• Bug,  Niece-com-poops,  travel

    A Quick Detour through Chinatown

    On the way to the bible conference… we made a little detour through Chinatown. I love Chinatown. I thought I wasn’t going to get to go this year because Toby and I have been very (over) protective of Baby Bug and going to Chinatown is like going to another country if not just for the fact that it’s in LA where scary gang members live. BUT I love, Love, LOVE Chinatown and it was calling me saying, “Come look at my baubles! Come buy my pretty things for so very very cheap!” So we listened and had a great time…

    Except for the part where my nieces were with us (my mom and I) and my nieces are the WORST shoppers EVER. They hate shopping and the fact that everything was foreign made it worse. The way they were carrying on, you’d think I was forcing them to eat cauliflower. At least Baby Bug was pretty good most of the time (maybe because she’s strapped to me and can’t go and hide under clothing racks yet…) But she did pull her fair share of stunts.

    Her biggest trick is that she reaches out and grabs things. She also likes to fall in love with things and hug them and cry when I take them away. So somehow she fell in love with a silly yipping dog that barks and wags it’s tail and I shelled out six bucks for a stupid annoying toy because I’m a big pushover and I’m going to have the world’s most spoiled rotten daughter.

    Which sort of reminds me that the reason my nieces always beg me to buy things for them is because I have been buying them things ever since they were born. I’m the best Aunt ever, remember? I love spoiling my nieces. Consequently, they think nothing of spoiling my shopping trips. It’s too bad too because if they had been perfect angels, I probably would have spent twice as much money on them.

    I still managed to spend more than I should have. We probably only saw a 16th of Chinatown and I think I blew my entire Christmas present allowance. That’s okay though. I think everyone is going to love their new silk pajamas.

    We’re safely out of the spending zone now and tucked into our cozy bible conference hotel room. Baby Bug is fast asleep in her portacrib and I am rocking the internet with a handy dandy hotel provided ethernet cord. I haven’t used anything but wifi in so long I almost forgot how to use an ethernet cord. I thought I was going to have to bumble through changing my internet preferences and reconfigure something or other but I didn’t. I just plugged it in and here I am on the internet!

    Here or there, here I am!

  • Beach Bits,  Bug,  Tis the Season

    Just another day at the beach…

    I almost hate posting these pictures because I just know there’s somebody in Idaho reading this who had to scrape five inches of ice off their windshield in the morning and they work in a cubicle with no windows, five feet from the bathroom that flushes loudly and stinks and they’re hating me for living at the beach and living the life of luxury. Wait that was me a few years ago, sans the ice and Idaho of course.

    Anyway, yes I admit it. My life is awesome. So much better than that cubicle by the bathroom. I wish I could go back to myself then and tell the much younger me that it’s all going to work out. I’m trying to appreciate this life now and not be too much of an idiot and take it for granted. I know any day I could be stricken with cancer and the whole snowball of debt could roll over me and send me back to square one. Or maybe I’m at square one now and things are only going to get better. I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I do know that it sure is nice coming from lowly beginnings. While people around me fret about the real estate market and how they can’t afford this and that, I’m just happy that I can go to the beach every day. If I never ever become more successful than I am today, it will still be a better than I ever expected.

    I hope I haven’t pissed anybody off with this thinking. I just don’t have much to say today. I’m about to leave town for a few days to attend a bible conference and see about a bazillion relatives that I haven’t seen in twenty-some years. They may or may not have wi-fi at the hotel. I’ll take my computer with me but I’m not promising any posts. So in the meantime, don’t hate me too much for living at the beach and have a really really happy holiday!