No Title For This One

This post is going to be a mishmash because in order to organize all the commentary, it will just take too much out of me, and the damn vacation already took all it could from my soul, my bones, my weary traveling bod. Without further adieu, as best as I can relay it, I bring you:

Manic’s Trip to Hell and Back…

Typos and all because I'm too lazy to go back and edit this sucker...

Observations and Facts.
This post will be devoid of emotion. Create your own conclusions.

Flew to Florida with KC and the Sunshine Band. Broke out into "I'm Your Boogey-Man" and "Do a Little Dance" every chance we got on the flight.

At one point on the flight, I’m sitting next to Mrs. Friend-Of-Manic and I look across the aisle at her son. He’s sitting there with a coloring book and FOUR-INCH sharp scissors! I’m like, “Uh, check out your son!”

We urge him to put them away, and when he asks why, we whisper-yell across the aisle that it is a weapon. The kid is like, “How are scissors a weapon?”

We are cracking up at this point, and actually pretty shocked that my seven ounce bottle of 50 SPF sunscreen got confiscated while he trekked right through security with an item that could gouge out the pilot’s eyes, plummeting us all to an untimely death (But wait, now that I think about it, death prior to Disney might not have been untimely. It might have been a blessing!)

Yes, you heard that right, Manic HATED Disney. More later.

Mr. Manic and Mr. Friend-Of-Manic's drunk by the time the flight departed at 1:00 p.m.

Crashed The Academy of the Holy Names (aka The Academy of the Horny Dames) 20th High School Reunion Saturday night.Partied with people I have known since we were about five, including BF cutie-pie AM and her hubby.

I am fat.

But not as fat as probably 80 percent of the people at Disney.

The Disney organization is a well-run machine. The whole thing is a machine. I hated it. Hated the crowds. Hated the lines. Was thankful Mrs. Friend-Of-Manic's is smart enough to know how the FastPass works so we could get through the shit quicker. Felt sick after going on the very first ride at DinoWorld at Animal Kingdom.


Father has been drinking. Nothing new in Manic’s family.
Father calls a daughter a bitch.
Father calls his dog a bitch.
Is there a difference?
Daughter cries.
Daughter has PMS.

Sorted through boxes in a steamy attic searching for old memorabilia, specifically my Judy Blume collection I know I never gave away.
Found none of them.
Sweated my ass off.

Happiest moment of the trip: seeing this sign at Disney:


Tukey infested with bug bites.
Visit to the First Aid office at Magic Kingdom.
Manic cries. Nurse tells Manic not to cry; it'll upset the child.
Manic still cries. She is fighting with Hubby. She is hot. She hates Disney World. Her son is in pain from infected bug bites all over his body.


Children prance around her. Eating ice cream. She wants to smack the kids around her.
Disney World is the stupidest place on the entire face of the earth. Even stupider than Curves and Salad restaurants and Massage Envy places and Beading Stores and Scrapbooking stores.
Disney World is a cult. It's like a corral of cows being moved from one spot to another with no destination in mind.


The food at Disney World is good.

The service at Disney World is impeccable.

I still hate the place.

I wonder what the most sought-out after job is there--Mickey? The Flying Tinkerbell during the fireworks show? The woman cleaning the toilets? The guys stuck outside in the steaming heat of June locking people into place before they take the plunge of their lives off some stupid roller coaster.

The person who has to sell balloons? What do they do with the balloons at the end of the day if there are some left?
I wonder what it takes to get a job at Disney? A winning personality? Charm? Wit? Anyone who applies? I look at the people and wonder, "Are they for real?"

On the plane on the way home, this is what I wrote:

So, I thought I’d try to just state the facts and make some vacation observations and make this post devoid of emotion. Let’s see where this takes us. We are 30,000 feet in the air, and as an oxymoron, I have swallowed a Xanax to relax me while sucking down a grandenonfatsugarfreevanillaiced latte. Caffeine and Xanax. A winning mix. Like ordering the Big Mac combo with a diet coke. Pointless.

Anyway, the trip. It’s like this – you know how when you have a really bad break-up with a boy you thought you loved? Life sucks. You’re miserable. Nothing will make things better. Or, when you’re in that transition stage of labor and you’ve never experienced so much pain in your entire life?

