. . . With Noithing But a Dance Belt and a Tube of Chapstick: Part 1

If someone can name the movie that that quote comes from WITHOUT CHEATING you get a prize. I'm not kidding. I will come to your house and make you dinner. Unless you live in TX. Then I'm not going. But I'm serious, NO CHEATING!! You have to know where that comes from off the top of your head.

So what is this post about? Well, it's about how we went down to LA on Tuesday night. It's a long story. I'll try to sum up quickly.

Marcelo has a permanent resident card, but that only allows him to come back to the USA. To travel to any other country (including his country of origin) he needs a passport from that country. And his Ecuador passport expires in April.

We would be able to renew it VERY EASILY in Ecuador, but we need it valid BEFORE we travel back there. So that means we need to go to an Embassy or Consulate somewhere in this country. There is an office in LA and an office in San Francisco so naturally we would be going to LA because 1)it's closer and 2) we can pass through Las Vegas on the way back for Marcelo's most beloved king crab legs. DUH!!

So for a long long time I've tried to get Marcelo to commit to going. I wanted to plan the trip, make hotel arrangements, find maps online, you know the works. He wouldn't commit. He kept putting it off. We made up a tentative plan of our schedule so he knew what to expect. The original plan was this:

Wed-Drive to Vegas. Stay the night in Vegas
Thursday-Drive VERY EARLY to L.A. Get Passport renewed. Drive back to Vegas. Spend Second night in Vegas
Friday-Drive home.

A pretty long trip, but broken up nicely and easy to remember. Well, on Tuesday (his last day of school for the week before Spring Break) and he comes back from school and we start talking about going. He says. "well if we are going to go tomorrow, I should get the tires checked out". So he heads off to the tire store.

I post that blog about which freeway to take, thinking that I'll get a few responses before I leave the next day. However, Marcelo comes back from the tire place and says, "let's just go now. I want to get this over with. Let's just drive all the way to L.A. tonight."

You should know it was like 6pm when he said this. I was cooking Evelyn dinner. Nothing was packed, no hotels were reserved, no maps printed out, NOTHING! But he just wanted it to happen. OK!! Let's do it!

We quickly found a place for our dog to go, and then we started running around like mad. The plan was to get Evy ready for bed like normal, but then put her in the car seat and just start driving. The hope was she would sleep for a long time. We packed and were on the road.

The drive down to L.A. was pretty uneventful. I wish I would've known about taking the 10 to the 210. But we did get there VERY early (right around 5 am) and there was very little traffic. And it was just easier for me to take the 10 all the way. Marcelo is TERRIFIED to drive in big cities and he's horrible at reading maps. So I didn't want to have to look at the map MIENTRAS driving in L.A. and just taking the 10 all the way there accomplished that for me

However, on a side note, while there was not a *lot* of traffic, there was still some!! At like 4:45 am!! What the crap? Why are there that many drivers on the road at that horrible hour? Who is commuting at 4:45? If you are awake and going to work at 4:45 you need to speak to a specialist about some workaholic issues you got going on. And maybe this is just my opinion, but pre-5 am drivers are WAAAYY more aggressive than normal L.A. drivers. It's like they are manic about getting to where they want to be before the massive amounts of traffic come out.


Anyway, the Ecuador Embassy is located in the Larry Flint (AKA Hustler Magazine) building on Wilshire Blvd of downtown Beverly Hills. I am talking RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BEVERLY HILLS!! I could only find one grocery store and no Target. I know: I asked some scary Phillis Neffler look-alikes if they could help me. So no regular stores. However if I needed to buy a luxury car I could choose anything from the Lexus, Mercedes, Aston Martin, BMW, Lotus, Jaguar or Ferrari dealerships all surrounding me. Apparently those in Beverly Hills don't need to eat or buy moderatly priced housewares, but they DO need fancy new cars! Holy inferiority complex, Batman!

When we got to the building, we were VERY early. It didn't open till 9 and we were there at 5:30. UGGH!!! We tried to get our kid to sleep, but she wasn't having it. So we found a really nice Beverly Hills park and I took our child out to play in the sand while Marcelo got another 90 minutes of sleep. I chatted on the phone with my mom-I love that my mom talks to you when you are driving late at night so you can stay awake. It's her thing. She told me to call her at any hour if I needed to talk. However, a combo of Diet Dr. Pepper and sunflower seeds had me WIRED!! I guess all that sleep deprivation from motherhood has finally started to do me some good.

Other side note on people of Beverly Hills: They are angry all the time. I've never been honked at so much while driving. Like if I was turning into some driveway and the person didn't like my turning speed? HOOOOOOOOOOOONNK!! Apparently money doesn't make you happier; It just makes you a bigger dill-hole.

So when the building opened we went inside and I was instantly reminded of why I don't miss Ecuador some days. Now, this is TOTALLY my opinion, but I think that those from Ecuador are just used to things being difficult. They just expect that life will suck, and that there is no other way. And they just accept it. We Americans don't accept much of anything. We question our bill from the Denny's. ("Did you order a drink AND a milkshake? It just seems like a big charge for a drink. I think I'll ask them about it"). But Ecuadorians are much more likely to be like, "Oh, man, we just got screwed over. DANG!! Oh, well, I guess it's my turn to be screwed over. Too bad!!" And then they just go on with their day. Americans would be much more in your face like "Um, I'm going to need to speak with your manager. . .. NOW!!"

The way I saw this happen on this day was because the "system" went down and everyone was stuck waiting around waiting to see if it came back. The "system" was never fully defined for us, but we all joked around that it was some sort of waffle making/picture taking apparatus that needed to speak with Ecuador and Ecuador was offline at that time. We had fun joking about it. They told us that we might have to come back tomorrow. Like we lived down the street or something!! And Marcelo was just going to be like "What can we do? We have to come back tomorrow!" And I was ANNOYED!! Seriously annoyed.

Remember, at this point I had been running on 1 hour of sleep from the previous night. The Diet Dr. Pepper had been out of my system for hours at that time and I had a hungry/whiny baby. Oh, and I was hungry. I didn't have dinner or breakfast (unless you consider sunflower seeds at 3 am breakfast). And when I went to find a bathroom, I was told that I had to go to the basement of the building next to valet parking where they made me use a KEY like I was freaking in the 3rd grade and they had to "regulate" who used their bathroom. I mean, it's freaking Wilshire Blvd! I just watched you valet park a Lamborghini! The people around her drive $150,000 cars!! And you don't trust them in your public bathrooms? And then they told me I had to come back? I'M GOING TO NEED TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER RIGHT NOW!!!

Luckily the mysterious "system" came back on line and we got out of there around noon. Not too bad, right? We went to get some food. Correction, we went and INHALED some food and then got back on the road to go back to Vegas.

I'm going to do the second part of our trip tomorrow. But I just want to add something here: My husband is a TOTALLY different man when he's around his own people. He's funny, life of the part and the "class clown". He's so much fun and just so funny to be around. Sometimes it's hard to remember why you got married when the baby is sick and you have no money and you are annoyed with each other. But sitting there in that tiny little room, watching my husband joke and laugh and have a good time, I was reminded of just how much fun he is, why I fell in love with him and how much I love him. Oh man, now I'm REALLY looking forward to June.

Ok, that's enough for today. More on this trip tomorrow!