Everybody Needs A Little Time Away

I’m taking my blog on a road trip to VEGAS BABY with my girl Dawny! She’d asked me some time ago if I wanted to come to Vegas with her on the weekend after her birthday. She has a friend who offered the use of their timeshare condominium for the weekend as a gift. I have to say it has been really fun and nice, once we got going on the road as evidenced by the picture below. I say that because I felt like a hot, disorganized mess in the days leading up to the trip and even worse the day of. Every day I had a list of specific items, chores or things I needed to do and each day I couldn’t get it all done. Obviously I got all the important things done, but it still left me feeling stressed and vaguely inadequate. Does anyone else go through that before a trip?The drive took us about five and a half hours with traffic. It’s a beautiful thing to be on the road with a friend that you can talk to about everything or nothing at all and just enjoy the comfortable companionable silence. In the grand scale of things, we’ve only known each other five years but we pretty much hit it off from the beginning. Being around us is like have a front row seat to the Tammi and Dawn show, or Queenie and Dawny as we affectionately call each other, having no qualms informing perfect strangers of our nicknames. Some days, like on this road trip, we refer to ourselves as Miss Clairee and Weezer, an older, much lighter, wackier version of Thelma & Louise, minus Brad Pitt, killing a man and driving off a cliff. She enjoys country music and I really don’t mind listening to country stations when I’m driving. It’s actually a great genre for road trips.

The timeshare has  a very funky Vegas chic decor with two separate bedrooms and bathrooms. It has a full kitchen, dining area, living room and a washer/dryer in the unit. It’s seriously impressive, the perfect weekend getaway.

Both of us are PROFOUNDLY grateful we are passed the stage of playing dress up, going to clubs, trying to pick up guys, walking around in high heels and tight clothing! We went to the Encore/Wynn Casino tonight because I wanted one of their snazzy Red Cards with gold lettering! I won a little more money than I took to the casino and we went out to eat afterwards. Tomorrow we are going to listen to the Holiday Inn’s spiel for 90 minutes in the morning  so we can get a $60 gift card to use at one of the four restaurants at the Venetian. We plan on spending tomorrow evening, after an early dinner somewhere at the Venetian, on Fremont Street. That’s where the real gambling, people watching and fun will take place! We bought some seriously cute but comfortable outfits from Kohl’s for this. Because while we are passed the stage of dressing up for others, we love to do it for ourselves!

I’m sitting here smiling as I write this, wondering if some of you may be expecting a wilder, racier version of this blog since it is in Vegas. But honestly, this trip is about both of us needing a little time away from our extremely busy, productive lives before the Holidays hit in earnest. I’d like to write a ton more, but it’s almost 3 am and I feel like my brain is shutting down, as it rightfully should. I just want to say I’m so damn grateful to be at this stage in my life, where I can do something like this because my children are grown and I’m financially responsible enough to plan and afford it. Of course it helps tremendously that we don’t need to pay hotel or airfare, we don’t go clubbing and we don’t drink. What we do is make each other laugh, have fun making others laugh with or at us and make the most of getting a little time away!