Atlanta

Mom, Giggles, and I ventured to Atlanta this weekend for girly time and shopping. We made the five hour drive on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Stone Mountain around five o'clock. To save money and time we stayed in a hotel just outside of the city for out first night. The Terrarium, as we affectionally called it, was a hot, sticky place. It had that warm sense of mildew about it and our sheets clung to our bodies like damp paper towels. We were informed upon our arrival that the hotel was booked solid for the weekend. Two different black families were having family reunions and apart from the oafish man across the hall, we seemed to be the only white folk around. Try to picture three happy white gals sitting amongst a sea of back people at the breakfast buffet the next morning. We couldn't either.

We headed off to a big mall in the morning where we spent our day gaggling at the expensive stores and the sexually confused folk that work in them. Fabulous black men with false eyelashes and fishnet stockings. Coming from SCAD, I'm no stranger to such things but the appalled reactions of my mother left me bursting at the seams. 

After a back breaking day, we arrived in BuckHead at our swanky hotel -ready to kick back on a heavenly bed and munch on tiny chocolates left on our pillows. Well! There was no reservation for us! After much worthless searching, Jack the hotel man, gave us a room at the same bargain price we booked the place for. Unfortunately, it only slept two. Late in the evening I was provided a rollaway cot that blocked up the passage to the bathroom. I slept poorly on this cot and instead spent most of my night searching for jobs in the tiny screen of my cell phone. Oddly enough, nothing appealed to me.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast and came back to the room to come up with the day's plan.

Having a sleepless night and little interest in the Designer Shoe Warehouse, I stayed behind for a quick nap while those two ran to this store "real quick". They came back three hours later. Giggles had a new pair of shoes. Mom had smoke coming out of her ears. Apparently, whilst I was slumbering in that giant cloud bed, those two were downstairs waiting on a shuttle for an hour. Then they shopped for a bit and waited another 50 minutes for it to come back and get them. Mom was especially enraged by this and even more perturbed to discover that they had checked us out of our room. Luckily I was still in there to let them in to get their things. We took our luggage downstairs only to be checked back into the hotel in the room right next door to our previous one. This room had two beds, though they were small. I remained awake for another consecutive night on account of Mom's bony joints jabbing me with every turn.

On a sunny note, we laughed a lot and ate lots of good food. Carolyn worked on her accents, Mom entertained us with her nightwear fashions and I discovered that I am still allergic to Pier 1 Imports.  It's the itchiest store!! In then end, that's what matters. The good times I mean. They even drove me through the Downtown on our way home so that I might look at the big buildings. They're eerie those things. 

The ride home went relatively quickly in my opinion. I managed to get my favorite church hymn stuck on repeat in my head and I sang it all the way home -mostly to myself though there were a couple of outbursts. Carolyn rode in the back to spare me anymore carsickness and Mom told me about Gladly, the cross-eyed bear. Google it. I was in stitches the whole way home.