Okay pups! So I haven’t put an actual blog out in…..pffffttt…. forever.  But, I’ve been sick for the past week & I was on vacation the week prior…so I have loads to talk about and some actual “quiet time” (boy….that’s rare.) So, let’s dive right in shall we?

The past several weeks I’ve been so freaking busy and crazy stressed out with work, and things that have been happening around the house. If you don’t already know, here’s a quick rundown: We went back down to three days from four, at work…which sucks money wise, but it gives me an extra day of rest on the weekends to work on more…personal things. Which never ever seem to even get done….ugh. Usually the first thing on my list every week, is laundry, dishes, car upkeep, then of course grocery shopping. And I always go to visit my granny every weekend. So, I always have a bunch of things going on, even if the things I do, sound mundane and boring….it keeps me busy. And two weekends ago, on Saturday, I went to the nursing home to visit my granny whilst my parents went shopping for…doors or…something? I came out of the nursing home a few hours later only to see, a flat front tire! I was FURIOUS. Kinda still am…but, I called my mum and told her I had a flat. Had to wait for an hour until they showed up…my mum and dad tried to help me get the tire off, couldn’t do it.  We spent a good….mmmm…hour trying to get it off…to no avail. So we called a tow truck, and then proceeded to wait another hour for it to arrive. When we finally got my car back home, my dad starts inspecting it, and low and behold…..there is a large gash on the inner side of the tire. I either hit something that cut it open, or I have something scraping against the tire from the underside of my car. UGH! My dad said that while I was on vacation, he would fix it. But, when I got home, there was just the spare tire on it. So, for the past week, I’ve been driving on a spare tire. However yesterday I had an appointment for an oil change & tire replacement. So, yay me for adulating for once!

Now, here’s the fun part!

Last week I was on vacation with a few of my favourite people! We were on my favourite beach, Sanibel Island! I have always loved it. It’s a quiet island, not a party place…but I’m obviously not a…party person, nor a people person…so I quite enjoy a relaxing, quiet vacation. I wrote a poem about Sanibel Island when I was younger….here’s a link to the poem, that I posted on this blog months ago if you would want to read that.  >>>>>>>

https://thewarriorandherwolfhound.com/2015/05/24/i-must-go/

I brought my friend Alexa with me, she’s the best! We’ve been on technically 2 cruises together…and we’ve been to Atlantic City together as well. She’s so chill, I love traveling with her. She’s from Staten Island, and I’m from Ohio; so we met up when we both landed in Fort Myers. We had to rent a car, or well…I did, since I’m the eldest and she doesn’t drive. So, we get our stuff into the car, and make our way to the island, which is about a 30 minute drive. Once you make it over the causeway islands, Sanibel Island doesn’t really have any traffic lights, usually only four way stops and stuff…and anyone who knows me, knows I hate four way stops with a passion; almost as much as I hate roundabouts, but that’s beside the point. We stayed at Sanibel Moorings, I’ve stayed there with my family before and it is definitely one of the nicer all-inclusive places on the island, they have a full kitchenette in every condo, full bathroom(s), master bedroom with master bath, Wi-Fi, and prime closet space. Each condo gets their own parking space, there is an on-site laundromat, towel exchange, umbrellas, chairs, and loungers for the beach! Two pools, canoes/kayaks(just in case you would want to go kayaking in the canal nearby, and bikes for daily rental(Do you know where the kayaks are? Well they’re not by the kayaks!!)

We had a garden view condo, which was…nice, but a bit dark. There was a tree in front of our porch, and it pretty much blocked out all the sunlight. There had been a hurricane that had rolled through Florida just a week or so prior to our visit, so a few places that I wanted to go to, were closed. We had lunch at this hotdog joint, Schnapper’s Hots…which kinda has gone downhill in my opinion. Usually it’s pretty good, but it was subpar this year, which was very disappointing. After lunch, we went and bought our groceries for the week, then went to the condo to put all our stuff away. When we got settled, I think…we went to the beach for a bit, and saw dolphins! On our first day!  After that, we went shopping but we didn’t buy anything while we were out; we went back home and made ourselves a pizza and went to bed fairly early. We had had a long day.

