Vegas, baby, Vegas!

So DH took me to Vegas for Mother's Day! Or not quite, lol; he and the other basketball coaches in town had a 3-day (last Friday to Sunday) coaching clinic to attend, and we wives tagged along. We had fun girly time during the day while the boys were in class, and then we all hung out together at night. Some of the highlights:

I am a loser

Despite having lived next door to Nevada for much of my life, this was my first trip to Las Vegas (driving through and/or having a layover between flights to other places doesn't count). I have no moral objections to casual gambling -- I've fed dozens of quarters into pinball and video game machines at the arcade with my daughters (and don't even get me started on DH's claw machine habit!); I don't see much difference between that and, say, video poker. You spend your money; you get your minutes of fun; end of story. And what about raffle tickets for school fund raisers? Sweepstakes for commercial products? Office sports pools? All harmless (IMHO), as long as you're not using your family's grocery money or rent to get in on it.

Anyway, with that attitude I excitedly slid my first dollar into a penny-ante poker machine. I had to keep asking DH which cards to hold because I know nothing about poker. I'd win a few, then lose a few, then lose some more, until eventually my dollar was gone. So I put in some more. And later on some more. I tried different machines -- more poker, classic slots, a Wheel of Fortune game that I never quite understood -- and different denominations up to a buck. Again: Up, down, finally gone. At my best I was up to $8 (after having put in $5, so that gave me a net gain of three whole dollars) so I cashed it out and decided to play only with my winnings. When the $3 ran out, though, I put back in the other five. Because I'm a sucker like that.

I know the casinos are rigged against people like me. I know they use extensive psychological tricks to get you to believe you'll be the next to hit the jackpot. I mean, somebody's got to, right? Why not me? I kept sitting down next to people who were winning $500, $1,000 dollars (though I have no idea how much they'd put in to get there). Why couldn't I be next? Why not me?

But now, ~$40 poorer, I know the answer: It will never be me because I am a loser, lol. L-O-O-O-O-O-O-S-E-R! I do not win things. I especially do not win things in Las Vegas, where every game is stacked in the house's favor.

But I still had fun.

Casino games have cool names

Things like Super Duper Double Bonus Poker. Bucks Ahoy. Lucky Larry Triple Super Pay. So many more I wish I could remember.

I am not fancy

I don't think I could be fancy if I tried. I mean, sure, I can get cleaned up: I wear a skirt or dress every Sunday, and I know how to apply mascara. But mostly I don't; mostly I'm about as low maintenance as a girl could be. I don't know how to accessorize; I wobble around in heels, worried I'll break an ankle (though I do love a chunky platform shoe to make me taller than my usual 5'4); I've never had a mani-pedi (or either one separately); I buy the majority of my clothes at Walmart.

I figured I'd have unglamorous soul sisters in the other coaches' wives, who all seem as low-fi and practical as I am, so imagine my surprise when I found out that several of them had spent their Saturday morning (while I slept in, yay!) at the spa getting "treatments."

I do think it would be cool to go to a spa (and I certainly don't begrudge anybody else their facials or pedicures) -- but I worry the staff would size me up as I walked in, decide I wasn't their kind of clientele, and chase me right back out, lol.

Maybe some day I'll screw up my courage, pretend to be fancy, and see if they'll pamper me with their treatments anyway.

I still look 12 years old

Apparently. Whatever. What do you think?



So two of the wives and I were standing around the casino on Saturday night watching the third one play Blackjack (which she cleaned up on, by the way -- whooo!). I was leaning against a one-armed bandit, minding my own business, when a casino employee sauntered up to me with that tsk-tsk look in her eye. I thought I was about to get in trouble for hogging a slot machine without putting money in it. But no.

"Excuse me," she said. "Are you older than 21?" I told her I was. I told her I even had grey hairs to prove it, and showed her the wiry strands poking every which way from the top of my head. "I'm still going to need some ID," she said, obviously unconvinced. She stared at my driver's license a good long time before shaking her head and handing it back. "Wow," she said. "That is not at all how old I thought you were."

When the casino lady left, the other wives scooted closer to see my license before I put it away. "You're in your thirties? Huh! I wouldn't have guessed that either!"

The funny thing is that I once made plans with my sister to go to Vegas just for the privilege of getting carded. I had recently turned 21 and she was about to turn 22 (we're Irish twins), and thought it would be wonderfully vindicating to whip out those IDs and show the world that we were, indeed, legitimate adults. We never did go. (I worried they'd think my license was a fake and confiscate it, lol.)

I've always been annoyed to be mistaken for a much younger person. (Oh! Like the time we went to dinner on my college graduation road trip and the waitress gave everybody but me -- including my then 10yo sister -- big people menus and big people glasses, and I alone got the 10 and Under menu, a box of crayons, and a tiny glass. Grrrrr!) People tell me I'll be grateful for a young face when I'm older. I'm older now than I used to be, but the experience was still a mix of funny (50%), flattering (5%), embarrassing (30%) and irritating (15%). It would be nice to be taken seriously as a grownup, you know!

Anyway, I don't get it: I have grey hairs that grow more and more prominent all the time. I have wrinkles. I have tired eyes. What will it take to look like I'm at least out of my teens?

Maybe in another 20 years I'll find it flattering, lol.

It ain't called Sin City for nothin'

Our contingent took care of the sloth and the gluttony, but the lust -- even for Las Vegas! -- took me by surprise. We confined ourselves to our hotel and to the Strip, so I don't know how the non-touristy parts of town look, but the billboards alone made me wonder how parents in Vegas handle the sexually charged atmosphere. It seems to me you'd be having conversations a lot earlier than other parents do ("Mommy, why does that lady have no clothes on and why is she hanging on that man?").

We were continually accosted on the Strip by lines of people handing out cards with half (or fully) naked women on them. The (*cough*) "advertisers" wore t-shirts that read things like Girls Direct To You In 20 Minutes. The men creeped me out, but ... eh. You'd kind of expect it. (Not of all men. Certainly not of good men, which most of the men I know are. But you know the kind of pervs I mean.) What shocked me and made me sad were the young women handing out the skanky calling cards. Why would you do that to your sisters? I don't understand.

It's good to get away sometimes

I thought about my girls the whole time we were gone, but I didn't exactly miss them. Is that terrible to say? I get so few breaks from this more-than-full-time job; this was the first time I've left Tres overnight, and only the second time I've left the other two (as far as they know -- I did leave 5mo Uno once to go house shopping a few states away, but she doesn't remember that). Uno indulged in the melodrama of the moment as we drove off to the airport -- wailing and flailing her arms, oh brother -- but my (saintly) mom, who took care of them while we were gone, reported that all three of them did just fine once we were out of sight and that they behaved themselves all weekend. (I hope she's telling the truth, lol.)

I love them. The girls are never far from my thoughts. But I can't tell you how rejuvenating it felt to be a few hundred miles away from them for three days -- to be myself, alone for once. To sleep in! What with night feeding infants and nightmare-having children and future curfew-breaking teenagers, I didn't think I'd ever get a solid 8+ hours again! Wah! I had so much fun. I worried I wouldn't fit in with the other wives -- I was the youngest among them by 10 or 15 years -- but oh my goodness, it was awesome. I got to be a grownup. I got to relax and I got to have fun.

I think I ought to do it more often. :-)


~RCH~


PS - Big, BIG thank you again to my parents! THANK YOU!