Susan’s Journal

I wake up the next morning to the sun poking in through the plastic hotel curtains. It’s pretty bright outside. I look over at the clock, and crap! It’s almost 9am. That’s when the front office stops serving continental breakfast. I nudge Scott awake, and he pulls on his shorts and white t-shirt to head down to the front office to grab breakfast. I doze off for a minute or two until he comes back, stuff stuffed into his arms. He has two bowls, cereal, and milk for the kids, a waffle for himself, and a couple tiny blueberry muffins for me. It’s a great breakfast, and best of all, it’s free! The kids ask me if we can go over to the beach, and I figure that first thing in the morning before it starts getting really hot is a great time to go.

One of the reasons I’m so enamoured with Biloxi is because we used to live there. Scott and I met in Virginia, but I already had orders to go back to Korea; I found out they needed teachers at Keesler AFB, MS, and I found out if I volunteered for that I could get out of my Korea orders, so I volunteered. Even though I was halfway across the country from Scott, at least I was in the same country. We got married, and I moved to Biloxi–well, an apartment in Gulfport. I drove up to see him several different weekends, and one of those I became pregnant with what would become our daughter, Rainlin. One weekend he was going to come down to visit me; but before he left, a day or two before he got on the plane to come see me, something terrible happened–a teenage kid got shot right outside my apartment/townhouse. My hormones were reeling from being pregnant, and I was a mess. In that one weekend that he had come down to visit me, he moved me into a new place. We ask the kids if we could go galavanting for a while, and they said ok; so we bring my camera and take some pictures of places we used to live. This is the townhouse in Gulfport that we had lived in, the one on the right hand side, the end unit.

After we take a couple of pictures there and leave quickly (that place still gives me the creeps), we drive the 20 minutes more out to Pass Christian to the townhouse Scott moved me to after the shooting. I miss the tin roof, where it sounded so cool when it rained… I miss standing on the upstairs balcony on cool nights… I miss Jabba, MOW, MOW, meowing at the top of his lungs at the top of the stairs… I just miss that place.

The kids start to get bored and fidgety after lots of driving and visiting places they don’t know, so we decide to spend a little time for them to play. We find this playground nestled up against the beach in Pass Christian that we had never been to before–we had never been there because we didn’t have kids when we lived in Pass Christian before. We let the kids swing on the swings and run between the two slides, and this small little grassy playground turns out to be a place full of great fun for them.

Afterwards, we walk ten steps down to the beach to pick up shells along the water. There’s never been a whole lot of good shells to be found down there–not big, whole shells anyways–always just pieces of them. Scott called out to us from back near the playground, and we wandered back and up onto a pier there.

The pier was a long, beautiful walk out over the ocean. Right near where we were standing, we saw the occasional dolphin jump up, and Rainlin would say, “Oh! Oh!” and point at them as she saw them. We watched as a shrimpin’ boat lazily whirred by us on the way back to its pier.

The sun began to set, and we all decide we were hungry. On our way back towards the hotel, we see Ryan’s steakhouse–a place we used to love to go to when we lived down here. We turn in and park, and I walk slowly and take a couple pictures of the beautiful ocean just across the street as Scott and the kidlets run towards the restaurant.

I ask Scott if we can make one last stop before we go back to the hotel, and he pulls in across the street from our hotel at Sharkhead’s gift shop. It’s a really neat huge pink gift shop–you walk into the store through the shark’s mouth. I collect keychains, and I’d like to pick Scott up a new tank top to wear on the beach, so we poke around the store and let the kids check out all the neat beach toys too. Dylan picks out a rubber dinosaur, and Rainlin finds a beach shell necklace that she likes.

By the time we get back across the street to the hotel, nightfall has completely fallen, and the air is breezy and warm. We all shuffle lazily up the hotel steps and around the corner to our hotel room. I shrug the kidlets out of their clothes and into their pajamas, and after a short scuffle about kicking each other in the queen bed they’re sharing, they both give up and flop asleep in opposite directions. Scott and I cuddle up to watch the late night news on TV, and shortly afterwards we turn it off to go to sleep ourselves.

On a normal trip to Biloxi, it takes us about ten hours to drive there. We drive east to Shreveport, then south to Baton Rouge, then east to Biloxi. We stop once or twice for gas, then we stop once or twice for potty breaks, then we usually stop for one good meal on the way. It’s somewhat of a long drive, but those little TVs that we velcro to the back of the seat rests, they’re a lifesaver. The kidlets get to watch movies with their headphones on, and Scott and I get to listen to soft music in the front seat.

As finally get close to Biloxi, we start to see familiar road signs. I perk up and start to get excited… we’re almost there! The highways are two lanes each way, rolling over hills, with hundreds of billboards on each side, one after another, telling you of the treasures that await at the casinos.

We turn off of highway 10 onto 110, which is a little stretch of road south that brings you down to highway 90, along the beach. 110 is only a few miles long, and spans one large area of water. It has a bridge with one of those things that lifts up so boats can go underneath. We BRR-BRR-BRR go over that, then follow 110 down towards its end. It goes down a little incline and under an overpass, curling around to bring you west on highway 90.

Once we are travelling east bound on highway 90, we are greeted by the Biloxi Lighthouse. It stands in between the east bound and west bound lanes of highway 90, and we get a beautiful glimpse of it in the sunshine as we drive by.

Just a few more blocks down the road, we come to our hotel. It’s a great little place for us to stay, complete with a pool for the kids to play in and a continental breakfast offered in the front office each morning. A family with two kids can’t argue with a free continental breakfast! The rooms all have high speed internet included, and also a mini-fridge, which we use to store a gallon of milk that the kids drink while we’re there. We check in, park, and get our bags to bring them upstairs to our second floor room with two queen beds.

