American Girl Girls and Hotel Hallway Hurl

The hotel and the city are filled with moms and their under-12 girls, here for the American Girl Place pilgrimage.  Little girls can be seen toting the red AG bags almost as big as themselves, with Samatha or Josefina trailing a stray hand or head of hair off the side.  My girls got dolls one year, but we figured out quickly that it was the catalogs they found so compelling.  All those charming, tiny accoutrements!  It was the same with Barbie.  My girls had a few Barbies each, but quickly discarded the dolls for all the stuff that went with them, to be incorporated into whatever animal toys they were playing with at the time.  Aside from American Girl booty, it looks moms and big sisters get time at their favorite stores too, as shopping bags dangle from every arm.   I guess I don't have the shopping gene because I don't understand why anyone would spend vacation time traipsing around stores. 

I've been reading Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood, a memoir about the author's 10 or so years as a binge drinker.  Last night, I was reading about how in college, she and her friends would go to hotels for sorority/fraternity dances and, basically, carry on like any rock band, busting up furniture, leaving cigarette burns in the carpet and puking anywhere the urge hit.   Next door to us in the hotel was a group of younger people--I couldn't tell if they were high school or college age.  I just knew they were loud and that there were probably more than the maximum number of four guests.  Luckily, I was wiped out, and wasn't kept awake by them.  But, when I poked my head out the door to grab my complimentary USA Today, I was greeted with a 15-20 ft. stretch of drying vomit.  My guess is that the person was so drunk that they couldn't walk without support, and were leaning against the wall, as the urp was in a fairly tidy line next to the baseboard.  Woo!  Party!

I'm glad we got out for a good walk and fresh air yesterday, as we woke up to snow flurries.  While we brought our winter coats, we didn't think about hats or gloves.