I Freaking LOVE Myrtle Beach. For Reallys.

Happy Rainy Freaking Friday, people!

I spent the last few days taking my son and my daughter to Myrtle Beach for some special mommy-baby time. Sometimes they get a little jealous with the blended family thing so it's important tha they get their special individual time. They are on the younger end of the family spectrum so they are still enjoying things like Spongebob Squarepants and toilet humor, while our older two are discovering boys and probably other crap that makes me uncomfortable.

Anyways, the drive out there was fine, there wasn't really any fighting or anything. I picked Myrtle Beach because it's the closest and I've been there before so if my GPS failed, I would still be able to get there and not get lost. Or AS lost as I normally get. Let's be honest, I get lost almost every time I go to uptown Charlotte and I pretty much live there.

I really hate Myrtle Beach. It's beachy and all, but it's the sloppiest, redneckiest, spring-break-on-a-ramen-budgetiest place I've ever been. The view of the water is pretty if you get a nice balcony, but that's about it.

My kids woke me up at 530 am the first morning and I'm not even kidding. It's like Christmas to them to wake up and go picking up shells. I was really cranky about it but they were seriously so cute and happy that I didn't bite their heads off. I just made coffee in the in-room coffee machine (after throwing away moldy rinds from who knows when and scrubbing it so religiously it counted as cardio) and then got dressed.

Myrtle Beach is actually really nice when the sun is coming up. That's because you don't have Maw and Paw and all the chitlins running around and fat teenagers in their berkinis picking wedgies with no regard to who may be watching because they've already had too much moonshine to give a crap.

I have heard it called the "Redneck Riviera". You can get a hotel in Myrtle for like $49 a night as long as you don't mind walking across the street to the ocean and staying in places called "The Gay Dolphin" and "Hurl Rock Motel". Also, it's a bonus if you don't mind bed bugs. That's what I heard anyway on the news last year. Whatever.

I was very picky about my hotel, it took me like 2 hours scrutinizing and trying to find one that knew what wi-fi was and was far enough away from the "Grand Strand" that I could pretend I was somewhere else.

I didn't even really admit on Facebook that I was going to Myrtle, I just said "the beach." Because it's not so much the area that bothers me, it's just the idiots it attracts that bother me.

Anyway, before I start making you wonder why the hell I even bothered to drive up there, I'm just defending it with, it was a beach, I knew how to get there, and I should have known better.

The first thing that happened when we got there, was the kids hopped out of the car and heard an ice cream truck playing Christmas songs (?!) while we were trying to register for our room. So immediately they were like, "Can we have ice cream?" (it was like 9pm) and the little 6 year old says "Is it Christmas? When is Christmas?"

Um, no, we can't have ice cream because we haven't had dinner yet and Christmas is a really long time away. The ten year old says "Aw man I wanted Ice Cream, I felt so happy!" and the 6 yo says "I thought it was Christmas." and then has a really sad face.

Damnit. Thanks a lot Ice Cream truck a-hole for making this trip start off with disappointment. I hate you.

So we get checked into the room and the guy at the desk is nice and he says he's upgraded me to an ocean view room. Turns out Ocean View is like, if you walk out to the corner you can just make out the water.

Dude, I know $150 per night isn't that much to pay in the scheme of things, but for Myrtle Beach, that's like 5 star, so I'm kind of pissed off. I go back to the desk and the kids are upset because they want to swim. We passed 3 pools. It closes at ten and it's nine thirty now and we haven't had dinner. We're ordering pizza. There is no way they can swim. More "AWwwwWWW!!" and sad panda faces. More disappointment. Awesome.

I go back to the front desk, and I make sure to try to be really sweet but I'm really really annoyed.

"Ocean View? Are you kidding with me right now? That's messed up."

Okay, that wasn't sweet at all.

He kinda smirks and looks back at me. He's wearing a Kanye West T-Shirt and he's really white. Immediately I wonder if he thought Kanye was cool for taking away Taylor Swift's microphone or was that douchey? I decided that it didn't matter and realized I forgot my ADD medicine.

