Village Idiots

Well in case you were all worried...we SURVIVED the week! Now we can say we were homeless for a week and never want to be that way again. The week started off smooth in the hotel (as mentioned in the previous post), but that changed when we decided to head to the Myakka campground. We pulled up and went to talk to the Ranger. Now we have, believe it or not, been here before AND we made friends with some of the regular travelers (they all happen to be 60+ as expected). So when we asked the Ranger to look for their OHIO plates she gave us a crazy look but did so anyway.

Then we tried to show her exactly where we stayed and where their favorite sites were, but this became a challenge due to the fact that they had done some remodeling since we were last there. Since we had within 5 minutes made complete asses of ourselves we told her we didn't care which site we had, but our one request was to be as far away from civilization as possible. She picked her favorite site that was in the back, away from the camp host, and only one other site nearby. The odds looked good for us, but this is where the story really gets interesting. We set up camp quickly, as usual, and sat around reading the paper at the picnic table until our bellies started to grumble. Sooooo... from a couple prior stops we had gathered all the fixings to make hotdogs. We bought most of the items including the actual hotdogs, buns, and liquor.




We took the leftover pop from some friends along the way for our mixer. And we also decided we needed toppings for the dogs. With our cooler packed to the brim with bathroom supplies we knew the only logical way to get just the right amount of toppings was from a fast food joint. So we stopped at a very crowded Chick-fil-a and snuck in to get ketchup, mustard, and utensils. Sara was so stealth no one even knew that nothing was bought! We decided we have to do this more often. Later after the hotdogs were all cooked up Jenn added an extra topping of dirt and sand to her hotdog...she must like them crunchy!!

That evening we were being friendly campers and invited our neighbors and all their crumbsnatchers over for a fire, we also invited Skip and his dog Abby who let us buy some of his overpriced wood too! Skip and Abby were the only ones to join us and trust us that was a real treat. Later, Jenn met perhaps the molester of the campground, Randy. This interesting bird drank beer, burped, and listened to music all night long, and happened to move into the only site right next to us: neighbor #1! The next day was spent roasting in the sun until it was time to head to dinner to see some of Sara's old patients from the James who have a house on Anna Maria Island. Of course we were late to happy hour, but they are good people and quickly caught us up on what we missed! We headed back to Chip's house for a home cooked dinner of eggplant Parmesan, shrimp on the barby, salad, and macaroni salad. We would be lying right now if we said our mouths weren't still watering from the meal. They must have felt bad for us, but we insisted we like camping and headed back to our home away from home tent city!

Basking on the beach is what we started the next with, deciding that laying around was making our muscles go limp we headed for a long swim to the sand bar. Only some water was ingested, but it was worth it when we got out to the most beautiful place ever! We also took a stroll in the wilderness up to the tippy top of the canopy walk. All the gators we saw can't get us from up here!

                      

                                                          

                     

           

                                          

 After awhile the fun was over and Sara had to head to the campsite to shower and make herself presentable for work. First night on the job was a real treat, but while i slaved away making a quick buck trouble was brewing at the campsite. Jenn was stranded with no car in the middle of nowhere with her two person tent. The white trash billies and all their little crumbsnatchers who had rudely declined our offer the night before, took it upon themselves to move into the site directly next to us. As the sun was setting Jenn tucked herself comfortably into her tent, but before she could even say goodnight Randy, the creepy as #$%@ molester was knocking at her tent door. 

