Tripping Part 2

I know you're all dying to hear about the Milk Glass Convention but I have to take a word about hotel rooms, food, and attitude.

I gained five pounds on this trip, and it all seems to be in my butt. Obviously, the less you walk the wider you get, but five pounds? In a week? Okay, admittedly, most of it has already come off (yay water weight!) but I gotta tell you, I didn't eat that badly. More than usual, of course, because I was on vacation, but not that badly ... until something changed.

What do I mean by "badly?" Weight Watchers has two paths that you can follow to lose - I follow something they call Core. Basically, it's eating whole grains, fruits and vegies, and lean meats, without much measuring and counting. Since my life is hardly quiet, and I love to cook (and I get the most creative when I'm limited in my ingredients), this is the best option for me. I love it, even on the road - most things grilled, raw, or steamed are on the Plan, and I've lost about half of my seventy-some-odd-pounds this way.

Most days I ate grilled beef or chicken (without skin), baked potatoes (with skin), and steamed vegies and/or salads. Two days I ate chili - best I've ever tasted (in a restaurant) was in the Corning Glass Museum's cafe, actually. But that last day I ate a huge roast beef sandwich and curly fries at Arby's. Then I topped it off with a bar of chocolate and compounded it with sugary cereal the next day.

Am I the only one who loses her mind when she's on her way back to the stress of every day? I expected trouble, and I got it, in spades.

Up until then, it was practically a storybook trip - and not the wolf-in-grandma's-nightgown fairy tale, either. When we arrived in Corning, though, I admit I thought I'd be seeing big teeth pretty soon when I found out we were on the second floor in a hotel that had no elevator (and we do not pack light!), and one cart that wasn't useful on stairs. I kept hoping for the best, and the Big Lug never uttered one word of complaint. He also said nothing (louder this time - you know that non-vocal silence I'm talking about) when the room I'd booked didn't have a fridge or microwave (penalizing me, by the way, since I'm the one who needs them). Yet the world I'd left was so jam-packed, so crazed, I was still expecting a great time. Then I sat down on the toilet, and nearly slipped off when it rocked - rocked - up from the floor.

Uh-oh, where's the woodcutter when you need him?

An hour later, and multiple attempts to fix it (stripped bolt), we moved into the only other king room they had - a suite with fridge, microwave, separate sitting room, and whirlpool bath. How awful for us, right? That's when we also found out that the complimentary breakfast had hot eggs (with ham - that's Core) and sausage gravy (his favorite). The bed was softer, the pillows piled higher, the TV clearer ... the Big Lug grinned, said someone was watching out for us, and settled in like a cat in cream. (My dyed-in-the-wool trouble-finder was also the one who told me about the other night clerk, who took her dinner break in the parking lot ... with her husband and her three little kids. He told me this with a soft smile, confessing that some people would say she shirked her duty in leaving the desk, but he found it romantic and common-sensical.)

Later, at the convention, we also had a suite (no whirlpool) and a breakfast every day that included specially-made omelettes. Grilled fish and steak and chicken were within walking distance. Popcorn and diet Coke every evening at the manager's reception. Shredded Wheat in my room, with low-fat milk to go on top. Heaven. And easy. Until the recurring nightmare (that I'd cheated on the Big Lug) hit me and panicked me (this one happened at the only other convention I'd attended). Have you ever had a dream that was so real it haunted you? This was one of those. Four-thirty in the morning, and I'm shaking and nauseated, ready to bolt. But he held me, and told me he knows I'd never cheat, that it was entirely out of character, that one of the reasons he'd fallen in love with me was that I had honor, and, unlike him, even when I'm sniping about people I always see the best in them. I cried, he held me tighter ... then had us both laughing when he reminded me the other reason was my boobs.

And you wonder why I'm working so hard.

The last night we were on the road, I (finally) had been hunting - unwilling to charge back to reality, I stopped at a huge antique mall, only sixty miles from Cleveland. Three hours later I wasn't even out of the display shelves - lots of jewelry, plus the convention had fired me up for milk glass, so I was looking at everything. Though I found several unique pieces (as well as four pairs of gold earrings for a good price, and a fabulous silver bracelet for Hippie Chick), the milk glass was severely damaged, repaired, or reproduction. Thanks in large part to my dawdling, we didn't leave Ohio until five that evening. And when we rolled into our last hotel, though the room was lovely (and they had elevators and carts), the breakfast was plain and stale, the air conditioning was uneven and humid, and the room was thirty dollars a night more than the one in Corning - only two dollars less than the posh room at the convention.

Was it really that bad? Did my attitude affect my perception? Or did my attitude shape reality around itself? Can we all bend our reality, just a little, like a magnet does with running water? Or did the luck I don't believe in just run out? Whatever it was, I'm back, I'm here, and I'm billing thirty-eight hours this week.

Maybe all of life is just one ginormous mixed blessing.

Heavy on the blessing ... if we simply let it be so.