Trouble

We tried to make today work, we tried to be in a good mood today, but nothing in the day conspired to help us out. When we got up this morning, we didn't realize our checkout time, which meant we were going to be late...which worked out fine. I went to the walk-in medical clinic, but they also had regular patients and could only fit in one more person that day, which was me instead of a poor older lady with bronchitis. Good for me, not so good for her. I had to wait for an hour and fill out three pages of paperwork, but Richard had given me a thermos of coffee knowing there would likely be a wait, so I was in good shape. The doctor looked at it and said 'It's infected', yep, I know that; he said he wouldn't lance it, but gave me a script for antibiotics to take care of it. In and out in no time once I got in, the visit was $85. I went to Publix, because if I did, the antibiotics are free, and I can use free antibiotics. The wait to get my drugs would be about 45 minutes, so I got some stuff and went back to Richard & Ann's house and we ate lunch instead, and celebrated her 80th birthday, before going back to Publix to pick up my drugs and head to the airport. I hadn't checked anything for the flight other than airspace. I planned a route around the restricted areas, and away we went. Nothing about the flight went right, although we did stay aloft, so the important things went right. ;) We landed after some hassles, walked into the rental car place, and the lady behind the desk said "Oh, you were scheduled to be here at noon, I hope we still have a car for you, we've had a lot of people come in today for cars." We're like...we had a reservation for a week, you'd better have a car. She said if you're late they can give your car to whoever comes in. I say something like "Huh, I'd have thought if you reserved a car for a week, then it's yours for that week whether it sits there in the parking lot or not." Nope. Steve shot me the "be quiet" look, they had a car we can use (another generic Ford gray car...why do I always get gray?!) and we were off, with her telling us if we were late next Saturday she could give us a nice weekend rate instead of charging us for two more days like she originally said. First, the car is almost out of gas, so we stop for gas. Next we go to lock the car, and the key fob is dead. Fine. We'll lock it manually. No, we won't, there isn't a single button on the doors to lock the doors, no knob, no nothing. And the car won't start going, it won't shift properly. Somebody drove it like a rental, and it's in trouble, with only 21,000 miles on it. I call in and tell them about the transmission and the key fob, and they tell me how to lock and unlock the car without the fob. It's a button on the top center console. Cause that's intuitive. We lock the car and hunt for our hotel, then a parking space, and end up going the wrong way in the garage, having all sorts of trouble. We get out of the car, I go to get stuff out of the trunk, and the car alarm starts blaring. The key fob with which to shut it off is not working. There is no alarm button visible on the console anywhere, so we can't stop the alarm. Finally Steve just starts the car, and that shuts it off. Two or three times in a row, every time we go to get in the car after it's been locked, the alarm goes off. This is...annoying. Finally we figure out that if he gets in first and just starts the car, then the rest of us can get in without setting it off. We are not having fun at this point. We go to check into our room, and they say they have overbooked our suite and have given it away already. You couldn't make this stuff up. lol But instead what they did was give us two adjoining rooms. Now life starts looking up. We have ocean view rooms, we're up on the 8th floor, we have plenty of space, and while it's an old beach hotel, not exactly a five star location, it's not as expensive and it'll work just fine. We tried to hook up with Kaylee's friend, and just missed her by a few minutes, after Kaylee got her swimsuit on and hit the beach thinking she'd found her down there, only to go up to the wrong kid. Awkward. She came back up to our room and we went to look for a boogie board for Kaylee, and the store had closed, but we found another that that and some goggles. After that we went to eat at Bonefish Grill, which was the first thing that actually went right all day. We spent too much money on one dinner, but it was really worth it from appetizers to dessert and everything in between. We got back to the hotel, Kaylee hooked up with her friend, and I'm sitting on our ocean side deck listening to the waves crash on the beach, in the warm but not too warm air, watching lightning off in the distance, and writing this. I'm also smelling somebody's pot from somewhere nearby, but that's a different story.

Tomorrow morning Kaylee was invited to go snorkeling with the manatees. We'd have to get up at 5 a.m. and drive over an hour and a half and they may or may not have a slot for her/us. I figured today was trying enough and we'd go ahead and sleep in tomorrow morning, and we have the rest of the week.

Long day, irritating day, but we're here now and finally able to relax, I do believe. Kaylee's ramped up and having fun already, and that's the real fun of it. :)