Love, Jimmie

Let me begin by saying, iPod and Passkey: FOUND.  I know you were worried.  Not half as much as me, but again, it is my stuff.

I’m going to backtrack a bit.  I’m a devoted member to my gym, the YMCA.  The staff members are so friendly, the patrons are often just as helpful as the staff, and my friends go there.  One of them even teaches some classes and while I’m very certain she tries to kill or at the very least maim us (is that in the rule book for being an instructor?), she’s very good at what she does.  The sweet little old ladies who take the water aerobics classes and invade the locker room while I’m getting ready for work every morning are delicious.  They wear the best sparkly blue eye shadow and comment regularly on my choice of bra and panty and tuck their t-shirts so far into their own panties that the hem comes out the bottom of the leg holes. 

An aside here.  One of the little ladies pays particular attention to my lingerie sets.  That’s what she calls them, my lingerie.  She gets tickled when they match and normally they do.  I prefer it that way.  One day I had a particularly fetching set and she approached me about it. 

“Honey,” she says, “are you married?” 

“No ma’am,” I say.

“Well you should be because that would be enticing to a man.”

Right.

And another time, I was just not feeling it.  I had on stuff that didn’t match.  And she wandered over from her locker to check me out.  She eyeballed me and heaved a big sigh and the look on her face was just heartbreaking.  “I’m just so disappointed,” she breathed.  I felt horrible about that. She is precious and I love her.

You can see why I pay my monthly fee gladly for the privilege of being a member.

So with all of my joy and ecstatic happiness with my Y membership, imagine my dismay when I discovered that upon leaving my very expensive flat iron in the locker room one day, it was stolen, like within an hour of my leaving it.  And also my dismay when I left my yummy shampoo and conditioner behind and they, too, were stolen.  (See?  I lose a lot of shit.) 

Apparently I am not alone. I see notices on the community bulletin board asking for “The person who stole my size six silver strappy sandals” to return them and then a week later, another plea for the “very expensive, super awesome sandals that are MINE and not YOURS” and then again a week later a message urging said thief to “be happy with your lying, stealing conscious, you dirty filthy cow who stole my sandals!”  I’m assuming the sandals were never returned. 

Fast forward to the birthday Vegas trip where I enthusiastically encouraged my sister and myself to Run!  Yes, let’s exercise on Saturday morning in Sin City!  And I had my iPod and used the “Porn Star Dancing” song to motivate me the mile and a half I actually ran on the treadmill.  That was the last time I remember having it.

I was on a high after finding my checkbook.  So when Phranke suggested that I call the hotel we stayed in on the off chance my iPod had been left behind and turned in, I blew her off.  In what universe would I be lucky enough to actually recover all three of my missing items?  None, I tell you.  But she was insistent and asked me in ways like, “What did the hotel say when you called them?” Just like I would do to make it seem like it was my idea all along.  She’s a smart cookie, that one. 

Now I planned this trip for my sister’s birthday.  I planned it with a budget in mind and thus we could not afford the likes of the Bellagio or the Cosmopolitan.  Instead, we stayed at the Excalibur, one of the cheesiest hotels on the Vegas strip.  Yes, I chose it but was slightly sneery about it.  It was cheap, clean, smoker-friendly and smelled a bit like ass.  With a Febreeze overlay.  Like lots and lots of Febreeze overlay.  Kind of gross when you smell it in person.  But we reasoned that we were not going to limit ourselves to spending all of our time in that casino. We had things to see and do that did not involve castles and maidens and the Thunder from Down Under boys (sadly).    Needless to say, I’ve never thought of the Excalibur as the highest quality hotel on the strip.

With no hope at all, and with a laissez-faire attitude, I called customer service at Ye Olde Excalibur.  The polite person on the other end asked if I had lost my iPod in the casino or in my room.  I gave her my room number and date of checkout and much to my surprise, she said, “Yes, we have it right here.  Silver Nano with a black case?”  I nodded, realized that she could not see me, and then breathed in ecstasy my “Yeeeeessshh.”  She offered to send it FedEx the next day and within a couple of days, I had it back in my hot little hands.

What makes me laugh is this.  I leave things behind at the YMCA, a supposed Christian organization, and it gets stolen.  I leave things behind in Las Vegas, Sin City, where what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, in a hotel that I was slightly snotty about, and they get returned.  Oh the irony. 

And so I say this.  Excalibur, ye olde hotel that smells of ass and Febreeze, thank you for being the high quality hotel I did not give you credit for and for taking me down a peg or two and for making me eat crow.  May I never judge a book by its cover (or smell) again.  Pass the salt.