That next day, we went for brunch at the Over Easy Café, because we’re classy bitches. What did we do after that?…..uhhhhhhhh…I think we probably went sunbathing. That evening, we decided to get all dressed up and go to my favourite restaurant, Matzaluna’s. I love it there, mostly because I love Italian food, but also because you can draw on the tablecloths. And I’m a doodler, also a child…so I love that. It wasn’t really crowded there, since it was a holiday and people were still out doing….whatever people do on Labor Day.

Then of course that night, Alexa let me watch my beloved OSU Buckeyes kick some serious ass on ESPN, while we waited for our friends, Phil & Hunter to show up. Phil had to work on Monday so they kind of got a late start. They got to the island around 11 or so, and then the real fun could begin! Meaning, we could finally get drunk! And get drunk, we did. Phil & Hunter taught us how to play this card game, Ring of Fire…which I still don’t quite understand…but whatever it was fun.

That next day we spent a good deal on the beach since the sun was out. It felt like a good day to just lie around and be lazy, Hunter was nice enough to make breakfast since Alexa & myself don’t particularly cook (I told Phil once I liked to cook, truth be told, I do, but only in my own kitchen.)  Fun fact about me, I’m hydrophobic so I don’t like to freely get in bodies of water. So, the three of them went out past the little sandbar there, which is farther out than I am comfortable venturing, while I got to find shells for my collection! And I found tons! Oh man, this year was a great year for shells! I am so happy! I love finding cool shells, my grandma gave me her shell collection from over the years and I love adding to it!

After we all got out of the water, Phil, Hunter & Alexa noticed the bottom of their feet were yellow! Like uber yellow and we didn’t really know why. It washed off though, so nobody was really worried.

That night we went out to the Lazy Flamingo, which is a really laid back bar…I love it. I have a soft spot for dive bars for whatever reason. I pretend to be classy, but I don’t like to be all fancy and shit. That night I’m pretty sure we got pretty drunk & watched Mad Max. I had wanted to see that movie, it was pretty good. (Some of the week is fuzzy, hence why it’s taken me so long to write this blog.)

I’m fairly certain we just laid around on the beach on Wednesday, and we figured out why their feet had turned yellow the day prior. They had been standing on live sand dollars! There were I guess a whole bunch! I took a walk down to the lighthouse, and on the way I saw a dead horseshoe crab & some sea turtle bones. It was awesome. We then went to the pool and messed about in there for an hour or so before we decided we were hungry. We went to Matzaluna’s again that evening, for an early dinner so the boys could get back to their place. Phil had to work the next morning early. Alexa & I opened a bottle of wine after they left. I’m not really a wine drinker; I’ve never been a fan of it.

Thursday, we got up later than usual and spent the morning on the beach before we made our way to Phil & Hunter’s place. We spent the night with them before making our way to Universal on Friday afternoon. It was about a 90 minute drive from the boy’s place. I’d been there once before, with my high school music program, but that was before Harry Potter world had opened. I was so excited to go there! We got there just after 2 pm, so we only had about 6 hours to get through the park.

The first thing we did was the Shrek 4D thing. It was neat! Not great, but…neat. Then we went on this, Rock ‘N Roller Coaster thing called Hollywood Rip, Ride Rock it.…It was fun, but I don’t really like coasters so I doubt I would ride that again. Then we went on the Men In Black ride, dude…that was crazy awesome! I loved it. We had to stop for some Dippin Dots along the way because, well….ice cream. We then made our way to Islands of Adventure. (This won’t be in chronological order because I’m having trouble piecing that together.)

