We’re back home now, of course, so now I can begin writing all about our wonderful vacation.

First, though, yes I’m definitely gonna get my period in about a week. I have PMS in every sense of the word. I figured I would, though, and as I told Tom, in October I’m not gonna dog him about having a period then as he said I could cuz that wouldn’t be fair. The proper person to “dog” would be God, but that’d be useless. He’d just be up there laughing at me and that’s exactly what he would want.

Now, about the trip. The drive to and from there was long, tiring and boring, but the scenery was beautiful with lots of huge mountains. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the high desert and the low desert. Up in the high desert, there are lots of Yucca trees and Joshua trees. In the low desert, there are lots of Prickly Pears and Saguaros. I think the low desert is prettier. There were lots of dangerous roads that wound in and out, up and down the mountains and we even had our headlights on, as most cars did, to make seeing an oncoming car easier. There were some skinny wooden white crosses here and there that represent where people have died. We never saw any rabbits, foxes or snakes out in the remote areas where there were no towns, but we saw buzzards. Those are birds that are bigger than pigeons and they’re scavengers. They eat dead animals. Most of the trip was just an empty desert with distant mountains. We only passed through 3 tiny towns which were Wickenburg, Kingman and Bullhead City, which I call Bullshit City. On the way up we stopped for breakfast in Kingman, but we didn’t stop anywhere on the way back.

We traveled to Needles, California through the Arizona side of the Colorado River, which I saw. That river is sparkling clean compared to the Connecticut River.

I was so emotional and so excited as we entered CA. Another childhood dream come true. That was so sweet of Tom to get me there and said it was my temporary fix till we went further into CA to places like Sea World and Disneyland. Needles is right over the CA border in the middle of CA. Maybe just a bit lower than mid-CA. Needles is part of San Bernardino County near Barstow. It looked just like the desert regions of AZ and NV. As well as NM, TX and UT. There’s the desert side of CA and the ocean side of CA, separated by a huge mountain, but of course, that’s way further into the state. I didn’t see a sign that said we were entering CA, cuz we kind of entered by a back door, but it was so cool to see the interstate signs that said California. We pulled up by a Taco Bell and got a soda. Meanwhile, I was out at the base of a small mountain right off of the parking lot, jumping for joy. Then we stopped a little further out in CA in another nowhere land area where there was nothing but flat desert with lots of huge mountains off in the distance. Tom and I took one picture of each of us and one of both of us. Out of all the times, I wrote about going to California throughout my journals as one big fantasy, it’s cool to finally see it written as the truth. I remembered as I stood in CA, looking all around me, how I used to twirl around on my swing set when I was little and wonder when I was facing CA. Then, I’d twirl around real fast, knowing I had to have faced it several times.

As we were getting in the car to head for Laughlin, I took a white-gray rock and here at home, I took my purple paint pen and wrote “California 9/19/1996.”

After driving about 30-40 miles in CA, which took an hour, we traveled the Nevada side of the river into Laughlin. I like Laughlin much better than Vegas. The lights at night are much nicer in Vegas, but Laughlin was more of an older and mellow crowd and it wasn’t so mobbed. Parts of the afternoons were sort of mobbed, but not like with Vegas. That place is almost always rocking. Laughlin’s smaller, too.

We stood on the 24th floor of the Riverside Resort which has 26 floors. It had a beautiful view of the area. We were sort of dipped down in a valley with mountains of nowhere land all around us. Laughlin is just a little lone town out in the middle of nowhere. The big mountain tops were almost level with my head as I stood to peer out of the hotel window, cuz that’s how big they are, even though we were in a valley and on the 24th floor. It was a nicer-looking hotel room than the Ex-Caliber in Vegas, but shit were those beds hard! They were agonizingly hard and I had to take the bedspreads from both beds and lay those down under me.

After we checked in, we went and gambled for a bit, then to a restaurant. This was the other negative part of the trip, besides the long drive and hard beds and that was that these two little girls were being so obnoxious. They were screaming and running around the restaurant like crazy. The parents just wouldn’t discipline them at all. These kids were lucky they weren’t around a good 20 years or so ago when more parents tended to discipline their kids. I was dead tired and it really made me glad we didn’t have a kid then as it really would be a burden to gamble and have fun and get some sleep with one around. We certainly wouldn’t be able to have sex, either, cuz what would we do? Tell it to wait in the bathroom till we were done? Daycare would cost a fortune. We’d have to gamble one at a time, too, while the other one watched the kid up in the room. Coming home and wanting to just relax with space, peace, and quiet would be just a dream.