Well that, my friends, is Disney World.

You’re in the middle of the heat and the lines and the cheery cast members you just want to bash in the head and the begging for icecream and the souvenirs and the kids whining and you’re thinking why the hell am I here, and how on earth do people enjoy this, and do families really use their life savings to subject themselves to this torture, some even coming back every single year. Why? And why are there chicks all made up with caked up made-up faces, done-up hair, their best clothes – long pants for God’s sake! And why do people take their INFANTS to this place? And why do newlyweds walk around wearing bride Minnie veils and groom Mickey tophat ears. What kind of man wants to walk around Disney showing all the other men in the place that he is so whipped-in-love that he’ll wear an Ear Hat like that? Man, I wish I had snagged me one of these guys.

And, its seriously like a cult. And everyone’s being corralled into the next ride. Get in, get out, get in line for another miserable, hot, dreadful, whiny 30 minutes or more to wait for the God-awful Lilo and Stitch experience while your son is crying because he has been bitten to death practically by some foreign bugs and he has an allergic reaction to the bites, and he wants to be held and he’s 50+ pounds and it’s 90+ degrees out and he just wants to go home, but DAMMIT we are at DISNEY-FREAKING-WORLD so we’re going to enjoy this and go on this Lilo and Stitch ride where they trap you in, lock you up, turn the lights off and three-quarters of the room are children under the age of five, and they’re all SCREAMING simultaneously terrified of the dark and the smoke and the scary noises and children and parents come out of there petrified and crying and angry that this is supposed to be fun but it’s scaring the hell out of these children who are supposed to be having the time of their lives.

THIS IS FUN?

And, Mrs. Friend-Of-Manic said it best when she said Disney needed a new slogan. “Where Dreams Come True” just doesn’t cut it. It’s “Where Dreams Come True and Divorce and Murder is Contemplated.”

You know what. There’s more to write about, like how my Uncle Godfather, who I love dearly but who can be legally considered an alcoholic (Hell, it’s OK to write this—he’d tell you straight to your face if you met him)… well, dear Uncle ends up in the hospital on Tuesday while his granddaughter (my first cousins daughter, whom, additionally, I love dearly) spent four of the days with us, (Which thank God she is a darling doll and a joy to be around, but here’s the other thing—I could never adopt a child because I am for positively sure I would be nicer to that kid than to my biological children.

And, yes, there’s more, like how the day after our Magic Kingdom day we hung out at the pool/bar resort from 1 p.m. to 10 where the kids swam, we drank, the kids got airbrushed tattoos, played bingo, flew down water slides, drank slushies, ate hotdogs and other crap, sang karaoke (Ajers went first and blasted out We Will Rock You. Hubby and Mr. Friend-Of-Manic sang I'm Your Boogeyman in honor of our brush with KC and the Sunshine Band, and Diva and daughter of Friend-of-Manic and Mrs. Friend-Of-Manic sang This One's For The Girls)...The bar tab that day was $360 with tip for all of us, which was about half the amount we spent per family at Magic Slingdom and we had a whole helluva lot more fun!

But I’m starting to not make sense. I did however ship my kids off today (we got home yesterday) to Vacation Bible School and had three hours to myself in a Starbucks where I wrote 3,000 words for my next book. And that three hours was so relaxing, and enjoying, and I listened to my itunes, and one song in particular from Swishy’s Gray’s Anatomy tape (All I Need) and like Swishy, I played it over and over and over and over because it just helped the words to flow out of me and I was doing it, I was writing, and it felt awesome and when I picked up the kids I was like, wow, that three hours was like the best time I had in two weeks, and I guess it was all because I was writing again, and it felt great.

ALSO, went back to Weight Watchers today. Got weighed, but too scared to look at the number in my book.

OK, I am about to fall over. But, as you can all see, I am back, and in full swing, and oh yeah, only ONE person entered my bubblegum blowing contest and that one person has won so I will put up the pictures later, and I do think there is much more to say and I’m sure I can keep typing and stuff will come out because I am like a hose that will not stop spraying right now because I have missed all of this and I am tired, and I am getting up tomorrow a.m. to power walk at 6:30 and I will stick to my points again, and I will work on my writing, and just as like labor, and broken hearts, Disney will become a faint memory and it won’t hurt so much later on.