Since we had a FastPass, we didn’t have to wait in crazy lines. I know we went on the Amazing Spiderman ride, which was probably the coolest ride. We rode Dr Doom’s drop tower, I love those. Then we walked over to Jurassic Park to ride the River Adventure ride, I won’t spoil this because I know Danny is gonna read this and he said not to. We walked through Toon Lagoon, The Lost Continent, Seuss Landing, and FINALLY spent the last part of the evening in Harry Potter World; my favourite. We rode the Dragon Challenge, and walked through Hogwarts! We rode on the Hogwarts Express, saw the Knight Bus, and went to Hogsmeade & Diagon Alley! Walked through Honeydukes & Zonko’s Joke shop, Alexa went to ride another coaster while I went to Olivander’s to get my wand! I also got to purchase my Hufflepuff robes, after YEARS of waiting! By that time it was getting close to 8pm so the park was going to close soon, so we made our way back towards the gates and stopped in Margaritaville for dinner. It wasn’t too packed and the food was okay. After dinner, we made our way back to our car. Both our phones had died by that point so we couldn’t wait to plug them back in. We get in the car, plug our phones in, but neither start to charge. We start panicking, but eventually mine turns on slightly so we open my GPS and begin driving home…then it shuts off like…15 minutes later! This keeps happening until Alexa’s phone FINALLY turns on about 20 minutes or so into the drive and we are finally on our way home. It takes us just under 3 hours to get back and by the time we do, it’s so late all we want to do is sleep. So, we crawled into bed around midnight almost 1am.

That next day was Saturday, our last full day. We surprisingly got up at a fairly reasonable hour, had breakfast, I did laundry then we went to the beach for a few hours, and then decided we should go souvenir shopping. So I took her to a little shell shop called, She Sells Sea Shells. It’s so cute. They sell all sorts of fun knickknacks there. We got a few little things then went to shop somewhere else, ended up at the little shopping center we went to the first day, everything was closed up early, so we went to CVS to get some last minute packing essentials. We were making our way back to the condo when I suddenly remembered; I had not seen the birds all week yet! So, we went to Periwinkle Park and I introduced Alexa to all the birds there! My favourite, Freddy, was still there. He is a 30+ year old Greenwing Macaw from South America. I’ve come to Sanibel Island almost every year of my life and he has been there ever since I can remember. I love visiting him, the park takes amazing care of their birds. They even have an educational show every morning at 10am where they feed the birds and talk about them and they will do tricks! It’s neat. Anyways, after that we had to rush back to the condo because we were going to watch Byrne & Kelly perform a StageIt show and we didn’t want to miss it. We made it just in time too. We watched their show while we had dinner, and a few glasses of wine. We stayed up not too late, but late enough, since we had to be up early that next morning.

Sunday morning, we got up, packed, took out the trash & recycling, loaded the dishwasher, tossed a whole bunch of food (in retrospect we should have left it with the boys but, we were ambitious.) I ran to the beach one last time and we headed out the door around 8 am. It didn’t take us long to get to the airport or to turn in our rental car, so we sat in the airport for about 90 minutes before we said our goodbyes and went to our separate gates. I had the earlier flight, but we boarded the plane, and then sat there for 45 minutes for seemingly no reason.

I got back to Ohio around 1pm, and I started feeling really ill. I had been feeling rough for a few days but when I got home, it really started to hit me. So, I get home and crawled into bed, not even bothering to shower or unpack. I worked that whole next week and finally got around to unpacking on Thursday morning, but I felt almost worse. I had gotten even sicker that week. Now, I’m on the mend so don’t worry!

Whew! What a ride, huh? It took me three days to type this thing, just so you all know. Alright, well it is midafternoon here and I have to go buy a new phone charger so I hope you all are staying warm/cool/dry/happy/healthy and whatever else! I want to say a big thank you to my wonderful friends Alexa, Phil & Hunter for coming on that vacation with me. I had a blast and I love you pups so much! And to whoever is reading this post right now, I love you too. I hope your weekend was awesome and you have a great rest of the week.