Damning myself some more, a lightbulb went off. Kanye West is coming to Greensboro. I have a ticket ninja who can get him an awesome hookup.

"Hey, I can help you score VIP tickets to Kanye if you're going to that show. Can you do a little better with the room?"

Bingo.

VIP is the most awesome word to throw around. It's going to be overused soon because now every club and concert has a VIP area or a VIP ticket, but for now I can capitalize on it because I know people that can sell it to you.

"For reals?" he says "VIP? How do you get VIP tickets?"

"Oh, I promote concerts and work with a distributor. Don't buy regular tickets I can get you tickets that aren't on sale to the public. Just email me if you decide to go and I'll put you in touch with the guy. They're not much more expensive than the regular tickets, you just have to know who to talk to."

"Hells Yeah." he says.

So he tells me he's fixing me up with a suite and it's on the corner and it has two balconies and a fridge and a microwave.

That sounds better.

And before you all get irritated with me and ask me why I just offered to help SELL him tickets, it's not like he comped my room. If he had comped my room completely at a $300 value, I probably would have helped out a little more but I'm not gonna use my personal tickets just to get a slightly more tolerable room in the redneck riviera. Not gonna happen.

Give and take kids. Give and take.

So we get to the room and it's what you'd expect for Myrtle Beach. It's clean enough and it doesn't smell like vomit and smoke. I'm satisfied.

We order pizza and we go to bed. The kids wake me up at 530 am. It wasn't that bad because like I said, it was very quiet and beautiful.
I went on the front balcony, and had a gorgeous view. Then looked out around the corner and saw this.

Awesome. Only in Myrtle Beach would they make sure to save plenty of ocean front property for the trailer park.

See, and you thought I was being mean!!

Whatever, so the first day was okay, we beached it up for the first half, went to the pool til about lunchtime and then got cleaned up to go to the aquarium to see the sharks. My son is obsessed with sharks due to shark week.

We pay $47 to get into Ripley's Aquarium and then realize very quickly that they are probably doubling the allowable amount per the fire marshal. You couldn't walk without stepping on someone. The mermaid show they advertised was in a pool with stingrays in it that didn't look more than 4 feet deep. How were they supposed to dive in that? The shark exhibit had a 2 hour wait. For no great white sharks. For two hours I wanna feed a noisy kid to the shark. Screw THAT.

My kids started getting anxious and claustrophobic so we decided to leave. I bought my son a shark toy and he was happy. I went to customer service and told them that this was horrible. Why would you charge me without telling me I wouldn't see the exhibits without a few hours wait for each one.

"Do What?" said the employee, unmoved by my very unhappy body language

SCREW YOU. I HATE THE SOUTH!! I HATE IT!!

He explains that it's "just a really pawpular turrist 'tractshun, ye kneow?"

NO. No I do not know. I hate when people say "you know" at the end of stuff. Especially with that damn drawl. I do not know. I am not agreeting with you. I hate it even more when they repeat themselves because I didn't agree. I'm not going to agree because it's polite. Screw that. You know what's polite? Not making me pay to be cramped in like some kind of redneck body odor holocaust to see some sharks that can't even kill anything. Shark Week is FREE!! I hate you!!

So, yeah, the Aquarium was fail. They said we could come back the next day, but I decided I'd rather ...just about anything...than subject myself and my kids to THAT.

We decided we wanted ice cream. Not TCBY. Not Frozen Yogurt Shack. FREAKING ICE CREAM. What happened to Baskin Robbins? Let me tell you something people, Frozen Yogurt is going to make your ass just as fat when you put tons of Gummi Worms and Oreos and Hot Tamales on it. Just because you used a strawberry or two does not make it healthy. And do you know what else? They are tricking you into filling up that giant bowl and then charging you by weight. I hate you!!

Wow, I just realized this is going into rant territory. I think I'll mark it appropriately.

