"Grumpy, come smell the thing you gave birth to!"
Grumpy comes over and whiffs ME.
I push her over to Jessi.
She wrinkles her nose but says "it's not that bad."
Yeah, if you're a dead skunk.
To her credit, even Jessi is embarassed. She goes to the restroom and washes up, but it doesn't help much because the stench is coming from the shirt, not from her. We'll be there in a couple hours so it's no big deal she says.I don't let her off the hook though...
"You guys want something ? Coke, chips ... MENNEN ???"
On the plane I refuse to sit next to her. We stick Alex between us and Grumpy sits on the other side of the aisle. Lucky Grumpy.
Jessi falls asleep soon. Alex & I watch a Bones episode on the DVD - but the plane ride from Miami to Orlando is so short, we're not even half way through when it's time to put away our electronic devices. Not that we're complaining.
We're in Orlando now, soon we'll be in Disney and obviously it will change everything. Hopefully, including shirts.
As we board the fake monorail, I can't help but stare open mouthed at a kid who's in the same car. She can't possibly be more than twelve and she's wearing black "butt shorts", a red crop top ripped at all the right places so everyone can see the black bra underneath, black knee high boots and a ton of makeup. She's with her parents and her little sister (dressed head to toe in Gymboree). The parents seem to be totally oblivious to the fact that half the monorail car is looking at their kid in shock.
"You didn't tell me they had attractions at the airport,too."
See, my sister can be fun. We crack up, but I still keep my distance. At least the kid doesn't smell.
We had to go get our luggage. While we were on the first flight I was bored and pulled out our DME reservation to read. That's when I realized that the reservation number on the tags didn't match our POP reservation. We're doing a split stay, POP and CSR, and the tags had the CSR reservation number on them. I didn't want to take a chance that the luggage would be sent to CSR so we opted to pick it up and take it on the bus.
Off to the Welcome Center. Soon we're on the DME bus, and about 20mns later, we're off to POP !!!!
I know Jessi will enjoy the video. When it starts, I turn around to make sure she's watching..... she's sleeping.
I want to shake her awake but Grumpy tells me to leave her alone. She's tired, let her sleep. Geesh. I sulk.
When we approach POP, I accidentally inadvertently by mistake not on purpose hit Jessi on the head with a rolled up magazine. Hey, she had to wake up at some point.
Grumpy & I get the luggage from the bus with the help of the driver, and carry it over to Luggage Services while Jessi & Alex take their sweet time getting off the bus. We enter POP and Jessi loves it, the decorations on the walls, the colors... I'm glad.
We go to the front desk. A guy with a very bad cold and an even worse lisp checks us in. I don't understand half of what he says but don't want to be rude and ask him to repeat too often, besides we know what we're doing. We all get our cards, and a map. I'd asked to be in the 80's section, we're in the 90s, close enough. Grumpy goes to Luggage Services, gives them ou room numbers and they say someone'll meet us there. Cool.
According to the map it'd be a lot easier to cross through the parking lot. Now it's Grumpy's time to be a pain.
"NO WAY. We're not cutting or taking shortcuts, you're going to get us lost again."
Excuse me, when have I ever gotten us lost ??? I got lost by myself plenty of times that's true but have yet to get anyone else lost, especially at POP.
When we get to the Big Wheel, and Jessi is still somewhere around the Goofy jets, I declare they can do what they want but I'm cutting through the buildings. Grumpy comes with me but after a bit declares that I don't know what I'm doing and makes us all go all the way around the building instead of cutting through it. She's upset with me because I've gotten them lost and now it's taking forever to get to our room.
The luggage girl is there with all our stuff.
"Did you guys get lost? Why didn't you cut through the parking lot, it's so much shorter !"
When we're in our rooms (we got connecting ones!) I again suggest to Jessi that she hit the shower and change. Grumpy gets annoyed with me. It makes me so mad that after all these years Grumpy STILL always takes Jessi's "side".
"I'll just wash in the morning."
"What are you, five ? You stink, you're not going to go to dinner like this ??? Take a frickin shower it's FREE."
Alex agrees and she finally goes. Grumpy & I go to our room and start unpacking. I want a drink so I leave the room to find a machine. When I try to get back in, my key doesn't work. Grumpy lets me in and tries hers - doesn't work either. I try it on Jessi & Alex's door. It opens.
We're in their room, and they're in ours. Wouldn't matter if their tickets weren't on their keys (Grumpy & I have APs). Also Grumpy & I have charging priviledges on our keys, and they don't. So we can't just exchange keys. We have to switch rooms.
Yes it's a bit of a pain but Jessi and Alex make it seem like we asked them to shovel dirt. Huffs and puffs, sighs, muttering under their breath. They hadn't even unpacked yet, so basically all they had to do was drag their bags from one room to another through the connecting door. Not exactly torture.
We're all hungry. Jessi says she's too tired to walk to the food court. Can we order something ? There was an ad for pizza delivery on the beds when we walk in. I take a look and it's a nice menu but I can't figure how it got there because it's an offsite place. Since when does Disney allow this ? I know that there's pizza delivery service at POP from the food court and I'd rather order from them if possible.
Grumpy gets mad and yells at me
"There's no pizza delivery anywhere in Disney !
You have no idea what you're talking about!!!"
Woman who gave birth to me said what????????????????
Oh-My-Word.
That was just what it took to get me really, really mad.
"EXCUSE ME??? I don't know what I'm talking about ? Who planned the trip ? Every trip we ever taken, for that matter. Who made all the reservations ? That's right I know nothing and you know EVERYTHING. That's why it took us 20mns to walk to our room! What do you think that is, the spa services??"
I grab the POP pizza delivery menu (that is on top of the TV cabinet) and throw it on her bed.
"FINE ! I know nothing and did nothing ! All I'm good for is paying!"
She storms off to the bathroom.
Grumpy and I have not fought or had a nasty argument
once in WDW. Not once.
I order us dinner and when Grumpy comes out of the bathroom, I make peace. Pizza's not gonna be there for about half an hour, how about we go to the pool ? Offering a trip to the pool is always a winner with Grumpy. She agrees. We ask Jessi (Alex doesn't go in public pools, she's kind of a germophobe). No,she's too tired. Okay whatever. Grumpy & I go.
And she lets her frustrations out.
"She's tired from what ?? She slept all the way through Miami. And on the bus. I didn't sleep and I'm not tired. Neither are you. And what was that about moving rooms, did you hear Alex sighing ??"
I shrug. Maybe she really
is tired. Compared to what she does in her everyday life, that IS a lot.
"It's like she's not even happy to be here."
I try to reassure her but it's not easy because I feel the same way. We paid more to get a flight that arrived earlier so we could do something on our first night. Not a park, but maybe DTD or even just having dinner together at the food court and checking out the shop would have been fun.
"Look, we wouldn't have done much anyway. And we have an early reservation tomorrow morning so maybe it's for the best. Let's go to bed early and rest, so tomorrow we can do what we planned."
We did just that. Had pizza, Jessi & Alex in their room (Jessi didn't want to get out of bed), Grumpy and I in ours. We reminded them of our 8.10am reservation at Crystal Palace the next morning. We had to be at the bus stop by 7.30, at the latest. Okay ??
Sure. No problem. Don't worry so much, we'll be on time.
At 7.20 the next morning, Jessi was still in bed.