Now at this point Randy was supposed to be home to Wisconsin, but he decided to stay and was bummed his site was taken by the billies. He offered Jenn a drink and conversation "as he was a really good conservationist", but Jenn politely declined and did her best to deadbolt the tent by tying the inner strings tightly. Just as her baby eyes were drifting off to sleep, WW3 begin between all the coons in the woods courtesy of the Billies who took the liberty to name each coon and fed them a trail of strawberry poptarts directly to the site. Needless to say Jenn fell to the calming sounds of coons growling and hillbillies giggling...the way camping should be. Before long the sun was rising in the east and Sara returned to the tent for some rest, to her dismay this is not what she was going to get. Now we were sitting in the tent recapping the previous nights activities, when all hell broke out in billyville. Apparently it was move out day and the Mr. Billy was taking down the tent before Mrs. Billy had her full fat foot out. It billyville this enough to cause Mrs Billy to completely go off the handle and the "whole F*$#%ing trip is ruined". After numerous F-bombs, screaming, and threats from both ends, Mrs Billy said enough is enough grabbed half of her kids and sped off to god knows where. Mr Billy, although still upset seemed to calm down and started to evaluate is life decisions, little did we know he was soon going to join the "missing persons list" and Jenn would find herself in the middle of the trial. With it finally returning to quite wilderness Sara drifted to sleep only to awake a couple hours later with police rounding the site. Jenn seemed to make a comment to the police about the crazy billys and before you knew it Jenn was forced to make a statement of that mornings activities or her plates would be run and he would need her to come to court if needed. The situation went like this: Mrs. Billy couldn't find Mr. Billy and called the police claiming he was missing, but failing to mention and later lying about how they had gotten into a fight earlier that morning. After numerous police rounds and questionings we escaped to the bathrooms to shower and hide, but to relief the camp host, Mickey, came to tell us that Mr. Billy had been found on the side of some highway and no longer needed to question Jenn. The jury is still out whether Mr Billy really wanted to be found by Mrs. Billy...the world may never know!! Luckily we both worked that night. Sara's night alone in the tent the following night was much less eventful and her only problem was mild rain storms.

Sooo, as you can tell we were in dyer need of an actual roof over our head. The crap  in the car was starting to crowd the front seat and you had to strategically place your ass in the passengers seat just to fit! Not to mention the rank smells from all the dirty clothes, beachwear, and camping equipment. Jim, or Rocco, the landlord said the house would be ready around 1. Now this weekend on the island was "Siesta Fiesta" so we headed to the village for some drinks. One sign made our whole days wait worthwhile: FREE BEER. It happened to be at the shoe store so we did a little trying on while we drank our beer. Within a half hour we took over and started running the keg. We also got invited to a crayfish broil at the owner of the shoe stores house...the friendliest people live on this island! After we drained our final beer we got the go ahead from Rocco to move on in! We were pleasantly surprised at how nice our beach house actually was. See pictures:

Being 0.3 miles from the village and the beach you can see this island life is going to be EPIC! We were exhausted from moving in and living out of tent that the first night in the new house was spent in PJs watching Pretty Women and passing out early! However, after a well rested day we dropped a ton of cash on a few of our favorite things at the grocery store. Then it was mixed drink and off to the beach on our bags, dinging our bells all the way there. We learned a lot on this first bike ride to the beach including:
1. It is ok to wear a dress when you ride your bike
2. You must ding your bell at every intersection
3. You still have to look both ways when crossing streets (Sara is going to have problems with this)
4. It is difficult to hold a cocktail and ride at the same time..but with practice it is possible

While we were enjoying yet another beautiful day on the beach Sara got a little present from the seagulls. A healthy portion of shit complete with a rainbow of white, black and green..that means good luck right?!?!

