We made it

As you know, we made it to Cincinnati.  We got checked in.  Got our bags unloaded.  And I am still starving at this point.  As we are leaving the hospital to go feed our faces, Joan gets to chatting with one of her nurses.  For 20 minutes.  Seriously.  No disrespect to her...I love her with all my heart...but I am hungry...and you are going to see this nurse in the morning when you come back.  

Yes...I was thinking of me and only me.  Okay, I was really thinking of Kathy AND myself.  I just knew that at any minute, one of us was going to tear the other's arm off and start chomping away.  Told you I was hungry. 

We finally get Joan to ourselves and get to the parking garage where Kathy asks me to "please drive?"  IF I could rewind right here, I would find a stake and drive it into my heart.  Then I would have cut my fingers off, one at a time, with nail clippers.  It would have been less painful...AND I was already AT a hospital.  AND I wouldn't have had to have driven. 

"Okay, I can do that.  After all, you have driven the whole way here anyway."  Oh, did I tell you that she let me drive for 10 minutes on the Bore Snore Beltway?  She is such a generous sister.....

Now... I don't know if you know this or not but parking garages are not my thing.  I'm not scared of them.  I just have a weird feeling when I'm in them.  Like I'm going to hit my head.  ALL. THE. TIME.  I can't help but squint my eyes so as to shield them from getting hit.  I believe, even though we were on level 2, we had to go UP a couple of levels just to get out.  I am assuming level 2 means two levels down but they should just say that.  I had to take a whole lot more turns to get out of that stupid garage, than she did to get in it! 

We head to Don Pablos.  As if driving in Cincinnati isn't scary enough, driving someone else's car makes it double scary for me.  The last thing I want is to hurt someone else's car, ya know???  Finding a parking spot was nearly impossible.  I thought Kathy or Joan was going to have to go inside and pull someone out and make them move THEIR car for us.  Ugh!!!  I can't tell you how much of a nightmare that city is.  If you have been there and you like it, then you must be clinically insane.  The only thing I found there, that I liked more than my sister & the family I went to see, was the exit road out of there!

Don Pablos had some good food.  Joan had their "biggest" margarita and it took her 41 minutes to drink it.  I think that was mostly because she hadn't seen people in so long, she wanted to get in as many words as she could.  And she did.  No fear there.  Anyway, as usual, I ate a little more than I should have and felt full up to the roots of my hair.  I needed to burp so bad that it almost hurt.  I was debating ordering a pop when it suddenly came to me...without my knowledge...so I couldn't stop it...and it was loud...B-U-R-P!!!

Whoa!  I don't do that in restaurants.  Maybe at home (maybe?) but never ever at a public restaurant!  I was a little mortified at the sound that came out and my eyes were big and all I could say was "Now I know how babies feel."  As we are laughing about it, I happen to look at the table behind Kathy (facing me) and this lady is sitting there with a young gal and I could just tell she was horrified at what I had just done. 

Joan breaks out in story time about this moment and here's how that went.  "We were sitting outside on the smoker's porch last night, joking around, and there was a roll of paper towels in the middle of the table.  I said to this gal, you see that roll of paper towels?  Yes.  That's my tampon!"  Well, we broke out into laughter (I can't remember how that story came up though) right there at the table.  LOUD laughter.  I looked right over at that lady just as she put her napkin on her plate, rolled her eyes and got ready to leave. 

Ha ha ha now that is just funny!  We ran her completely away.  She may have even had her hands waving hysterically in the air when she ran out the door.  I'm not sure though because I was almost on the floor laughing. 

After dinner, we head down the strip mall to Carter's.  Joan said she would be outside smoking and would find us.  Kathy and I go in and look at a few things and walk right back out.  I told Kathy I was going to scream when I saw Joan and scare her.  There was no Joan.  She was gone.  Ka-put!  So we headed to the next store, Home Goods, since we had told her that was the reason we walked down here anyway.  We figured she would be waiting for us inside the door.  No.  No Joan.  We have lost her.  And she couldn't have left us there because she doesn't have a driver's license and Kathy had the keys!

Look around a little bit and she finally calls...just as my phone died on me.  Great.  Turns out, she had followed us into Carter's and we didn't know it.  We were probably only in the building two minutes and we didn't see her come in and she didn't see us leave.  It wasn't a big store at all either.  Can we say distracted???  We meet back up and did some shopping.  That was a very neat store if you haven't ever been in one.  It was a cross between Pier 1 and Gordman's, I guess.  Very cute stuff.  They had furniture with the name brand "Hooker."  If I would have had a truck, I would have come home with some Hooker furniture!

