greetings from… wait, where are we again????

We have changed our minds about what we are doing so many times that I seriously have NO idea what we are doing. We aren’t currently in Charleston, sadly. The weather forecast looks very bad for the days we planned to be there. Which were..ummmm…..oh, yeah, yesterday and today and tomorrow. Yesterday I changed the reservations to next Sunday and Monday nights. We will probably cancel those too. Although I was starting to fear yesterday that we were going to have to go to Charleston anyhow, bad weather or not — I spent like half an hour trying to cancel our initial reservations, which I’d made online through AAA but when I called the Red Roof to cancel they told me I’d made them through Travelocity, and would have to call Travelocity to cancel, which made me think I must be reaaaaallly losing my mind since I do not recall ever making ANY reservations through Travelocity, especially the ones I’d just made a week before so you’d certainly think I’d remember THAT. And it is not like I am constantly making reservations to all sorts of exotic destinations. Generally I am making reservations for the Mount Pleasant Red Roof Inn, and I either call them directly or occasionally do it online through AAA. Which always means just calling Red Roof Inn to cancel/move the reservations which we do seem to do constantly. SO being told that I’d made reservations through Travelocity was quite the bafflement. Especially when I found my emailed confirmation which had a great big AAA logo on it and was from AAA’s website and said AAA about twenty times and also said if I needed to change the reservation I should just call the hotel directly.

Making me think, "what the hell???" I called Red Roof’s main 800 number. They told me the same thing the actual hotel told me: I’d booked through Travelocity and I had to call them. So I called AAA. They made me wait on hold forEVER and then over an amazingly bad connection said something like "aooerp a d0e9ru wae Travelocity allejrk aw call them JPJGOE  merged aoejt wep "
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So I gave up and called Travelocity who kept asking me for a Trip Reference number and I kept explaining that I did not have a trip reference number but I did have an AAA Confirmation number since I had in fact booked through AAA and I was looking at an AAA email right in front of me with AAA all over it and I really did NOT understand why everyone kept telling me I’d booked through Travelocity especially since I’m pretty certain I’ve never booked anything through Travelocity in my entire life and I’m sitting there looking at a confirmation from AAA….

"When did you book this trip with Travelocity, ma’am?" asked the reservations person, at which point I said, a little emphatically, "I DID NOT BOOK THROUGH TRAVELOCITY, I BOOKED THROUGH AAA AND I’M SITTING HERE LOOKING AT MY CONFIRMATION FROM AAA AND I WILL BE GLAD TO GIVE YOU THAT CONFIRMATION NUMBER YET AGAIN BUT FOR FUCK SAKE AND FOR THE TEN BILLIONTH TIME I DID NOT BOOK THROUGH TRAVELOCITY!!!!!" I actually did not say :"for fuck sake" but I was starting to sound pretty peeved at that point, I’m sure. Since I was getting beyond peeved at that point. 

Then the reservation person got a tad snippy and said something, AGAIN quite garbled, about AAA and Travelocity merging and she was putting me on hold for 3-5 minutes and looking up my information. AGAIN. 

While on hold with all these different reservation people I’d googled AAA and Travelocity merges and did not come up with one damned thing, but when the Travelocity person finally returned she said she was going to have to transfer me to AAA, Which she in fact did so apparently they HAVE merged somehow, although the merge is obviously not exactly a seamless one. 

The AAA person I got THIS time was very nice and very helpful and cancelled my reservation and sent me a confirmation that it was in fact cancelled, and also said something about the merge but bizarrely it was yet again a weird bad garbled connection so I still don’t know what exactly is up with THAT. But it did finally get cancelled. And I called Red Roof back directly to re-book for Sunday and Monday and also vowed to NEVER book online through AAA ever again. Although I have done that before and it’s never been a problem at all. I’ll at least wait till the merge- if that is in fact what happened – settles the fuck down and everyone knows what in the hell they are doing.

And I had had no intention of going on and on and on about THAT. But we are in fact not in Charleston. We may be there on Sunday. But probably we will wait till later. (I have already informed Travel-Saturated Baker B that if we do not go this weekend or over the Martin Luther King Holiday Long Weekend, I am going by myself. Because I really really REALLY need a Charleston trip. Like NOW. A few weeks from now will do too. Eight months from now will not do.)

Since we did not go to Charleston, we DID go to Baker B’s Family Christmas Eve Party last night (it seems like longer ago than last night. I am SO CONFUSED.) Which was very nice and I’m glad we went. We did not spend the night in Morganton, though, and we drove back up here LYING that we were going to spend Christmas Day with MY family. Because Baker B is neurotic and has a Condition and Noise Issues and Eating Issues and although his brother and SIL and sister’s boyfriend were in M’ton, all his nieces will not be there till Thursday and he cannot do that many days with his family and Eating and Noise and Etc. (I am not neurotic, though. No, no, not at all. I am in no way rooting for the fewest days in M’ton as possible.) 

So today it was a Christmas Day with me, Baker B, and the cats. As neither of us are Christians (and I grew up in an anti-Christmas religion) this was actually perfectly fine with me. I did want to do something special for the big Christmas Meal which is difficult with Baker B and his neuroses, but that was solved very happily by a trip to a local Chinese restaurant which has an excellent buffet full of very good seafood, and was also full of other diners and lots of white noise and Tsing Tao beer so Baker B was happy and not neurotic and it was a quite nice time. 

Tomorrow we are both going to Asheville and spend the night with my dad. I think. I was originally going last Friday, then it snowed and was blizzardy. So I decided to go this coming Friday instead. Then we decided I should go tomorrow and see Daddy but come back to M’ton Thursday so I can see the Nieces and Kids. And Baker B could just go directly to M’ton and meet me there Thursday. Then the weather report started looking sketchy again.So Baker B decided he should just go with me to A’ville tomorrow. Complicating things even more is that Baker B’s niece from Colorado and her husband are spending Saturday and Sunday in Asheville for a little getaway of their own (they live in Boulder and are more like Baker B and I than the rest of his family combined, and will LOOOVE artsy beery outdoorsy Asheville) so we want to spend Saturday with them. 

So. Yeah. Massively confusing. It is supposed to rain/snow/ice be nasty tomorrow night through Saturday. Ten minutesfrom now that will probably completely change. The whole thing is giving me a horrendous headache and we keep forgetting what we’ve just decided. I’m hoping the Boulder Kids don’t experience flight cancellations. 

I am so confused I am just going to stop talking now. But I will post a few more Baker B JibJab Creations. He downloaded all 11 yesterday and showed them to his mom, brother, SIL and his sister’s boyfriend last night after the Christmas party. His brother and SIL and sister’s boyfriend didn’t really seem to think they were all that hilarious, but his mother (who is getting close to 92) was VERY impressed with the star role that several of her Creepy Dolls played. Although of course she does not view them as "creepy" She kept saying things like "OH, there’s Kewpie!!!"  

They do not work with iPad, I don’t think. You may need to refresh even with a regular computer, but apparently iPad can’t show them. 

More ornaments, looking kind of sinister:

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Perhaps my favorite, featuring Malevolent Nutcracker:  And Dame Edna!! Bizarrely, Baker B did not know who she was but had just run across the photo sometime in the past. Web Woman knew who she was— I thought she was the Silenco Woman from Mullholland Drive, but that was the Blue Haired Woman. Even more oddly, Baker B’s sister’s 70-some year old very Southern, very conservative boyfriend said, with delight, OH, that’s Dame Edna!!! 

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And A Christmas Carol:

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