I'm back! Sorry I haven't been around much. I got home Saturday afternoon, spent most of Sunday with a couple friends, and have spent the last two days trying to recover from ten straight days around other people LOL. It's been nice to sleep in my own bed and spend some quality time cuddling my cats on the couch in front of the TV.
Pigeon Forge was fun overall. We went to an exotic bird sanctuary called Parrot Mountain, where I got to pet and hold cockatoos and macaws and had a conversation with a cute green parrot that talked! So cool! We also went to the Titanic Museum, which I've been wanting to go to for years, and it was great! It focused mostly on the ship, of course, but there was also a nice little exhibit about the movie, where they had the 11 Oscars on display as well as Rose's sinking dress and lifebelt, autographed by Kate Winslet, and the violin from the movie, autographed by the whole cast. They also had Madeleine Astor's real lifebelt and a deck chair from the ship, which was really cool. It took us two tries, but we also did Dollywood. We first went there on Wednesday, arrived right as it opened, and went on one roller coaster, only to be told there had been a water main break, and they were shutting the park down an hour after it opened. So we had to leave. Luckily, we were able to go back on Friday, our last day, and spent the day there. I rode almost all of the roller coasters and had a really good time. Those were my three favorite things we did. We also had plenty of relaxing downtime drinking moonshine on our back porch overlooking the Smoky Mountains. So pretty!
I survived the week without wanting to kill my sister or any other member of my family, which was good. The only bad part was finding a dead bedbug in my bed on our second morning there. I'm generally not afraid of bugs, but after watching too many episodes of "Infested" on Animal Planet back in the day, a bedbug infestation is one of my biggest fears. So you can imagine my horror at finding this thing and googling a picture of it to confirm my worst fear. My sister, who booked the cabin, called the company, and they sent an exterminator out to basically confirm that, yes, there was evidence of bedbugs, but they couldn't do much about it while we were staying there because they have to heat the house to like 350 degrees to kill them. They didn't have another open cabin that we could move to, so they gave us the option to either leave then and get our money back or stay and get a discount. We didn't have anywhere else to go and weren't going to pack up and drive nine hours home two days into a week-long vacation, so we chose to stay and ended up getting 50% off what we paid for the cabin, which was a lot. I didn't end up finding any more bedbugs, but my nephew found two live ones in his room over the course of the week, and my sister found one in her room on the last night. So gross! We bought a bunch of trash bags and Ziploc bags to bag all our stuff up before we went home - walked out of the grocery store looking like I was preparing to hide a dismembered body LOL. I washed all my clothes and everything that could be washed twice in hot water and dried it on the highest heat settings. My shoes are bagged up in my freezer for the next few days. And everything else that couldn't be washed, heated, or frozen either got pitched or is bagged up in my detached garage for the next ten months, until any bedbugs or eggs should be dead for sure. This includes my suitcase, Chromebook, and tablet, which doubles as my Kindle. My Chromebook is 6 years old and probably on its last legs anyway, so I took advantage of Amazon Prime Days and ordered a new one of those so my writing won't be affected, since I do most of that on a Chromebook these days. But, ugh, so stressful!
And what a chaotic week-and-a-half it's been in American politics! I had mixed feelings over Biden's announcement, but now that it's sunk in, I'm actually really excited that Kamala will likely be the nominee, and it won't just be a repeat of the 2020 election. I hope the Biden voters, black voters, Trump-haters, and WOMEN will unite around her! The next few months are gonna be crazy, but it's exciting to think we'll have another opportunity to vote for the first female president in this country.
I'm glad you had a good time at the music festival, Steph, and glad to see you've been updating, Mare! I had a good writing day today and feel like I'm finally getting back on track after just writing a little bit each day for the last week or so. Will most likely update on Saturday.
