Adventures in Waco

 Last weekend, Husband and I went to Waco.  Our excuse in going was that we needed to bring, and install, a router in GirlChild's apartment (they provide WiFi, but you have to provide the router), but that was just an excuse to go to Waco. We needed to see our baby.  Us being us, a simple overnight trip to Waco involved two weeks of planning -- first, I had to figure out what to do with Killer McSavage.  We found what we hoped was an ideal situation, a dog sitter who would come to our house twice a day and let Shadow outside, check her food and water and give her belly rubs.  I had to interview multiple dog sitters to find one who wasn't freaked out by 95+ pounds of dog ... surprisingly, a ginormous dog can make some people do a double-take. LOL!

Then we decided we needed to rent a car.  The brakes in the car need to be replaced and Husband's truck is seriously high-mileage so we decided renting a car was the best option.  After numerous phone calls to find the best prices, multiple discussions on what, exactly, is a mid size, etc., and we settled on a rental car.

We could have stayed with GirlChild in her apartment, but I'm at an age where sleeping in the living room on an air mattress isn't all that appealing, so we also had to get a hotel room.  There is a very nice hotel we have stayed in before, but it's not the most budget-friendly chain, and since it was just the two of us, just one night, we decided to downgrade ourselves.  We found a well-known chain just a few miles from her apartment -- the chain itself can go either way; some properties are quite nice and some are extremely iffy, but we thought we'd give it a whirl.  There are parts of Waco that are "sketch", but we figured we'd gamble.

Dog care?  Check.
Rental car?  Check.
Hotel reservations?  Check.

My husband, being who he is, wanted to leave Houston Saturday morning -- at 4:00 a.m.  What?  Why?  "That way, we can get to Waco in time to take Michelle to breakfast."  "Sweetheart, she is not going to be awake at 7:30, not even for you and Cracker Barrel."  Just to double check, I called her:  "What time do you want us there on Saturday?"  "I'll set my alarm for 9:30, can you be here at 10:00?" 

We left Houston Saturday morning in time to get to Waco at 10. For the first 45 minutes or so of the trip, I obsessed about the dog sitter.  What if they didn't come? What if they do come but Shadow won't let them inside? What if they come, and Shadow lets them inside but they are really crack-heads who turn our house into a meth lab for the weekend?  (That last one was from an episode of Breaking Bad.  But it COULD happen!)

My husband distracted me by stopping at Dunkin' Donuts and getting me something sugary to eat.  Thus fortified with sugar and caffeine, we resumed our trip to Waco.  

Here's a whole lot of nothing between Houston and Waco. There are cows and more cows and more cows. There are three small towns that are notorious speed traps -- and not much else.  Being this scintillating conversationalist that I am, I was able to chatter the entire way and keep my husband amused.  We pulled into Waco a little after 10:00 and then proceeded to get thoroughly lost within the labyrinth that is GirlChild's apartment complex.  We finally texted her and said, "We are in the Serenity Garden, by the pool.  Come find us!" and thankfully, she did. (Yes, her college apartment has a Serenity Garden and a pool. My first college apartment had drug dealers and cockroaches).  

We visited some and then went out for lunch -- there is a local institution called Health Camp.  It's been serving greasy burgers and to-die-for milkshakes to Wacoians since WWII.  It's amazing. I ate myself silly. They had a jukebox in the restaurant, so GirlChild played us music while we ate.  

From there, we went to Best Buy to get the router.  She, keeping up the music theme from lunch, hooked up her iTunes to the Bluetooth in the car.  We listened to that strange "What the wolf says" song.  Repeatedly.  It's an odd, odd song. I was grateful to get to Best Buy so that we could shut that stupid wolf up.

From Best Buy we went to HEB because I needed to buy her food.  She didn't necessarily need food, but I'm a mom, and I buy food.  

We got back to the apartment -- go THRU the Serenity Garden and turn left at the Game Room, the elevator is just past the gym -- and Husband set up the router while she and I unloaded groceries.

Her roommate had decorated for Halloween in our absence:

The router wouldn't work ... our iDevices would connect to the wifi, but for no apparent reason would suddenly disconnect.  Husband would go back into her bedroom and the wifi would reconnect, but as soon as he came back in the living room, the wifi would disconnect. After multiple trips in and out of her bedroom, he realized the router was plugged in to an outlet controlled by the wall switch -- so when he would go into the bedroom, he would turn on the light switch, and the router would turn on. He would leave the bedroom, turn off the lights, and the router would disconnect.  He moved the router and voila!  Constant wifi connection!  

GirlChild had an hour or so of homework she had to do, so Husband and I said we'd go check in to the hotel, and she could call us when her homework was done.  There are parts of Waco that are ... iffy ... and as we GPS'ed the directions to the hotel, we realized we were in one of the iffy areas.  We pulled up in front of the hotel, and we both shuddered -- no, I realize we were downgrading to save money, but this was TOO much of a downgrade. He went inside to cancel our reservation as I begged Siri to find us another hotel.  We found a WONDERFUL hotel, very clean and more luxurious than I planned on, and it was only $10 more than Hotel Skanky.  We were thrilled.  

GirlChild called, said she finished her homework and if we wanted to come back, she'd cook us dinner!  How could I refuse? My child, cooking me dinner?  She made a lovely dinner of chicken and mashed potatoes.  And she cleaned up afterwards.  That was quite a treat. Several of her friends came over, after dinner, because they wanted to meet us.  I was flattered, until she said her friends thought we were Sasquatch. I asked why, and she said it was because she talked about us but they had never seen us.  I wasn't quite as flattered. But her friends were just delightful young people. I really enjoyed meeting them.  After her friends left, we went to Sam's. I'm still the mom, I still needed to buy her more food.

Oh, and while we were out, our meth making crack-head dog sitters texted me a picture:

So maybe they really are a responsible young nice couple who just wanted to come dog sit for me.  That reassured me.

The next morning, GirlChild gave us a tour of Baylor. We've seen the campus a bazillion times, but she wanted to show us the new parts of campus that we hadn't seen before.  I will just say, the new dorms that the kids live in today are way nicer in the prison cell dorm that GirlChild lived in her freshman year.

We ate a late breakfast, saw a little bit of Church Under the Bridge, which is a church service that ministers to the homeless who live under the bridge, and then we said our goodbyes.  

It was a wonderful weekend. It will have to satisfy me until Thanksgiving, as I don't expect we'll see each other before then.

I enjoyed every minute of it, and I loved seeing my child as an adult, and I'm so thrilled we went -- but I'm equally glad to look forward to a quiet, uneventful weekend. 

I'm already planning our Thanksgiving menu -- I'm excited to know I'll be seeing her again next month.

And if anyone needs a dog sitter, I've got a very reliable, very responsible, non-crackhead / meth-dealer couple I can highly recommend, without hesitation.