My mom urged me to write about something that happened to my brother-in-law this weekend, so here goes . . .

My family's suite at the hotel this weekend was three rooms. Two rooms on either side, each with a bathroom and two queen beds. One room in the middle with a full kitchen, dining area, breakfast bar, fireplace, balcony, sleeper sofa--and then beyond double doors, a kingsize bed and a bathroom.

My immediate family (me, Greg and the girls) was in one of the side rooms and my parents were in the other side room. My sister Pam and her boyfriend had the area with the king bed and my sister Claudette and her husband, Mike, had the sleeper sofa area.

My parents went to bed early Friday night and so did the Lee family. My sisters and their men went to a couple of the hotel bars and then came back to their room. Pam and her boyfriend, Jeff, went to bed, and Claudette also crashed.

Mike wasn't sleepy yet, so he had a few drinks and then fell asleep, still wearing his jeans, either in the chair or on the sleeper sofa. He woke up about 1:30 a.m., needing to pee.

He didn't want to turn a light on and wake Pam and Jeff, so he walked quietly through the double doors, past their bed, and towards the bathroom. He must have still been asleep though, because instead of going left into the bathroom, he went out the door into the hotel hallway. The door locked behind him and there he was, barefoot and wearing just jeans, at 1:30 a.m., in the hallway.

He could have just knocked on the door, but he didn't want to wake anyone and he still had to pee, badly. He wandered around the hotel looking for a bathroom and he got lost.

He wandered around some more and then found his way eventually to the main lobby. Even though he didn't have any I.D. on him (and in any case, the hotel rooms weren't in his name), he convinced the hotel clerks that they should give him another key to our rooms.

Mike says he remembered all three room numbers, but I still think it's amazing they gave him a keycard. I guess they figured--1:45 at night, only wearing jeans when it's 10 degrees outside, barefoot--it's gotta be a true story.

So he found his way back up to the fourth floor, let himself in, and went quietly back to bed. We all had no idea, until the next morning, that he had had such an adventure.

Now, if my husband wants to explain how he completely ripped out the crotch of one of his pairs of jeans-----

My feet hurt. And not in the oh-I-walked--a-little-more-than-usual-in-the-last-couple-of-days way, but in the ow-I-think-I-have-a-bunch-of-microcuts-on-the-bottom-of-my-feet way.

You spend the better part of two days walking around barefoot in an indoor water park with hundreds and hundreds of other people. You stand for a total of a couple of hours in lines on always-wet staircases where other people stood just moments before and you hope that foot disease transmittal rates are low. Because you know no one is disinfecting those stairs at night.

That's the kind of thing I think about, not about cryptosporidium, like my husband. The women's locker room at Kalahari was always packed, with every locker taken and the floor wet and kinda slimy always and bits of old bandaids and pieces of waterlogged food and paper slowly disintegrating along the walls (you hope).

I did not ever intend to walk through the locker room without shoes on, but unfortunately, right before we started to leave, Allie suddenly had to pee and the other bathrooms (that are a little less used) were a good block away. So we walked in the locker room without shoes at the busiest time of the day. Ick.

This was right after my family watched the efforts of about six or seven people to disinfect the kiddie pool after four floaters were found (and I don't mean air-filled floatie toys).

It was a fun trip overall and we'll definitely go there again despite the germies because it's a good time, but it's good to be home.

There was music playing. Julia had on a pink princess dress and she was dancing around the living room.

Allie started to get up, saying, "I want to dance too."

And Julia hollered at the top of her little lungs, "No! You sit on butt!"

Such a wonderful sibling relationship.

When we met, I had a cat and Greg had a cat. The two of us moved in together after we got engaged and so did our cats. The transition did not go well for the cats (HUGE understatement).

My cat, Butterscotch, had been living in my condo for two years already. Poor Pig, Greg's cat, had never lived anywhere but Greg's apartment. Pig also didn't know she was a cat. You might laugh, but that's because you never saw her sitting on the bathroom counter, mournfully meowing at herself in the mirror because that thing that she saw wouldn't come and play.

Anyway, after the move, Pig lived in the spare bedroom of the condo by herself for a good two weeks (her choice). Then she came out, only to growl and hiss at anything that moved (and this is a very mellow cat) and to slink around with her butt pretty much touching the ground.

Things got better eventually, but only very gradually. We have a picture on the fridge of the two cats lying on our bed at the condo somewhat together, because that was such a rarity.

Back in 2002, Butterscotch got very skinny (liver cancer, the vet thought) and we had him put to sleep (sniff). Pig was once again the queen of the home and she seemed pretty happy.

Last spring (April), Pig started getting skinny, and she also starting drinking ALL OF THE TIME. Yep, $400 later, we had confirmed what we knew--diabetes. After much soul searching, we decided not to treat her (no comments please). We bought her some special prescription diabetes cat food and waited to see what would happen.

I remember worrying last year on our trip to Europe (in May) if our catsitters would have to deal with her dying. I left a power of (cat treatment) attorney document, just in case.

Uh huh. Yep. That was nine months ago. Yep, nine months.

Pig is just peachy. She's still much skinnier than she used to be (but she used to be pretty fat, especially when she ate most of Butterscotch's food for the months he was sick). She still drinks like a fiend. She still eats the prescription cat food.

And she's still sweet and mellow and a real lap warmer. She's very patient with the girls (even the 2 year old) and she decorates our house with her hair (like all cats). We love her very much, and even though she's not going to live forever, we're very happy she's still part of our family.

Now get off the back of the upholstered chair, Pig. You're ruining the cushion (and enjoying the softest place to sleep in the house).

We visited Barnes and Noble a couple of months ago, which we don't do very much these days. The girls always want new books read to them and we don't get to just read things ourselves, which is half the fun of going to Barnes and Noble.

Greg, bless his heart, volunteered to take the girls somewhere and I had an hour or so to myself. This was right after Oprah had selected "A Million Little Pieces" as her book club selection, so the book was front and center as I entered the store.

I grabbed a copy and found a vacant cushy chair. I didn't want to buy the book, just figure out what Oprah had seen in it. I started reading and I was completely hooked. I sat there and devoured the pages.

I even started crying at one point. And I don't think it was from reading the description of his non-medicated root canals.

I thought it was a wonderful book. I really don't care that it's not truthful. It moved me. I learned from it. Time flew while I read it.

Greg bought it for me for Christmas. I'm glad I own it and I'm not going to stow it at the back of some shelf and pretend I wasn't entranced by it. It's a great book, no matter if it's fiction or nonfiction.