Optimism & lightnin' bugs

Good news: I'm starting to get happy about the trip to Disney World.

Yesterday (Thursday, as I'm typing this late on Friday night) I was feeling incredibly intimidated by this trip. It's been a decade since I've been to WDW and, believe it or not, things can change there rather quickly. And since my beloved husband has never been to WDW, I was all the more concerned. So Sylvia (the mum-in-law) and I headed over to a bookstore to gather information.

Have you been to the travel section of your local bookstore lately? Have you noticed the SHELVES of books dedicated to Disney World? It's unreal! There's the offical guide, the unofficial guide, there's the guide for grown-ups and the guide to "the best of the best" (AKA the most expensive stuff). There's the Top 10 guide & the Zagat guide the interesting planne in a spiral bound notebook with tabs and on and on and on. And that's before you even start to consider other non-Disney options like Universal Studios or Sea World or a thousand other things. It's frightening! At one point, the mum-in-law sat down in a comfy chair with a book and let me do my research on my own, but before long I just felt dizzy from information overload. So I wandered over to her with 4 books in hand & said, "I just don't know what to do. It's so overwhelming!"

And then Divine Providence stepped in.

"Excuse me," a voice said. "Are you going to Florida?"
The question came from the man sitting across the way from my MIL.
"Yes," we said. "In fact, we're leaving for Disney World in just a few days for a family reunion. But we've been too busy with other things to plan our trip and now we don't know what to do!"
"Well," said the kind man, "I used to be a travel agent. Maybe I can help."
And help he did. He gave us handy advice and even told us which books to ignore and which are actually helpful (and luckily, the helpful books are smaller and cheaper than the not-so-helpful books). This man was fabulous! After chatting with him for 10 minutes, he went about his way. He never even told us his name. But ever since I spoke with him, I've been feeling much much better about this trip. Yay. :)

In other news, I am tipsy. Tonight is the mum-in-law's last night in NC, so we decided to have a bottle of wine with dinner. The others gave up early, so I ended up drinking about half the bottle on my own. As a result, I am making TONS of typos and I am trying my best to fix them as I go along. I hope I'm doing an excellent job and when I come back to re-read this post tomorrow I'll be supremely impressed with my own Tipsy typing skills.
Anyway.
We decided to eat dinner in the breakfast nook so we could enjoy the beautiful view of our wooded back garden. While we were eating dinner, Sylvia noticed some small flashes of light. And for a moment she was concerned that maybe there was something wrong with her! Maybe the alcohol was affecting her vision. What else couled explain these tiny flashes of green light?!? Luckily, she said something to us and Tim explained that what she was seeing were fireflies ... or "lightnin' bugs" as we call 'em in my neck o' the woods. She had never seen them before! Can you imagine? It was then that I realized that during the past week, we'd always been out shopping at dusk so Sylvia had been missing this every night. How glad I am that we started dinner later tonight and she was able to catch our own, miniature electric light show. Yay. :)