Tips For Surviving a Bachelorette in Miami

Last weekend I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Miami for my bachelorette party. I was accompanied by one sister, two sister-in-laws, one bridesmaid, and three friends. It was awesome. Before embarking on our journey, we were given advice from friends and family, most of which were things like “don’t die” and “don’t lose the bride.” While helpful, there were other things I would've liked people to have told me so that I could appropriately prepare. So I decided to make my own list of tips and advice for those of you who may be visiting Miami in the near future for a bachelorette party. So get our your stilettos and a pen. You will want to write this down because once you arrive in Miami, you will be too hammered to remember any of this.

Make friends with the flight attendants (and pilot, if possible). This generally always works in your benefit (don't bite the hand that feeds you), but it's especially helpful when you tell them your friend has never been on a flight before. (Yes this is a true story and yes she’s twenty-six years old.) It may result in receiving a “My First Flight!” sticker, as well as a trip to the cockpit (that’s what she said!) for some photos post-landing.

Buy everything at Walgreens. Whether you’re looking for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, bottles of wine, pop tarts or sunglasses, Walgreens has everything under the sun and then some. And it’s all for super cheap. This is how it should be. (Shoppers Drug Mart, take! a! NOTE!). It’s also open 24 hours a day. Winning!

Eat at Nexxt. I’ve heard the rumours that portion sizes are larger in the US, but hadn’t experienced it until I experienced Nexxt. I still drool when I think about this restaurant.

Make friends with the bell-man. (Also known as a bell-boy, bell-hop or the oft-confusing, bellmen. “Why are you saying it like it’s one word? It sounds like a type of sweater. Or a sex position.”) But seriously, these people can tell you about all the best clubs and restaurants, advise you on the best floors or rooms in the hotel that are not under construction, find you spoons for your ice cream at 3 a.m., and help you to stay calm when you temporarily loose all your friends.

Don’t forget travel insurance. Because even though there may be jellyfish swarming the beach, you may still want to risk it and go swimming in the ocean. Chances are, if you get travel insurance, no jellyfish will come near you. But you know that the laws of the universe state that if you forget to buy insurance, those suckers will automatically sting you out of principle. (NOTE: I didn't go in the water because I am well-versed in the laws of the universe and know how backwards and stupid they are. Which is good, except that I'm sad because I didn't go in the water. I hate you, universe.)

Bring earplugs. In South Beach, construction workers don’t work on weekdays. That would be silly. Instead, they prefer to work on hotel renovations between the hours of 7 and 11 am on Saturday mornings. That makes sense, right? WRONG. This is South Beach, bitches. DID WILL SMITH TEACH YOU NOTHING? Party in the city where the heat is on. All night on the beach til the break of dawn. Apparently the sacred song ‘Miami’ means nothing to the construction workers of Miami. So I repeat, bring your earplugs.

Make friends with a group of Aussie boys. Because there might be some times where you need a male buffer to ward off other creepy males, or hordes of creepy males. Just make sure that your Australian buffer is not also creepy, or else you will be drowning in creepiness with no escape route.

Have fishbowls handy. If you start to feel sick while at a club but know that you can’t make it to the bathroom, then just give ‘er into a fishbowl. It doesn't matter what’s in the fishbowl prior to your puke. Just use it, put it back on the table and try to stumble out of the club as subtly as you can into a cab and go back to the hotel like it never happened*.

Pack your suitcase the night before. This is in case any unforeseen events happen the morning of your departure to delay such important activities. Things like excessive puking, not waking up until 10 am even though you need to leave at 11 am, and spending an hour fighting with the manager over her unwillingness to honour her promise of waived hotel fees.

There. Now you are fully prepared to drink your face off in Miami and party on the beach til the break of dawn. Happy puking!

-Alice

*While this sounds like something that I would definitely do, it was not me, in fact, that puked in a fishbowl. It was one of my sister in laws. I will let those of you that know them guess which one it was. 

The Most Surprising Moments From Last Week

Fact: my daughter is a picky eater. This is not news to me, nor should it be to you, if you've been following along. Former speculation that has now become a proven fact: she is also a wild card.

