I feel like I’m finally starting to catch my breath after the past crazy week. A quick recap:

• On Friday, my husband left work early so we headed over to Typhoon Lagoon for the afternoon. Here’s a little-known fact: apparently theme parks are EMPTY the Friday before Labor Day. We hit every single ride and there were no lines for anything. We even did the Shark Reef snorkeling that we’ve been eyeing for awhile but always has super long lines. It was great. And I’m not going to lie, I was a wee bit freaked out to be snorkeling right next to a shark, even if it was a little Leopard Shark. But then I figured there was no way Mickey would allow anything bad to happen to me … right?

(Source)

• After an afternoon at Typhoon Lagoon, we decided to take full advantage of our season passes and headed over to Epcot for dinner. We always try to go somewhere different. We’ve hit pretty much every place for dinner now (got a dining question about Epcot, I’m your girl!), but we hadn’t yet tried Tangierine Cafe in Morocco. And it was great. I had the three sliders, which included falafel, lamb and chicken sliders that each had the most amazing pieces of cold beet strips. So good and why haven’t I thought to try this before? Plus, it was served with great hummus, tabbouleh, and cous-cous. We were happy campers with this meal, and since it was walk-up service, it was much cheaper than a lot of options. After dinner we headed over to one of our tot’s favorite places at Disney — the England Pavilion for the band, The British Invasion. We love it. There’s a shrub maze that our little one will run around in for hours. And she’s been known to get her groove on to the lads.
  

  She loves them, yeah, yeah, yeah

  This is actually her there last summer, but you get the drift … it’s a long-time favorite of ours. E. was so wiped out by her afternoon of splashing around Typhoon Lagoon and dancing her tail off that she was fast asleep before we even got to France. I love bedtimes that don’t involve the whole bedtime battle! She stayed fast asleep the whole walk out of Epcot, getting into our car and driving home.

• On Saturday we headed up to The Villages, where my mom and her boyfriend were staying for the weekend to give it a test drive. If you don’t know about the Villages, it’s essentially a full-time summer camp for the over 50 set. It’s amazing. I want to move there now — tons of golf courses, pools, tennis courts, softball fields, etc. And there’s a club for anything you can think of — alumni clubs, dance groups, cheerleading, woodworking, painting, you name it. So we got to go up and play with them for a night. We even got our own golf cart to tool around it.

We were having a great time. After exploring the community in our pimp ride, we went to a fun dinner, featuring more music and dancing.

DadJovi is back on his marathon training regime, so he ate light — just some hummus and pita and few of my fries. We went home and at about 11 p.m. the groaning started. I was already asleep but he woke me up saying he was in a lot of pain. He kept getting wicked stomach cramps that took his breath away. I’ve known him for about 8 years and he has NEVER, EVER, EVER wanted to go to a doctor for anything. But after about 45 minutes or so, it was clear that something was going on.

So we threw on some clothes, left E with my mom and went searching for the nearest hospital. Luckily there was one “on campus” (it is a retirement community after all). And actually, it was a pretty amazing hospital. Very nice and we only had to wait about 15 minutes in the ER before we were in a private exam room with DadJovi in a bed and the TV turned on.

They gave him the full work-up — an EKG, a chest XRay, an ultrasound and blood and urine work. Three hours later, all the tests were back and they were all negative. Nothing wrong with him. Nada. No gallstones, no kidney stones, no signs of appendicitis, no elevated white blood count. We didn’t think it was food poisoning because there was no vomiting or diarrhea (TMI, I know) but that’s the only thing we’ve been able to come up with.

So now we’re just dreading the bill because it’s going to be the most expensive stomachache of all time. Obviously we’re so relieved that there’s nothing seriously wrong with him. But am I wrong that I was at least hoping for at least one tiny kidney stone or something? I keep teasing him that when I had a stomachache that bad at least it turned out to be gallstones (and then I had my gallbladder removed) or I was in labor.

The only upside was that they gave him some great painkillers that eventually stopped his pain. And I think he did get a new appreciation for what labor was like and why I was so euphoric when my epidural FINALLY started working 15 hours into labor. Man, I still remember that being the greatest moment of my life up until that point (OK, the delirium of a non-working epidural during a seemingly never-ending back labor might have had something to do with that thought …).

Men. I’d really like to clobber whoever started calling women the weaker sex.