After that it was home to spruce up for our first big night out in the village, looks like a tornado is coming through town tonight. We started the night with high hopes and headed to SKOB to listen to some live music from our friend who was playing near the shoe store the previous day. We couldn't decide what to drink so we went balls to the walls and had long island iceteas, mistake #2 (mistake #1 was the empty case of yuengling at home). As we sat at the bar we met some local yocals and talked about another well known travel nurse, but we soon decided she got nothing on us and we will soon the talk of the town! This goal will soon become mistake #3. After awhile our travel nurse story was spreading and before long people were begging us to join their table and shots of patron were placed in front of us, mistake #4. After that went down, not so smoothly we joined another table of some kids our age. They said the only way they would order a "Village Idiot" was if we would join them, we can't let them down so Village Idiots we became, mistake #5. Now, you know we cannot just drink a drink so we started playing the Alphabet Game.
Although this is one of our favorite games the previous mistakes were starting to take a toll on our minds. Needless to say instead of "helping" them drink this bucket we just consumed it all. Before long we got yelled at for playing the game to loud and it was time to blow off some steam at the Beach Club. Usually we are not clubbers, but on island it is a different world, so our assess landed directly in the middle of the dance floor, this was quite the scene and mistake #6. We became the free entertainment it was something special. Our baby eyes were getting tired and now our baby legs were tired too and we still had to pedal our way home!! We thought it was a successful night but when we woke up we realized we were missing a couple important items, sorry Jim. A bike lock, 2 bananas, and the house key, PLUS there was a situation in the bathroom, but no need to go into details of that one!

Overall, the Island Village life is gonna get the best of us!

Our 13 week Spring Break...

The last 3 nights of work were everything you would expect and more...outrageous patients, paper charting, more paper charting, and partiies..oo and did we mention paper charting??!!? Anyways, we found how much we were truly loved by all the staff between the 16th and 17th floor. Party #1 began around 11:00PM on G17 with the break room transformed into a full blown decked out party. Tons of food and treats. We even got a basket full of goodies from the best PSC Denise!
After we stuffed our faces here we headed down to G 16 where we were again greeted by the entire staff and a complete spread of goodies with a cake that appeared to say "Sara and Jenn. Thank you and good fuck". Apparently Houston doesn't know the difference between F's and L's.



 We practically ran out of work to turn in our badges. We were not completely thinking straight as we were riding the escalator and panicked mid way down when we realized we needed out badges to get out of the parking garage. So we did our best version of a high knees run and ran back up the down escalator. People were laughing all around and we honestly didn't even realize for a minute what fools we really just looked like. Needless to say, we got out of the garage and went right home to bed. From there we packed the car to the brim, stopped at a Starbucks and finagled our way to free coffee and headed on our merry little way out of the great state of Texas and never looked back! Soooo long suckers!!

Pork chop and Applesauce (our trucker names) settled smoothly into their side job: Truck Driving. We rode rocking chair pretty much through the whole night with chicken pills/espresso beans to keep us awake and alert. On this trip we avoided all the pickle parks and lizard lots, nothing good ever happens there.

The Sunshine State did not let us down as it welcomed us with blue sky's not a cloud to be seen for a perfect sun shiny day! So we did what we know how to do best and headed to the #1 beach in the US for a nap. Being that we cannot move into our beach house until the end of the week we had to get creative on where we would sleep. Some fellow Ohions were in town vacationing with their families and said we were more than welcome to spend the night. How could we say no?!?! However, what we walked into was 3 families with 9  crumbsnatchers on their last day of vacation. Kids were crazed and excited and parents were stressed out and exhausted. With our lack of sleep it is safe to say we got along with  the kids and spent dinner at the childrens table playing games. Two drinks later we crashed hard into the closest bed we could find.

Next morning, we woke COMPLETELY homeless. However, when living on an island there are no worries and its 5 o'clock somewhere so we headed to the strip to find the best happy hour deals. We scoped our favorites and ended with 2 for 1 bloody mary's...mmmhmmmmhhmmm We could get used to this life! After awhile we had to meet our landlord to drop our check. Various texts were sent to confirm a meeting place (our landlord didn't trust us dropping it at his house, not quite sure why?) and before you knew it this sounded like a full blown drug deal. our landlord coined his name as Rocco and we used our trucker names. We think we will get along with Rocco just fine! At that point it was prime time sun so we headed to the beach to rest and relax!