Last week, Dawson and I packed a picnic dinner to take to the park. We were cutting up green peppers for a snack for ourselves, not expecting Thumper to give them even one glance. But then my wild card just flat-out asked for a slice. Say what now? Dawson eagerly handed her a piece while I stared wide-eyed, with my jaw on the floor. She only ate three bites before deciding that was enough, but still. My heart soared knowing that she was even willing to try. It gave me hope.

A few days later, I felt energized enough to give this vegetable thing another go. Beside the three bites of green pepper, Thumper hadn’t eaten much anything in the way of veggies for at least a couple months. So I plunked some cooked zucchini in front of her (she used to love this stuff) and hoped for the best. I was met with Thumper’s best screams for the following fifteen minutes. After begging and threatening like the Supernanny nightmare I had become in those heated moments, I finally asked Thumper if she would prefer to eat with a spoon or fork. Mid-wail, she stopped, thought about it and then asked for a fork. I gave her one, and she ate the whole bowl of zucchini, then a second and a third. WHAT THE EFF? Was it really that easy? Was that the one step I’d been missing this whole damn time? Whatever. I don’t care because it’s what’s working now and I feel like a good enough chunk of my sanity has been returned.

For most of Thumper’s life, I’ve severely tried to restrict junk food (for her, not me, of course.) It’s not that I really care if she has some cookies or ice cream here and there, but considering her meal choices are limited and not always the healthiest and even those are usually touch-and-go, why bother giving her sweets to fill up on? It’s hard enough on days when she isn’t stuffing her face with cookies and such. But lately, I've started to ease up. For one, because my mom and mother-in-law each get a full day to spoil her every week and I have pretty much no control over what she eats. And two, to be honest, the kid wore me down and I needed to start caring less in order to survive. I was so invested and so worried that it was starting to kill me. So now treats have become sort of regular in our house, and of course, just as I was coming to terms with that fact, the guilties kicked in and I started to fret that I was ruining a perfectly good child with horrible food. Then a wonderful thing happened. One day, Thumper was halfway done a cookie when she handed it back to me and said ‘I all done.’ I thought maybe it was a test because what kid isn’t going to finish a friggin’ cookie and tried to give it back but she looked at me like I was crazy and said ‘I not want it. You eat it.’ So I stuck it in my mouth and waited for her to cry and ask for it back, but she just smiled and asked if it was good. So I chewed. And it was good.

So what did I learn from all this? Well, for one thing, giving my child junk food will not automatically kill her. And neither will letting her go two months without any real vegetables. For another, she is capable of deciding when she’s had enough food, whether its sweets or veggies. But more importantly, putting so much pressure on what she would and wouldn’t eat only made her more determined to do the exact opposite of what I wanted. It’s a lesson I hear other moms talk about all the time. Hell, I even learned about that when I was eight watching that episode of Step by Step where Carol forbids Dana to marry that surfer she meets while they’re on vacation in Hawaii and Frank has to remind Carol that the more she tells Dana not to do something, the more she will want to do it. So yeah, I always knew that if I acted nonchalant about food, then there was a better chance that she’d choose to eat some on her own. But it’s so much easier said than done. I was totally incapable of detaching myself enough from her eating habits to be nonchalant until the situation wore me down so much that I just gave up for awhile altogether, resolving to try again when I had the heart to do it. And that’s when the green pepper thing happened. Of course it did. It’s just like when you lose your passport, or your favourite necklace. The minute you give up and stop looking, that’s when you come across what you were searching for. It’s like this odd reward for quitting. It’s another one of those ass-backwards law of the universe. I get it, universe. I get it. You win. YOU ALWAYS WIN, YOU GREEDY BITCH.

But Thumper is eating vegetables again, so maybe we’ll call it a tie.

-Alice

Things I'd Tell My Former Self

My friend Leslee* has this blog where she writes letters to her future self about her current life. It’s a blog full of hilarity, zombie references and general awesomeness. It’s also one of my weekly sources of inspiration, which this week manifested itself into today’s post where I decided to write a letter to my ten year old former self.