The kidlets beg us to go to the beach, and we decide we have just enough sunlight left. Scott changes them quickly into their bathing suits after fishing them out of the suitcase, and I grab my camera as we head out the door. We walk across the relatively busy two-lane highway 90 and across Sharky’s parking lot to get to the soft sand thats part of the beach. I have the kids stop for the mandatory Mommy-pictures, and I snap this adorable picture of them standing by the beautiful beach grass.

We spend about an hour, letting the kids putz around in the shallow water and dig in the sand, before we decide it’s time to get some dinner and go back to the room for the night. We’ve done a lot of driving, and everyone’s a bit tired. We could walk down to Sonic, but we opt to just take the van there. We pull into the drive-in place, designed like a 1960’s roller skating car hop, and eat a burger as we watch the ocean roll by. Sonic is right there, built into the beach, with a beautiful ocean view. After eating our dinner with the windows rolled down, Daddy drives the van back down the street to the hotel. Upstairs in our room, the kids play online games thanks to the high-speed wireless Internet, and we catch a little news before shuffling everyone off to bed.

Yesterday, I was going to post about Saturday, (did that make sense?) but I got caught up in the whole hurricane thing… for those of you who didn’t know, we used to live in Biloxi, and this whole situation tears at our heartstrings… here is the story of the hurricane I rode out by myself when I lived down there.

I just sat on the couch as I worked from home yesterday, laptop in my lap and TV on in front of me… watching the devastation unfold… then night fell, and no one would really know how much damage their was until the morning.

I got up this morning, in my safe and sound house, took a shower, and got dressed, like so many people in Biloxi can’t do this morning. We turned on the TV, and there was a man, crying, saying that the hurricane ripped his house in half, and he was holding onto his wife’s hand for dear life, and she said you can’t hold me, and he let go, and the house was blown away, and now he can’t find her… it’s a terrible, terrible thing. I was almost in tears watching him cry. I have a hard time looking at newspapers, showing a place I love in so much ruin.

We have hotel reservations to stay down there for “Fall Break” the second week of October, but I don’t even know if the hotel we have reservations in is still standing. I told Scott this morning–I just want to jump in a car and go down there and help. I want to do something. Instead, all I can do is sit and watch homeless, saddened, ripped-apart locals on TV.

It’s going to be a sad day. My heart is with the people south of I-10.

What a fun weekend! Saturday we went roller skating. Dylan was doing okay, though wasn’t rolling very much; he has to realize that he has to roll while he’s out there, and not try to walk. Four “hotties” (as Daddy has taught him to call them) found him, oh I don’t know about fourteen or so, and they decided to bring him into his little group, and he was very thrilled. They skated along slowly and talked while he putted along with him. They would turn around, smile, put their hands out to him… it was SO cute. A little while later, I didn’t see him right away, then finally saw him off into one corner, sitting on the bench at the edge of the roller rink, talking to one of his girlfriends… picking up chicks already! He’s started to get braver on the skates; he let me hold his hand and pull him along, starting to teach him to roll more and push with his skates. I told him he had to look cool and skate faster so his girlfriends could see, and that was really an initiative for him. One of Rainlin’s little friends showed up at the rink, and as always Rain knew two or three other girls there, and she had a blast as well. She’s started getting really good at skating. One of Rain’s friends asked me if she could come over our house a little while after skating, and I said sure. Her grandpa said she kind of conned him into letting her go, lol… I told him it was no problem at all. She’s a great little girl. She and Rain and Dylan came home, had sandwiches, and goofed off for a few hours until her grandpa came and picked her up from our house. It was a really fun day.

Okay, so who is it that’s listening to my Radio Blog overnight, using up all my bandwidth, and making my page crash? Huh?

I guess I’ll take it off my main page…

The kids are in bed, Scott’s ran up the street to grab a couple groceries, and I’m left her to stare blankly at the computer screen with no idea what to say.

Honestly, I haven’t felt like writing in my journal the past week or two. Not much, anyways… I just get sick of sitting in front of the computer all day sometimes, you know what I mean? Why couldn’t I be a construction worker, like that guy at the end of Office Space, leaning on my shovel and saying “Fuckin’ A.”? That would SO be me.

Tomorrow is Wednesday (that’s Warehouse Wednesday to you Spaghetti Warehouse fans)… what, haven’t heard of Warehouse Wednesday? At lunch time, you can get a coke, a salad, and a plate of spaghetti for five bucks. Can’t beat that.

I picked up three kids from school today instead of two–one of Rainlin’s little friends is staying over. We had a little pizza dinner, then scooted off to the roller rink in town.

Rainlin has really taken to roller skating. She loves it. I also think that it’s cool to her to be out there skating with all the big kids. She loves to dance while she skates too, and it’s really cute. Her little friend did great also, fell quite a few times, but always got up with a smile. Dylan did… okay: halfway between the one great time we had, and the one horrible time we had. He got out there and skated; but I think being late in the evening and all just pooped him right the hell out. He did skate, though–and he didn’t cry… much. So I’m proud of him.

We got home, got into pajamas, cuddled up under blankets, and turned on the TV way low so they could have something to fall asleep to… and after a very brief argument with Rain about the TV being too quiet, a moment later I stepped into her room, and they were both asleep. Dylan fell asleep in his own room, watching some documentary about… surfing. It came in from Blockbuster, and I’m not really sure why. Oh well. He wanted to watch it, and apparently it was pretty boring.

Now it’s time for me to roll over and pass out myself. I love to skate, but I’m not ten anymore!

Not a lot going on this week. I’ve got to work on Sunday, and a friend of mine is going to watch the kids on Sunday, so I’m going to watch her daughter overnight tomorrow night. That’s about it. Just nothing big and exciting in my world right now.