Being that we can't move into our beach house until Saturday we needed a place to stay, so we used what we learned on our last vacation and headed to our new favorite hotel: Homewood Suites! Not only do that have a complete spread for breakfast, but Monday through Thursday they serve dinner. Being that we love food and it is all you can eat we asked to see a menu, were pleased with what they had to offer, and so we booked a couple nights here. We quickly unpacked the essentials to our life and cleaned up for dinner at a local eatery. We were extra hungry so we devoured biscuits until the waiter brought the last batch with a togo bag and said you don't have to eat these all here you can take them home if you like. Well that just started a whole conversation and before you knew it not only were we completely stuffed, but we also left with our waiter David's number. Coincidentally enough he just moved here from Texas and was looking for some new friends..lucky for him that we stumbled into his place of employment. Look at us two nights and already a new friend! We still had not had enough beach for one day so we made one more pit stop to check out one of the prettiest places to ever see the sunset!

Then it was off to bed! Easter Sunday morning came around real early due to our brilliant idea to go to Easter Sunrise Service. The service started at 6AM and contrary to popular belief we somehow managed to make it in dresses with our blankets and even fresh coffee.
Lucky for us it was entertainment beyond words. For example, one woman did not like the message so after she somehow turned her entire sweater around she plugged her ears and had a slight rock going. All the while her husband just shook his head. For us the message was brilliant and even moved us from our spot in the fiery pits of hell. It went a little like this: "I am not perfect, but I am close so that is good enough. You all don't have to do everything right but if you come close enough that is then good enough". Music to our ears, not perfect but pretty damn close! The final farewell was also interesting. He invited us all to stay after and enjoy music by the choir led by the penis! We thought he meant to say pianist but he had some trouble so we stuck around just to make sure we were missing the after party on the beach! The rest of Easter Sunday was spent yet again on the glorious, crystal clear, powdery, soft sandy beaches of Siesta Keys. We did add a little flare to our day by wearing bunny ears in lu of Easter.

They got us a free ride from Johnny Free Rides with his very sly pick up line "You ladies want to..HOP on". Good one Johnny..we will be in touch with him again for sure! We got numerous compliments as we walked the beach and even got to see SANTA!!! Apparently he knows the best place to take his spring break too! All in all it was a pretty darn good Easter Sunday!



Tomorrow begins our first day of work...wish us luck! Not sure if we need it or our new place of employment needs it more!! I am sure we will dazzle them!


Well folks...where was all the luck. The hospital is nice, everyone is super friendly, but our schedules are completely DIFFERENT! AAAH. Well we will just have to go with the flow and see how this pans out! But since we don't work tomorrow we cancelled our hotel and are going camping! Heading to the nearest liquor store, nearest dollar store for rafts to sleep on, and the nearest grocery store for hotdogs. (unless we can sneak back into our hotel for cheeseburgers in paradise night!).

Spring Break with our BOYS!!

The first day we arrived in Houston is all we heard about was the WORLD FAMOUS RODEO. At this point we were sick of hearing about the damn rodeo and we were ready to see what all the hype was about, especially since everything else in Houston seems to be less than average. However, having worked the night before left us feeling sluggish. As our usual we were running a little late and felt like we were going to miss everything the rodeo would have to offer. But boy were we wrong. Upon arriving at the gates we came to realize that this event is more or less a fair or carnival atmosphere with copious amounts of fried meat that we couldn't have because it was Friday (Yes, we do try to follow some of the Lent ways). Sooo, we settled for a potato on a stick..you know how much we love our potatoes. Then we found the largest cone of ice cream and headed into the stadium. To our pleasant surprise what we thought was going to be an already started concert in which we would be late turned out to be a full blown rip roaring rootin tootin rodeo! WE watched bull riding, broncos bucking, carriage racing, muttin bustin, and 4H crumbsnatchers running around trying to catch calf's by there tails. Each event seemed to be better than the next and we were on the edge of our seats the entire time! Finally, something worthwhile in Houston and the main event hadn't even started!