So, after we ate prime rib, we gambled some more, both together and separately. I kept winning and losing the whole time and Tom told me that if I see something I like at the gift shop or wherever, to get it while I have the money. So, since I stretched the $60 I had to begin with, I ended up being able to get $55 worth of wind chimes. I got 4 gorgeous ones which I’ll describe later.

For the most part, I played quarter machines. I got carded 3 times and the change people looked at me strangely when I asked for quarters with the way I say the word with my Eastern accent.

Here we go again with Wendy calling and bugging Tom with computer questions, but he’s at his mom’s right now, so there’s nothing he can do for her at the moment. What’s the story with this woman, though? Is she still heavy on him, or what?

Anyway, I basically played quarters and would win 200 quarters, and several 10s, 20s, 50s 100s and a 150 here and there, but of course I’d lose it. It was so much fun and I really love gambling and even have a favorite slot machine now which was at the Gold River Hotel. We were there on the 2nd day. There’s a machine there that has your typical 3 wheels that roll around with bars and 7s and cherries, but it also has a wheel up top. If you roll and get the money bag symbol, you get to spin the wheel and you can get from 25-500 quarters.

I like the Gold River’s change-holding cups best, too with its cactus design. The Riverside Resort just had a map on their cup, but I liked it cuz it covered where we had gone.

I bought a really pretty magnet with different shiny colors on it of a desert scene with different cactuses that says “Nevada.” And I also got one that has cards, dice and change on it that says ‘Laughlin’ and it also has my name. Even though I hate my name, I got it cuz I thought it was weird that I’d find something with my name on it, which isn’t too common, and I like the design.

Here’s a description of the wind chimes. One’s only a few inches long with one small and one larger purple crystal rock with gold chimes. The sun reflects through it nicely. One’s longer with bold colors, streaked with silver on its chimes and it has horses. The next longer one has beautiful floral chimes streaked with silver. The longest one, which is about 2’, has one rainbow-colored chime in the center which is streaked with silver, and then it’s got 5 round rings with round balloons hanging inside the outer ring. They’re really gorgeous.

By around 6 PM, I was getting very tired, but couldn’t sleep for a while till I made the bed comfier. So I listened to some CDs, and sent postcards and short letters with the hotel’s stationery to a few people. I contemplated on and off sending my folks a card. I asked Tom if he thought I should and he said yes, so cards and brief notes went to Kim, Bob, Larry, Tammy and my folks, but I still won’t write regularly to my folks or call them. I’ll let them call me and I certainly don’t want to see them, cuz I still mean it when I say that the 30 years of BS are over. Not only do I think that they weren’t very good parents, I don’t think they’re very good people. They’re certainly not my type, anyway. I’m sure Tammy will be pleased to hear that I sent them a card and not pressure me about contacting them for a while since Ma tells her every single thing I do or say to them.

We ended up falling asleep and waking up at the same time and that was from 9 PM - 5 AM. Before I went to bed, Tom went down on me, then we screwed when we got up. He didn’t get off, cuz his legs were still sore from working on the roof. At least it can’t leak in here and there’s only a little tiny bit left of roof work to do.

When we got up, we gambled a bit, then ate at that same restaurant. It was nice and quiet in there and it was right by the river, so we had a nice view from where we sat. Then we gambled for a while, then went to the post office which was below the casino. They had casinos down there too, though. After sending my mail out, we walked out by the river and saw some boats and some folks were on jet skis. We saw some ducks and even a pigeon walking by. Then we went to the Gold River to gamble, then back to check out of the Riverside, then back to the Gold River again till we lost our money and left.

Later...

I finally got Kim’s package. I really only liked two of the shirts. The ones saying ‘Arizona’ and ‘New Mexico,’ but Tom likes more of them and he’ll probably wear them. The calendars were nothing special. There were only a few pictures I liked that I’ve decorated my journals with. I thought they were live pictures, not drawings/paintings. The journal was rather dull, but I’ll make my own cover.

I left Andy a message when I got up this morning real early to let him know I needed to unwind from the trip, would be busy, but that I’d call him Monday. Sure enough, he called right back, so we chatted for a while. I told him about the trip and he told me got it off with Quinn, but still has to play his selfish games if he wants to know Quinn.