for two weeks. Threw away a ton of junk mail, watered the garden (yes, my mom had been watering it while I was away, but nobody watered it all weekend and it's been in the 90's), and washed the cars.

Oh, guess what else happened yesterday while I was in Disneyland. Aunt Flo came to visit. Yup, 66 days late. So I'm relieved about that really. Except shoot, she hadn't come in 94 days, why did she have to come while I was in Disneyland? And of course I was unprepared. But really, the only mishap I had with Aunt Flo was the PMS. For me PMS lasts through the first day of my period. Last night I cried because I didn't get any ice cream. How incredibly dorky is that? Really I just needed to cry and the minor disappointment of not getting ice cream tipped me over the edge. I didn't throw a major fit or anything, but tears did fall. And then there were more tears for absolutely no reason while walking back to the hotel. It was such a relief when we got there and we all went to bed so I could just let the tears out. Whoever invented PMS had a really sick sense of humor.

When we got home today we found that we had six new messages on our answering machine. We rarely get messages on our machine, so getting six over one weekend is very unusual. It turned out that all six were from my maternal grandfather. We're planning on driving out to visit him next Saturday, but apparently he thought that we were going to visit him this Saturday--two days ago. At first when we didn't show up he was annoyed. And then later when we still hadn't shown up he was pissed. And he was calling to tell us so. If you thought someone was going to come visit you and they never showed up and then didn't answer the phone for several days afterwards, would you be pissed or would you be worried? Yeah, I'd be really worried. Especially if it was my daughter and her family who always comes when they say they will. My mom talked to him on the phone and straightened everything out. He says we should disregard the letter he sent us when it arrives in the mail. To me this is all such a surprise. How could Grampa get so angry like this? We aren't a family that argues! My mom tells me that when they first planned this she even had him write it down on his calender so at least there was that proof in his own writing that we weren't abandoning him. I think that's how he feels, though, abandoned. He used to be really social, but in the last year or so he's been withdrawing from people and now he's lonely. I worry about him. I often wish my grandmother was still around to keep him company and keep him on course. We've offered to have him move in here or move to a house closer to here so we could visit more often, but he refuses. I really do worry about him.