                                                                                        The rodeo was followed by an awesome indoor fireworks show and Train came shortly after for the main concert event. Again, on the edge of our seats we belted out our favorite tunes like meet virginia and save me san francisco until our throats and others ears hurt. Then we headed home to get a good night sleep before our much needed vacation to Florida.

Happpppy St. Patrick's Day! We arose early so we could don our finest St. Patrick's Day gear and head to the airport. Beads from Mardi Gras, giant polka dot green bows, and hand crafted four leaf clover necklaces courtesy of Big Boy himself.    

 We knew it was going to be a good day when our airport courtesy taxi happened to be named PAT and gave us free courtesy coffee! We continued the good day with talk of bloody marys with our free coupons on the airplane, but to our pleasant surprise the stewardess said they were on the house because it was a holiday! The luck 'o the Irish is on our side! We landed in sunny Florida and were greeted by 3 of our favorite spring break boys. Big Boy, John Boy, and Rob were anxiously awaiting our arrival unsure of what the next few days would bring. As soon as we hit the car our responsibilities were gone and vacation mode hit us full force. As we opened the door we realized an extra passenger who was lost and then found by Big Boy had smuggled his way in...but that is a whole other story. 

We thought the boys would want to head back and continue to work on the shack they are building, but to our surprise they took us to the nearest beach. We spent the whole day lounging on the sand and walking in the water finding all different kinds of shells and sand dollars. The water was so clear and the shells were literally everywhere you looked. To cap off our first good day we had a few beers and grilled some hotdogs before heading back to our new humble abode. The next couple days are a bit of a blur. The main focus was either food or sun. 

The hotel we stayed in had complimentary breakfast and Monday through Friday an impressive spread for a managers special dinner party. So with our bodies toasted and our tummies tight you could see how we each took one of Big Boys shoulders and fell asleep on the couch every night. Each morning we arose early, ate breakfast, and drove the boys to work. Once they were settled in we drove to all the local hardware stores to pick up various items the boys requested. Most items were free with coupons, but who knew screws were so darn expensive! We got several funny looks walking the stores with our finest beachwear and when asked what we were building "a house" was the last thing these people expected to hear. The boys thought they could pull one over on us and gave us a job they thought we couldn't handle. We showed up to work in our summer wear and were handed long sleeve flannels, gloves, and socks (who knows if they were clean or not). They pointed to a room filled floor to ceiling with insulation. Jenn's fear of spiders and talk of possible snakes living in these piles of crap was not allowing for a very thrilled attitude. But, we knew we had a job to do so all garbed up we got to work picking up piece by piece and moving it neatly to another location. The whole time we were getting heckled by the boys, but it didn't stop us and we finished the job with ease. Luckily we did not get the itches; however, our lungs were feeling the sting as we both had a minor attack of the coughs. No worries we would rest it off poolside. One day, actually one hour of work can be so darn exhausting!

 We did what we know how to do best and headed to the pool to soak up some rays. Time flies when you are having fun and before we knew it was time to pick the boys up from a hard days work. Today was no ordinary day of just picking up and going home. Today's special was free fries with green ketchup yet again. Now, the day before was St.Patty's Day and free fries and green ketchup was the special at Burger King, most normal people would just get one order at one place but we are not normal and had to go to numerous burger kings and get numerous fries. The way Big Boys face lights up with free stuff is priceless. So, when we saw a commercial that stated free fries on the 18th as well we knew we had to go back. When all was said and done we had received at least 20 free fries and got scolded by the drive thru employees for taking a photo. 

