Vacationblogging: The Pornographic Restaurant

This evening we met up with my uncle and aunt, and went out to dinner at a place called Buca di Beppo, which evidently is Italian for "softcore pornography." The place was decorated with memorabilia and pictures of Italian people making funny faces, but among those were some very, ahem, interesting pictures, like one of a nude male statue holding his private parts, or a woman posing on a car, and any number of cute baby bottoms, winged cherubs, and pics of cheesecake in bikinis. Sonshine noticed each and every one of these pictures right away, and though we tried to downplay them for the sake of his sanity, it eventually became too much for him to bear and he had to be removed from the restaurant. Thankfully he decided to use his words and ask to be removed from the restaurant instead of having a complete meltdown and forcing us to bodily remove him from the restaurant. The food was excellent and the service was great. Our server found that the chef had sprinkled some flour on Knuckles' chicken breast and had him re-do it because of Knuckles' wheat allergy. We were lucky to have such an attentive server.

After that we went to Downtown Disney. There was a wedding going on there, and any number of prom dates in formal dresses. Downtown Disney is one of those places that's designed to simulate some sort of vibrant marketplace, but really is all owned by the same firm, as witnessed by the same souvenir merchandise being available in every store. Having been at actual vibrant marketplaces, I rather resent that, and dislike the faux-marketplace effect.

Sonshine went absolutely insane with delight because there was a Lego store. He rocked his head back and forth at the sheer pleasure of being in a shop surrounded entirely by the objects of his Asperger's obsession. We bought him a small bucket of Lego wheels and a Lego bulldozer, but only after he spent a large quantity of time and effort running back and forth between every display, vaccilating over which precious treasures he wanted to take home from this Eden.

Princess, sadly, lost her "Princess Doll", a little rag doll that I made for her when she was very young. She had put her in her sack, but the doll must have fallen out somewhere in Downtown Disney. We looked for the doll, but to no avail. I tried to get ahold of the lost and found there by phone when we got home, but no one answered because it was "after hours". I'll try again on Sunday.

Vacationblogging from California

I'm in California, just a few blocks away from Disneyland. Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly) we're not going to Disneyland. FH's company has a suite at a hotel out here, and when FH had a chance to pick his dates to use it, it happened to be free for Memorial Day weekend, so he took it. We were going to see my dad's side of the family, who all live in this area, but unfortunately my grandfather on that side passed away on Tuesday. I did get to see everyone else, though, at the memorial service. I wish it had been under better circumstances, but on the other hand I got to see everyone all in the same place, and it was nice to be able to bring all the kids and FH with me to see the relatives. I had figured on coming alone by plane to Grandpa's memorial, back when we thought it would be a couple more months away.

Traveling with the Aspies has been fun, if by "fun" you mean "extremely tiring and making you question whether it would have been better to stay home". Bagel adores car trips, but there are limits to how much car trip even Bagel can tolerate, and he doesn't adapt well to hotels and changes in his food routines. Sonshine's been the biggest challenge. I wrote him a social story to help him get through the vacation, and we were reading it every day, but he lost his folder where we had put the social story, the map, and the hotel brochure. The three days before the vacation were full of escalating behavior problems, and the trip itself was marked by frequent meltdowns over things like being hungry (even though he was provided with snacks) and not getting to choose the movie all the time. Knuckles only puked once, after eating a hamburger patty, but we think he might have an ear infection or something, and he's certainly been acting like something hurts. We must have stopped every half hour for either a bathroom stop or a meltdown discipline moment, and sometimes both. Princess has been good though, but she lost her new bathing suit and decided to bring, instead of the spare one that fits whose print she doesn't like, the one that's so stretched out that it falls off whenever she wears it. So we may have to get her a new bathing suit, again.

Thankfully we are staying in a suite. It's really nice, and bigger than our first apartment. There are two bedrooms, one with two beds for the kids, and one with one bed for FH and I. There's a crib for Knuckles, which is nice for when the kids are fighting over allergenic foods and get them all over the floor. There's a kitchen so that I can cook special food for Knuckles, and also so that we won't have to eat out all the time.

Tomorrow we are going to San Diego to see the Festa parade. I haven't been to a Festa in a long time, and I'm so looking forward to eating linguica, sopas, and sweet bread! And I'll get to see my sweet Nana, God bless her. We all love our Nana.

My Math 0900 class was cancelled, so I don't start work until June 7 when my Math 1030 class at SLCC begins. I'm not really keen on working at SLCC, it's a commute, and they pay about half of what USU pays. But it's work, and it still pays more than my more local options. I wish USU Extension would give me steady, reliable work, but people in Tooele think "bettering themselves" is best done by getting a bigger pickup truck, so there's not much demand for math classes out there.