Dear Former Alice,

There are many things I have to say to you. Such as, HI! And, who told you blue eye shadow worked on you? And more importantly, no matter what anyone tells you, side ponytails are your friend. Wear it, work it, and be proud. Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the more serious topics...

Your parents are the greatest people on earth

Your parents love you very much, despite the fact that you turned them into sleepless zombies and watched Olsen Twin movies non-stop for at least four years. They work hard to give you basically everything you ask for and they rarely call you on the fact that you are always the instigator in the fights with your siblings. They also let you watch Beverly Hills 90210 with them. Stop being whiny and angsty and tell them you love them every day. And start eating your peas at dinnertime, dammit. I know they don’t teach you about karma in Catholic school, but just because you don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t know about you. And trust me, karma is coming for you in the form of a blue-eyed, pint sized monster-princess named Thumper.

Those boys aren’t worth it

There will be boys in your life that will break your heart and whose hearts you will break. That’s okay because it’s a part of life and it’s going to help shape you into the person you are meant to become. But there will be other boys in your life that will come and go, boys who don’t really matter at all. So don’t let them make you think you aren’t worthy of happiness and greatness, and don’t ignore your friends to impress them or spend time with them. And don’t believe them when they tell you that fairy tales aren’t real because one day a very special boy will come into your life and turn your world upside down. It will be the best thing that ever happens to you and it will prove that you don’t ever have to settle for less than you deserve.

Write a movie called Mean Girls

In about ten years, the smartest and most hilarious woman in the history of life is going to write a movie called Mean Girls. She will say it’s based on a book called Queen Bees and Wannabes, but in reality it will be based off of your life right now. You need to stop being such a bitch. You might think what you’re doing is protecting yourself from the same type of scrutiny, but you are just being mean. So stop it. And then write about it, but make sure to change all the names. Feel free to use “Regina George,” “Cady Heron,” and “Aaron Samuels” instead. And use actors from Saturday Night Live to round out the cast. Oh, and most importantly, make sure by the end of filming you have become best friends with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. DO NOT FORGET THIS STEP!

Choose hairdressers wisely

You know that haircut that some kids have where it looks like someone placed a bowl over their head and cut around it? Yeah. Don’t let that happen to you again. That was bad. Very, very bad. Also, don’t wear belly shirts because no matter how good Jennifer Aniston and Britney Spears will make them look in a couple of years, they will only make you look like a stupid, baby slut. And when those conductor style overalls show up in your closet, leave them there. Maybe bury them under something. Or better yet, burn them. Nothing good can come from striped overalls. And nothing good did come of them, believe me.

Now, in the spirit of positive reinforcement, and because Ellen DeGeneres tells us at the end of every show to be kind to one another, I’ll tell you about some of the things you will get right:

• You will decide to grow out your bangs in the sixth grade. Finally. 
• There’s a dress you’ll buy during the break between grade 10 and 11. It will be the reason why your friends will refer to that summer as the “summer you got hot.” Thank you, Bootlegger, for your dark denim, halter-style, life-changing dress.
•  Similarly, you’ll buy a purple bubble dress in college. Great choice. That is a hot dress and it will serve you well. Oh, but when your friend (who will later become the Social Caterpillar) borrows it, tell her not to let Mr. Caterpillar put it in the dryer and shrink it. Because that was a sad day. 
• You will be part of the 2005-06 Cheer Sport Sharks open level team that wins first place at PCA Nationals. You will reference this win for the rest of your life to remind your friends and family that you were, at one point, a mother effing NATIONAL CHAMPION! (You will also rub it in your future blog partner’s face because you will compete against her to take the title, even though you won’t figure this out until you meet her six years after the fact.)
• You will be a fan of the TV show LOST. This show will pretty much be the greatest thing that has ever existed. It won’t just be the best thing since sliced bread. It will be better than sliced bread.
•  You will wait until LOST comes out on DVD to watch the series in its entirety and this will help stave off the curiosity-induced mental breakdown you would’ve experienced if you had to watch it over six years like everyone else, waiting months at a time to find out what the hell was in that hatch and to see if Kate would finally choose between Jack and Sawyer. Watching seven one-hour episodes in a single night is more your style.  