Another store or two and I need to find a Wal-Mart because I seriously need a new blender and can't find one in any of these stores we have been in.  How hard do you think it is to find a Wal-Mart in Cincinnati, Ohio when you have never been there before???  With the help of a gal at the Ronald McDonald house, we found one not too far away.  We did though, get turned around once...but that wasn't our fault...the GPS told me we were on a different road than the sign said!!  It's not my fault dang it!

Found the Wal-Mart.  Found the blender (after an hour).  Didn't find the Sally Hansen wax I am needing.  Kathy asks me again (I am such a sucker!) to please please please drive back to the house because her head was killing her.  This was a sign folks.  A sign for her and I to never darken the doorstep of this crappy place, ever again.  The funniest thing happened in Wal-Mart though.  I will never forget this as long as I live. 

Kathy walks in first and the greeter (about 80 years old and has a cane & a smile) tips his cane to the right, taps his foot out with his cane, like a bow, and says "Welcome to Wal-Mart."  Kathy says thank you and keeps walking.  I am next.  "Welcome to Wal-Mart."  Thanked him and kept going.  He was an odd little man but that little bow was adorable.  Joan comes in behind us and he does the same for her, "Welcome to Wal-Mart."  We are standing there waiting for her and she keeps walking.  Kathy says something like "aren't you going to say thanks?"  Joan looks at the man and says, "He's not real.  He's wax."  Pretty sure that was the closest I came to pissing myself that whole trip.  And it took forever to make her realize he was a human being!

Driving back, of course, like in any city, there is road construction.  And Joan was talking like a mad man, we were laughing like burnt out hyenas and I miss my exit.  Now... for those of you who have never been blessed with this city, I will tell you this.  It isn't like Des Moines, Omaha, KC, Wichita...where you can just go to the next exit and get right back on.  No, it's nothing like that.  The next exit was about 2 miles down the road and for two miles I had to hear two things over and over and over and over and over.....Kroger's--they have Kroger's all over down here.  Kroger's is the main grocery store here.  There are Kroger's everywhere.  I'm pretty sure I heard the name Kroger's 18 times in 30 seconds.  I finally had to end the madness with "Hey Joan, do they have any grocery stores down here?"  She just looked at me like I had lost my mind.  And then laughter.

The next road that I was to get off onto was called "Hopple St."  Between the GPS and Kathy, I heard Hopple Street 90 times in 30 seconds.  I was screaming at the girls.  They were screaming at me back while we were all laughing at the same time.  One of us would talk so the others would talk over that person and it was a nightmare.  Getting lost in this city scared me bad.  GPS had us going back to where we were supposed to go though.  Through more road construction...and at one point I couldn't understand how the car ahead of me got in the other lane...because I couldn't see the break in the cones...and I'm sure every car behind me was screaming that F-bomb that I am (to this day) still fighting not to say!

There was some nutjob that about took the back end of Kathy's car off while we were going down the interstate.  Seriously folks, if you have to drive like a rocket, leave 30 minutes early.  Don't be putting MY life and MY families lives at stake.  This was one of those moments when I got really frustrated at driving someone else's car in the city.  But we didn't get hit and we didn't die and neither did anyone else. 

And another thing I don't understand about their roads out there (in the city) is how you come to an intersection, not in a turning lane, your lane just ends.  Yeah for real.  And then you have to go on a wing and a prayer that you can blend in with traffic and nobody kills you.  Totally not worth the headaches at this point.

When we got back to the house, Joan gave us a tour and showed us all the wonderful things the Ronald McDonald house does for people and how the volunteers are 100% depended on to make it work.  It was amazing.  I think I told you that once, though. 

We get a snack and head out to the smoker's porch before heading in for the night.  There is a lady out there talking to us.  Can't remember her name.....Juanita maybe?  Not sure right now but she was so nice and so funny. She originates from Iowa but moved there years ago.  I questioned her sanity when she told me that.  She told me that they call the place "Cincinnasty."  And so it is. 

The night before we got there, the smokers were out on the porch and the SWAT team pulled up, told them to get inside just to be safe, and busted the house across the street.  How's that for slums?  How's that for entertainment?  How's that for thanking God I don't live there!?!

Can't wait to get to bed so we can get up and leave this city.  I looked out the window right before I laid down in bed and said, "Goodbye to you in the morning Cincinnasty.  I will never return here.  For any reason.  I do not like you and I do not have anything good to say about you."

And then it was good night.  So I don't think I will finish today.  It will be way too long for one read.  I will finish this weekend.....I hope.  But soon, I will finish soon.  We are on our last leg so how long can that one be??? 

Until next time, have a great evening and a magnificent weekend!!!