Needless, to say that bag went to the seagulls in fear that they topped our order was topped with an extra ingredient of spit. It is sad to say that most of the fries went to the seagulls, minus a few for taste testing red and green ketchup...the reason being our hotel offered us not only complimentary breakfast but also a full dinner spread. breakfast was always a surprise. This for sure always made us SMILE! Every time we road the elevator down we just got "caught smiling more" 

The main course switched between egg mcmuffins, omelets, mexican burrito, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. However, around the outskirts of the main course was waffles, bagels, toast, yogurt, fruit, cereal, and cold and hot beverages.Our absolute favorite breakfast item was muffins. They had blueberry, mocha chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip and banana nut,  mmmhmmmh. One day we came down and there were no muffins!!! The muffin lady explained to us that they had forgotten to take them out of the freezer and they would be back tomorrow. With sad faces we found other things to eat and went about our day. The next morning we were pleasantly surprised that the muffin lady saved us an entire tray of the assorted muffins just for us! We are not early risers and she wanted to be sure we got all the flavors we wanted! Honestly, she was the nicest muffin maker we had ever met! Onto dinner, this is no ordinary dinner. Night one consisted of salad bar, Italian wedding soup, bread sticks, chicken cacciatore, mashed potatoes and gravy, and unlimited beer and wine. Our cheap hungry asses took full advantage of this and dug in numerous times. This meal was so good we even invited the local family that lives about 20 minutes away to join us. Before long we were all stuffed and empty glasses of beer lined the table. What can we say when its free we capitalize. The second night, again local family invited, consisted of salad bar, broccoli cheese soup with "Quakers", sauerkraut, brats, rolls, all the beer and wine you could drink, and if you stuck around to the end you were surprised with leftover chicken and dumplings. 

Management was notified on how great this food was but the disappointment of no dessert always left us craving more, hopefully there are some dessert changes the next time we visit. Fear not! We fixed our sweet tooth by heading to the cone for some of the best ice cream New Port Richey has to offer. After a couple days of this schedule you could pretty much roll us back and forth to our rooms, we would not be going hungry on this vacation. Like us our three little bears always slept right in a row dead to the world! 

The final day was in the team leaders words "rest and recoop day". We were allowed to sleep in, but sleeping in the living room allowed us a personalized alarm clock that went to the tune of "potty potty potty potty". Waking up laughing was always the best. On this final day that didn't seem to be enough so Big Boy came back after round one of breakfast completely frantic. "You guys are gonna miss breakfast they are turning all the lights off!!" So we stumbled out of bed in our jammies, staggered down the long hall, stopped at the public restrooms making sure not to look in the mirrors and headed to breakfast. The muffin maker did not let us down and saved us another tray of muffins, in which we each took about 3 for later. With a fully stuffed gut we started the day at the Greeks local hangout for some morning chatter. (Big Boys brother married greek so he is in the inner circle). Then we headed to the cooks house to check out a swarm of bees, having a professional beekeeper with us came in handy. We swung by and picked up Elanie and we got to drive in the terrorist vehicle. We thought we wanted a standard VW but now we are not so sure. This vehicle is an '89 with a working sun roof that is literally the entire back half. The seats are more comfortable than my bed, with room to stretch your legs and even a ledge to kick back and relax. We road the streets in style!

We made a quick stop at Elanie and Richeys sons, Andy's,  "laboratory" where we met their other son Alex (see photo). From here it was nearly lunch time and breakfast was starting to wear off. Richey offered us some weeds that are actually quite delectable. We munched on those for awhile as we fed the fish our leftover french fries. We must have to started to look pale because the boys offered to take us to the beach and pick us up later. How could we say no! We said our farewells to the local Floridians and told them not to worry we would be back soon, trust me they are excited to have us back! Then we headed to the airport. Rob had an earlier flight so we got dropped too. We tried to get an earlier flight, but it proved unsuccessful. See things do not always go our way! We figured it will all work out, not like we were dying to get back to Texas, we could kill some time in the airport, but honestly the only thing we found to do was eat. Hell it is the last of vacation for this week so we might as well live it up! With only 20 people on the flight into Houston we were able to spread out and realized that people don't fly into Houston much they just flee it!

15 days, 9 night of work, and we are on the road again to our next assignment! Let the countdown begin!