What Happens in Vegas

... gets posted on this blog.

Great friend and fellow mama, B, joined me on a road trip to Las Vegas this weekend to visit our friend J, who is working on her Master's degree at UNLV. Oh, the fun we had. I won't bore you with the details (like...

• how we ate sushi and Thai food all weekend, or
• how B lost $2 on the slots, or
• how we both drooled during our fabulous massages, or
• how we loved the Bellagio fountains and cursed the time we wasted at *and trying to find* City Center, or
• how when I asked for a script M on my big toe instead of the usual flower, my Ethiopian pedicurist scribbled a black M that looks like a tick).

I'll just say that the theme of the weekend was allowing ourselves to let go and relax. And I shall now demonstrate our success at this task with the following story.

In the hallway near the elevator on the 10th floor of the hotel where we resided, there was a narrow table with a mirror above, and two leather chairs on each side. The table was not centered on the wall, which B and I immediately noticed. You see, we both tend to be Type A individuals. Yes, yes, I know this is quite shocking to you readers who know me (or us), but it is indeed true. And not only did we notice that the table was not centered on the wall, this fact bothered us immensely. We were about to walk over to the table and center it, but there was someone walking down the hall and we didn't want to lay our quirks out there for all casino-land to see. So we walked past the crooked table just that one time. We would fix it next time.

But, you see, every single time we walked by that blasted table, there was someone else in the hall. Usually just one person. What were these single hall monitors doing in OUR hallway? The answer is clear. They were there to prevent us from falling off the wagon. The wagon of "letting it go and enjoying our vacation without giving into our obsessive need to fix things." Bet you didn't know that wagon exists. Well, it does.

So as we ascended the elevator to the 10th floor at the end of our misadventures on our last night in Vegas, we said to each other, "This is our chance. The last chance to fix that table. We have been patient enough, and we've walked by countless times without giving in. But not this time." So when the elevator doors parted, we walked out to find the table, still crooked. But, to our surprise, there was a pair of teenage girls lounging in those leather chairs! We took one look at the sentries, sent to guard the table that had taunted us for 4 days, and we burst out laughing. Those poor girls will never know what their decision to sit in those chairs meant to us, the Type A girls who were forced to let it go and relax.