Leaving Las Vegas

I just got home from five days in Las Vegas with my husband. We have had a few short trips (one or two nights) without the kids, but they were always nearby, and always an easy drive from home. This was a real trip on an airplane that took me far, far away from home, in every sense.

It always amazes me how much work it is to get ready for a trip. There are mountains of laundry to do, shopping for food that I am not going to eat, and writing lists and more lists for the grandparents of everything the kids, cat, and dog will need to do while we are gone. Whew!

Packing for me is so easy. Some clothes, two pairs of shoes, makeup, toiletries … It all fits in one carry-on suitcase— if I can live out of one small bag for several days,  why do I need so much stuff in the rest of my life?

Some observations on the trip … in no particular order.

Travel

For all my husband’s complaining about traveling, it is really pretty nice. Since he flies so much, he often gets free upgrades to First Class. He got one this time too, at least for one leg of the trip, and he talked the airline into upgrading me as well. I got to live the high life from Denver to Las Vegas with my big, cushy seat and my free bloody mary whilst all the peasants in coach fought over their armrests. Let them eat cake! Mwahahhahaha.

Anyway …

I have always lived in the Northeast, which is pretty densely populated (or “thickly settled” as they say here in New England) From the Rockies on westward there seems to be hundreds and hundreds of miles of open deserts and canyons with no signs of human life. We did fly right over the Grand Canyon, though, which looks really cool.

The Grand Canyon from the sky

The VIP treatment

Bigger is always better

The scale and scope of everything in Las Vegas is ridiculous. The casino/shopping/theme park/nightclub/pool party extravaganza that is each hotel along the Strip is like nothing I have ever seen. Each hotel is unbelievably large and intentionally confusing to navigate, making it too easy to get lost, for better or worse. The grand scale of everything also makes it difficult to judge how far away anything is. You can walk along the strip for what seems like an awfully long time and still be in front of the same hotel. I was still getting disoriented in my own hotel on the last day of the trip. Maybe they rearrange everything while everyone is asleep. We kept calling this disorienting weirdness “eating the lotus flowers. “ If you ever saw The Lightning Thief, you know what I mean. I ended up sending and receiving a lot of text messages that said things like “uh oh. Lotus flowers” whenever we were trying to meet up somewhere.

$10 beers and $8 band-aids

For some reason I always thought that Las Vegas was supposed to be relatively cheap to visit, since the hotels make the big bucks off all the gambling, so everything else is inexpensive to lure people in. This is not so. Not at all. Everything was twice as much as it would be in a restaurant or bar or nightclub at home, but lucky for us, it is a work expense for my husband, so we only have to pay for half, so it works out to be about the same … this sounds like the lotus flowers talking again …

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

I had no idea people still smoked so much. Here in New England, smoking isn’t allowed indoors anywhere anymore, so I really don’t see it very much. It was weirdly shocking to see so many people smoking. I know that sounds dumb and obvious, but it really was surprising to me. I expected it from the college-age party crowd, but not so much from everyone else.

I am not 22

I had 4 beers one night and I was as loopy as I ever want to be out in public. I was in bed every night before midnight. I wore a skirty, 50s-style bathing suit. I sat in the shade at the pool.  I read books. I often thought the music was too loud. I was yawning every night when a lot of people were just starting their evening out. I thought the girls walking the strip in their string bikinis with their half-yards of margaritas and half in the bag already should go back to the hotel and put some more clothes on.

Feelin hot hot hot

But it’s a dry heat …

Good holy Hell it was hot. I love the heat, and I didn’t mind the weather one bit, but it was hot hot hot. Really hot. Like 110 degrees. What I didn’t expect was the complete and total lack of humidity. My hair did not frizz. I did not sweat. There was no drippy condensation on the outside of my frosty iced coffee. It was weird.

I just don't know where I would wear these ...

Fashion sense

People wear some wacky stuff, which is fine, mostly. There is something confusing about having people in bathing suits, sparkly evening clothes, orthopedic shoes and fanny packs all together in one place at any time of the day or night. Also, a note on tattoos: I don’t have a problem with tattooing per se, but I think in a few years the full-arm-sleeve tattoos and excessive tattooing in general will go the way of MC Hammer pants and Mall Hair — leaving a lot of people stuck in a fashion trend they can’t get out of.

Doing everything I set out to do

My husband was at a conference during the day so my “to-do” list every day was as follows:

·      drink the coffee and eat the breakfast that my husband brought to the room while I was still in bed.

·      lounge around in my jammies for a while.

·      Shower and get dressed and take a long walk before it got too hot.

·       Meet my husband for lunch.

·      Get an iced coffee and bring it to the pool where I would spend the whole afternoon reading.

·      Meet my husband for drinks and dinner.

I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I finish everything on my list.

The heart grows fonder

I really needed some “grown-up” time where I could just do whatever I wanted, even if what I wanted to do was really nothing at all, and it was great. I also missed my kids. Not every second, but I was away from them for long enough to really miss them and really want to get back. I didn’t miss the laundry and the dishes and the lunchbox packing, but it was nice to get back to my babies.