So, after our FAIL of an aquarium visit, and FAILed ice cream adventure, we drove back to the hotel because the kids decided to go back to the beach. There is plenty of ice cream places along Ocean Blvd, but you have to park and walk and put up with that circus, so I wasn't even going to consider going to one of those places. So don't message me and tell me about Friendly's. I hate that redneck magnet too.

Let me pause for a second and just point out that by redneck, I mean the people who are inconsiderate, who walk across the street armed with nothing but an alcohol fueled sense of entitlement that says I have to stop for a pedestrian no matter how far I already was into the intersection. If you are more concerned about spilling your beer than watching for a car I am talking to you. If your kids know more cuss words than I do , I'm talking to you. So I admit that I may be unfairly stereotyping. If you are reading this and you are merely from the south and have an accent, then calm down. I'm talking about the a-holes that ruin it for everyone. I'm sorry if you enjoy Myrtle Beach and that BS doesn't bother you.

I hadn't been in a while and I thought I would give it another shot, but clearly, I still hate it.

Ok, back on topic. So, we go to the hotel to get dressed for the beach and as soon as we put our blanket down there is this huge thunder crash. We have about 30 seconds to grab our stuff and go running back to the room. Shoulda seen that coming since storms tend to turn the sky grey, but I really wasn't looking. It happened that fast.

The kids are upset but taking it well. I dont care, I don't want to wash dirt from my hiney again anyway. We get to the elevator and my son bursts into tears because my daughter hit the elevator button first. He wanted to do it.

Oh, for God's sake, fine, you can touch the one in the elevator. He crosses his arms.

The door opens and he kind of slinks in there dragging his feet. My daughter looks at him. "Push the Button!" she yells.

He glares at her. She acts fast.

She slams the button.

My son's face goes from pouting to "O Hell No" in like negative two seconds and he starts stomping.

I WANTED TO PUSH IT!!!!!

Oh my god. Oh my god. It's starting.

He runs to the button panel and slams them all. Now we have to stop on every floor. There are only 6 floors but we're on the top. Dammit.

The kids snipe at each other all the way up and we decide to order pizza again.

Bailey says she has a tickle in her throat.

I decide that's a great reason to give her benadryl. In face, we wouldn't want Eban to get a throat tickle either? How awful right? You better have some benadryl too. BAM!!

By the time the eat their pizza, they're passed out. YAY Benadryl!!

I go to sleep after doing some work the old fashioned way, with a pen and paper (their wi fi doesnt work I HATE YOU!) and then I wake up at 8am. With bug bites all over my legs. There are actually bed bugs in this hotel. FML. I dont want my money back I want to leave. And I dont just have a tickle in my throat, it's full on swollen and I can't even speak.

I can't actually find any bed bugs but where the hell are all these bites coming from? AAUGH!! I wake the kids up, get them packed ,and we get ready to leave. I tell the kids to say goodbye to the beach.

Eban goes to the balcony and yells "SEE YOU LATER BEACHES!!" over it. I start laughing. Bailey has her mouth wide open saying "He said the B word!" and she runs to tell. I have to solemn up and then Eban starts crying.

"I didn't say the B word!! Butt is the B word!" he whispers, woefully.

"MOM EBAN SAID TWO B WORDS!!" Bailey yelled

Now he's crying and she's smug.

Where do I even start?

So, I don't start. I haul them to breakfast and then we get settled for the 3 hour drive home. Which was actually more like 5 because the weather was so stormy it looked like evening all day.

The best part of the drive, though was when they were playing their Nintendo DS's and they're asking me to pick names for the characters. I think i'm really clever and suggest Snot Face for Bailey's riding game. They think this is hilarious, and they name the horse something like Bubble butt. This backfired because the game had a storyboard to it and it constantly referenced SnotFace and Bubble Butt which would send the kids into peals of laughter that lasted at least two hours.

Awesome.

I also have a very fierce cold.

That was my awesome three day vacation to Myrtle Beach . Jealous?