The Fink's

Last week felt like a whirlwind. I took two sick days to get over the mother of a cold I finally seem to have given the boot. Michelle had an overnight in Corpus on Friday. I looked forward to a relaxing evening of fine dining and relaxation with my sis. I arrived at the hotel to find she scored a stellar bayview suite with a swell panorama of the marina. We cracked open our first cocktails and toasted on the balcony with all the beginnings of a grand eve. After my whiskey and her bloody mary made their way south, we thought it best to ease on out for some fine seafood. Over our fabulous cuisine, Michelle had a restaurant epiphany. As we finished the last bite we could possibly have before needing to seek retribution, she shared this: what happens to those people who roll up into there, order appetizers, drinks, fine meals, and desserts, then say they can't pay. What if they didn't even carry any means of payment with them knowing flat out they had nothing to pay with? We managed to crack ourselves up mulling this over...Feeling content with a full stomach and a warm feeling in our souls, we sauntered back over to the hotel for some girl time. Just as we had settled in, disaster struck. You must wait with bated breath while I preface this disaster...

Saturdays remain the ultimate grandeur. The freedom to lazily doze in and out of sleep, waking to hear the birds chirping (or coyotes yipping- whatever is relevant). The freedom to watch Pebbles and Bam Bam in the morning should you feel so inclined. It's the day you can say, take this job and shove it and mean it because you don't have to go back to the j-o-b for a blissful 48 hours. Dreamy. Simply Divine. You know what makes a Saturday morning even more savory? A dreamy sleep the night before. In order to achieve this dreamy sleep for me, I must have my Mack's. Mack's earplugs that is. My love affair with these tiny bright orange gems began a few years ago when we got married, and the snoring drove me to the brink of insanity (disclaimer: this has since gotten a lot better). I feel such a strong loyalty to the product that I would love to roll up in the factory, stand on a podium, hike up my pants, and give a hefty salute to the men and women who've been saving sleepless marriages since ninteen-whenever they started making these fascinating pieces of wax. You need to know this because the one thing I forgot to pack on my venture to Corpus- my Mack's. I feel confident you now have the background information for the 'rest of the the story'.

As we fluffed our pillows, favorite trash mags in hand, a scream that could have rivaled any Halloween scream you have ever heard sliced through the air. We looked at each other in utter awe after we figured out it was a child's scream and not the scream of someone who had just been hacked up in the room next door. No big deal. Just a fluke occurrence. Probably some kid got a little charged up. I mean we've all experienced the grocery store, restaurant, or mall run in with an out of control child. Honestly, I've been told that I was a bit of a fit thrower as a child, so I can't really get too riled up about these things. We flip the page and continue reading up on the sagas that befit the rich and famous. Here it came again! This time with vigor. This kid had the pipes of an opera singer with no sense of how to use it. Before we had time to process, adult screams came blasting through followed by doors slamming over and over again. We consider ourselves to be relatively patient people, but push it to the limit and sugar becomes spice not necessarily nice. She has a trick she uses on her many hotel stays- bypass the front desk, peek out the door to get their room number, and call yourself. We did and no change. The last straw arrived right about midnight when security came to shut them down. Unbelievable. I pined for my Mack's. I'm not ashamed to say it. Here comes the silver lining. Obviously neither of us could go to sleep, so we brainstormed the horrible revenge tactics we could implement. I know I deserve a slap on the hand for being vindictive, but we came up with some doozies! We schemed to lay on the floor and beat the walls with our feet while blasting the alarm clock and playing rap music on Pandora as loud as the speakers would go. In the end, we just got up early to go have breakfast and left the alarm against the wall blaring in our wake. I know, Twisted Sisters. It sure felt good sauntering down the hall to the elevator hearing it dwindle as we got further away. Ah, the simple pleasures in life. The real laugh came when Michelle had the pleasure of meeting the Fink family before she left. They were banging around in the hallway, bless their hearts, and she gave them a curt lesson in courtesy including how to properly close the hotel door without waking the dead. Truly hilarious!

I suppose the moral here is: a)double check your bag for must-haves before you leave lest you end up in a similar situation b)never underestimate the assembly- liners who make some of our most prized possessions available c)sometimes we have to get through the clouds to find the silver linings d) it's fun to stick it to the Fink's every now and again!