Tag: single digit dance

All The Single Digits…..

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

We’re nearly there folks. Just a few more days and you get at least two Sundays off from this tripe. It’s a strange phenomenon that the fewer days we have left in the countdown the further away it seems. Getting through another week and a bit seems more daunting than when we rounded the double-digit day milestone.

Looking back over recent posts, I recognise that the last few weeks may have come across as a little downbeat, negative, or big girl’s blousey. That’s because that is an accurate summary of the content of recent posts. How can I be moaning so much this close to a trip?

I don’t know. I’m tired and emotional maybe and in desperate need of a break? Who knows? Or maybe it’s because I am being persecuted by the Gods of the FastPass to never get the ones I want and this is a clear case of victimisation and persecution…….ahem, we shall move on.

Anyway, not to break stride, and continue this maudlin mantra, this week I learnt that O Canada will be down for refurb whilst we are there. So there’s that.

To be honest I am at the moment in the mode of trying to dampen my own expectations for the trip. The countdown and build up are so long and arduous that there is a danger that the holiday never stands a chance of living up to the lofty heights your mind has created.

So I am mentally preparing myself for the fact that it will rain a lot, which is just like being at home right now, and that the crowds will be huge and annoying and we won’t get the FastPasses we want….oh I’ve mentioned that already….

I do this just so that I can take these minor set backs in my ever pleasant and smiling stride of course.

Looking at reports from folks over there at the moment, the rain thing is definitely on the cards. We are experienced and seasoned August travellers so we know this and are ready to deal with it, but hopefully it will be restricted to the normal afternoon downpours and nothing more and we, as we have so far over all these years, avoid a hurricane.

If I can ensure my expectations are not too high then there is every chance they shall be exceeded and for my (and your) sake let’s hope that is the case.

Today, we will slip into our single digit day dance territory with effortless grace and I face just one week left at work now. Technically, I am in work on the day before we go, the day after the Bank Holiday Monday, but I shall probably work from home that day at least saving myself the horrors of the commute, so I am not counting that.

It’s funny that the absolute need for this holiday is so great now that I cannot comprehend how I intended to survive until next summer before having a holiday as was the plan. Right now, getting through another few days in the office without head butting someone is looking like a challenge.

There will be just one more blog pre trip so now is a good time to do some recruitment for the old social media channels. I will mostly be posting on the Mkingdon Facebook page so if you haven’t liked that, now is a good time to do so. I will be going “Live” a fair bit so if you want to join us, you know what to do.

If you wish you can also “enjoy” my content on Instagram and Twitter. How many ways are there to hear me moan about stuff? I wouldn’t bother “hitting me up” on Snapchat as I’ve never been able to figure out how to use it, which is just how Snapchat like it.

Sometimes I do think that this point of the countdown is the best and it is a state that everyone should live in perpetually. Imagine always having a WDW trip just a few days away? Existing in a state of perpetual anticipation would be lovely, other than of course never actually going on the trip itself. Having lost about six ounces on my hellish never-ending healthy eating regime for the last few weeks I have tried on the shorts, selected those that fit and are worthy of the journey, and with that another pre-holiday tradition is ticked off. I think that pink lycra is the way to go this time, don’t you?

Till the next time……

Is It Because I Is Blue?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I feel a little guilty moaning about anything when we are so close to a Florida trip that I can smell it, but I’m gonna. We are now two weeks in to operation update our house from the 90s. Two weeks with no bathroom and it still looks like a cell in a Far East prison. We have another week to go before we have the ability to cleanse ourselves in our own home and have any surfaces in the house that are not under three inches of dust. To add to our heartache the next set of workmen turn up tomorrow to create a double bubble of renovation chaos.

I am more stressed than Trump’s press secretary. To add to all of that I have to paint the bathroom ceiling today. I will store the required paint on my protruding bottom lip.

My much feared dental trip last week passed with little or no fuss. There was a little bit of grinding action required but it didn’t last long, as tends to be the case. I escaped with a slight sweat on after ten minutes happy to be declared dentally fit for my trip.

Anyway, with all of that self-pity and woe out-of-the-way we can now begin.

Louise tells me that I am often guilty of assuming a certain level of knowledge in my blog posts. I use WDW acronyms and don’t explain anything in enough detail for anyone who hasn’t spent a large chunk of their lives in Florida. So with that in mind, will you please join in with our SDD.

What? SDD…you know…oh OK, it is our Single Digit Dance day today. We are nine days out people.

Around this time, the milestones come thick and fast. Yesterday, a few short hours after pay-day, our dollars arrived. The exchange rate is so bad that instead of actually sending me dollars they just took money out of my account and sent me a voucher for a Perkins breakfast. Not quite of course, but a rate of 1.23 hurts I can tell you. You can shove your Brexit up your arse!

Yesterday saw Louise, Emily and I go shopping for essential holiday clothes and stuff. We didn’t go together. Good God, no that would have ended in a fist fight outside of C&A. What? C&A doesn’t exist…really??  It was there the last time I went into an actual town centre. Louise and Emily went together and I spent a lengthy twenty minutes or so in one shop to get everything that I needed.

Now, one of the items I needed was a lovely new pair of trainers. This is always a necessity prior to any US trip but it is now also a tradition and a key part of the countdown process. Because I am a creature of habit, middle-aged and tight these trainers have always tended to be the luminous white Hi-Tec numbers that can take down aircraft if the sun catches them the wrong way. I have dozens of pairs of these around the house in various states of decay…

I had another pair on my feet in the shop yesterday and I was just about to head to the tills when I went all crazy. I ventured into unknown territory and tried on another brand…..and……..wait for it……colour. It was almost in jest as just before I pulled on those non-white interlopers (or interloafers) I took a look at the price tag. Now, it doesn’t matter what Jessie J says, I never forget about the price tag. You cannot spend half of the GDP of Guatemala on US holidays AND buy expensive goods on a day-to-day basis.

As my foot entered these expensive follies I was very upset. It felt like I had put my foot into a warm otter’s pocket. It embraced and caressed me like a mother cradles a new-born. It was feetal heaven. Damn it!

I then spent a good few minutes calculating what I could stop Louise buying to allow us to find room in our budget for this indulgence. To cut what is becoming a long story short, I left the shop with them. I have never spent that amount on a pair of trainers in my life. Oh, and they are blue!!  Yes, blue!!

I can only apologise. I sacrificed tradition on the altar of comfort.

Louise and Emily were out for close to 72 hours and returned with one item of clothing each. I cannot comprehend how that happens and can only thank whatever God you believe in that I wasn’t with them.

In a return to the sanity of online shopping I added some rechargeable batteries and an SD card for the camera to my list of bought items in line with another tradition where I can never seem to find the exact same items I bought before every other trip we’ve done and have to buy some more.

Louise and Emily are busy arranging all sorts of treatments and procedures that I don’t want to know the details or cost of and I too am booked in for my back, sack and crack treatment ahead of my strutting up and down on Siesta Key beach in my thong. I shall leave you to embrace that mental image for the rest of your weekend!

With gritted teeth, I am hunkered down for one last week at work, mixed with a house full of workmen, chaos and dust whilst desperately trying to remember how to write a half decent and amusing trip report.

Till the next time…..