And the number one thing you will ever do right is this:

• You will call the number left on a napkin by a boy who looks eerily similar to James Van Der Beek and has an affinity for helicopters.

All my love and side ponytails,

Future Alice

P.S. Also, don’t get too attached to Lance Bass from N*SYNC. Turns out he is gay. Who knew?

*What I mean when I say “friend” is that she was a year behind me in college and dated a friend of mine (the super awesome party time Maxx Nitro of The Melting Sky fame) for awhile. Over the course of our college experience we spoke maybe five words to each other. Then a few years later she started a blog and I was like, I need to be this girl’s best friend. I settled for groupie status. What? It works for us.

At Least I Still Have Beaches

Prior to having a baby, I thought that positive thinking was the key to a good life. It couldn’t get you everything you wanted but it was definitely a start. It was influential. It could make shit happen for you. But since becoming the parent of a little girl who is as headstrong as I am, I’m not so sure anymore. I’m really starting to think that low expectations are my very best friend – even more so than the combination of a bottle of wine and re-runs of Beverly Hills 90210.

You remember when I asked the maternal powers that be (TMPTB) to work on changing the laws of parenting? It seems that although TMPTB sidestepped having to address my original concern, they were listening to the part about the beach because they decided to throw me a bone to keep me hanging on a little longer.

We went to my parents’ cottage this past weekend. Dawson, who never seems to be around for our failed splash pad and beach adventures, anticipated a fun water-filled weekend with Thumper. Oh, that silly husband-to-be of mine. Thumper screamed so loud when he took her in the lake that you’d have thought Elmo got tickled to death right in front of her. Swimming was obviously done for the day. Undeterred, Dawson planned his next strategy, which was to use an inflatable swimming device that we, being the imaginative geniuses we are, refer to as Sea Cow. Thumper loves using Sea Cow in the pool, and though we’re not dumb enough (anymore) to think that what she loves in the pool she will automatically love anywhere else, we knew at least there was a tiny sliver of hope that it might, maybe, kind of work. Turns out, Thumper does love Sea Cow in the lake. Woot! She loved it so much she eventually felt comfortable enough to climb out of it to swim in my arms. I was dumbfounded but elated. Progress! Awesome!

The next day, my dad suggested we take Thumper to a small sand bar on a nearby island, thinking that the silky sand and quiet water would coax her to swim without a tantrum. I chuckled but decided that if nothing else, it would kill some time before bed. But to my amazement, Thumper had the time of her life. She was running in and out of the water, happily squishing sand in her hands, jumping and dancing and splashing and being the perfect picture of a Coppertone baby, minus the bathing suit-stealing dog, while I stood by with my jaw on the ground until Dawson reminded me that I should be enjoying the moment instead of gawking at it. So we fist pumped for a few minutes. Progress! Awesome!

I guess I owe a thank you to TMPTB for giving me back beaches. I may have lost splash pads but at least I still have beaches. Well, for now anyway. Low expectations, remember? Maybe I just won’t ever go to the beach again so that I’ll always be able to say that, based on our last known trip, Thumper loves beaches. It’s not a lie; it’s just one of those weird half-truths. This way the glorious memory of this one great day will never be tarnished with the inevitable follow-up disaster trip.

So now I’ve got to set my expectations low on every other aspect of my life so that I can be pleasantly surprised about everything. Like food. I pretty much already expect nothing good to come of dinnertime because I don’t think Thumper has eaten veggies or meat in at least a month, save for some corn and lunch meats, which barely even qualify as food. Oh, except for the cauliflower I hid in her Kraft Dinner. But I think the unhealthiness of KD cancels out the nutrition of the cauliflower. So...Fml.

Oh, and as an aside, you know that maternal instinct thing everyone talks about? We like to call it momstinct. Well, yeah. It’s real. So when your mommy senses are tingling, listen to them. Even when it’s something as simple as, “I should go check on the baby because she’s probably awake from her nap by now.” Because if you don’t, you will later find your child naked in her pee-filled crib, with a poo-filled diaper strew all over the place. Yeah...Fml.

-Alice