Now, Vegas is a somewhat unlikely destination for us, since I don't particularly like to gamble. However, Vegas is a drive-able distance from L.A. and I am not one to turn down free accommodations.
I have to admit that I did lack a little enthusiasm when we left. The night before we went we finally got the lab results back for cranky kitty, and of course she needed a different antibiotic than the one the vet had originally given her. So I was a bit nervous about leaving her behind. Also, my week in survival mode during my husband's business trip meant that I felt behind and a bit discombobulated, and I couldn't help but think of all the things I should be doing to get ready for the rapid approach of the new school year during the time we were driving through the desert.
Nevertheless, I am glad we went for two reasons. I will start with the less-important reason first.
Just before we went on our trip, one of my friends (she of 25-pounds-of-batteries-disposal fame) lent me a book called Dirty Secret, by Jessie Sholl. This friend and I have discussed hoarding before, as well as lamenting the states of our own homes, and she thought I'd enjoy it. On Sunday, my husband and I headed out to relax by the pool, and while other time share guests waded through the adult pool with two-foot-tall plastic cups full of alcohol adorned with oversized dice at the bottom in hand, I sank back into my lounge chair and dove into the book.
The memoir itself is engagingly written, and I think I can attribute at least part of the mild sunburn I got that afternoon to my reluctance to stop reading long enough to head indoors again. It certainly gave me a different perspective on hoarding than I had had before, which had been gleaned mainly from a family trip wherein my sister-in-law, who had recently become fascinated with the show Hoarders, tuned into a couple of back-to-back episodes, which were fascinating in a traffic-accident kind of way. (I may never get over the food hoarder, who had a refrigerator in her basement full of expired yogurt, and the state of whose living room sent the professional organizer on that particular segment out into the yard, dry-heaving. I exasperate my husband by refusing to eat any dairy product that is so much as a day past its expiration date, sometimes not even ON its expiration date if I'm feeling skeptical.) The author's portrait of her mother as someone who was unable to make decisions about the stuff filling her house, unable to discriminate between trash and treasure, brought me a revelation that I will humbly file under the category of "duh."
That is, I am not a hoarder.
I have found some truly embarrassing things in my house just this summer (for example, cancelled checks from the checking account I had in college, back in the Paleolithic Era where your financial institution would let you put your social security number on your checks), but I didn't need someone else to tell me that there was no earthly reason to hold on to them. I do not buy things just for the sake of buying them, and then leave them sitting around in unopened shopping bags. My subconscious fear that somehow I was an embryonic hoarder, a "crazy cat lady" in the making, was nothing more than a Psych-101 self-diagnosis.
The second reason was that it was a lot of fun to spend time with my husband without kids, without obligations, and with not a whole lot on our agendas. We walked to our dinner destinations both nights, and while the view along our non-Strip route ranged from tacky (the barely-visible slogan on this billboard? "Always a Happy Ending.")
to depressing (vacant lot full of empties chucked over the fence--thank you open container law),
I enjoyed having the time to talk without our conversation being centered on what needed to get done at home, or work, or pertaining to the kids. We were able to relax and enjoy our freedom from home's obligations a little while, and remember that before 9-to-5, mortgage, kids, volunteer work, etc., there was just the two of us, deciding that we liked each other enough to vow to spend the rest of our lives together. And that deep down, that's still true, even if all we're doing together is hanging out in the middle of the adult pool (notably not the "mature" pool), people watching and trying not to laugh at what each of us is pointing out to the other one. (We had particular fun watching a group of twenty-somethings who were doing beer bongs in the pool before moving on to drinking games--this all before noon. It certainly helped to explain why a pool that was only four feet at its deepest point might need the life guard it had on duty.) Good thing, because someday, it will be just the two of us again, assuming we survive the teenage years. And the universe willing, those days will be fun...and clutter-free.
Okay, so not everything we saw in Vegas was gross. This was pretty good.
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