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