Ya Got Struggle Right Here In River City

Are you tired of hearing about my casino trip yet? If the answer is, "Affirmative, Val," then first you need to shut that crap up and talk like a regular person, and next, get over yourself, because you'll read what I put in front of you, by cracky, or you can just go find the daily blog of some other woman who complains about her husband.

This post is not really a complaint about Hick, though. Mark your calendar. And if that calendar was a gift from an ex-mayor, and your sister the ex-mayor's wife called to say you left it at her house on Christmas Eve, I hope to Not-Heaven you have stopped by to pick it up already.

So...Hick dropped me off at the front door of the casino, and I headed straight for the bathroom. What mature lady taking blood pressure medicine every morning does not, after an hour ride to the casino? But I'm getting ahead of myself here. We will revisit that bathroom later. More than once.

With my money arranged in my pants pocket for easy access, and my player's card in my shirt pocket for quick withdrawal, and my cell phone in my other pants pocket pulling down the most recent pair of slacks that I THOUGHT were the right size when I bought them...I made a beeline for the FREE Diet Coke. Oh, yeah. There are other flavors. But who bothers even looking at them, when there's FREE Diet Coke!

My tiny not-44-oz cup in hand, I headed for my little area of the six machines that I like to play. WAIT A MINUTE! My machines were gone! What's the deal? I can't enjoy myself playing random slots all willy-nilly! I want MY machines. The ones I fell asleep with visions of dancing in my head. Huh. I walked all around. Even back to the non-smoking area, which we all know is crap, nobody likes to play those games, they just want to give their lungs a respite. I had to pass through the high-roller area to get there and back. Not for Val. No siree, Bob! I headed over to the other side, too, where my favorite gambling aunt likes to play. Nope. Nothing of interest to me. Crap! Now what was I going to do?

By now I was back at the entrance, and crossed over again to where I started. To see if that ONE other slot I kind of like was available now. It was. I was soon up several tens of dollars, but itching to figure out where the dastardly conspirators in charge of that casino had put my favorite machines. I ambled over that way again, squinting at every single slot I passed.

AND THERE THEY WERE!

My six favorite machines. In the exact same place they'd always been, me having gone one aisle too far after the soda machine, missing them by not turning my head to the right. Oh, well. It's not like I'd been pouring out my heart to the wrong grave or anything...

The rest of the gambling part is pretty uneventful. I lost. Hick lost less. We ate a great burger. I had another hour to lose as much as I could before time to go. And then I cashed out the tickets I had in my pocket.

"I'm going to the bathroom, then I'm ready."

"Oh. You're not going to the one on the way out?"

"No. I told you. They only have one handicap stall, and there's always an old lady in it. I'll go in this one."

"Okay. I might as well go in this one too. While you are."

So Hick walked over to the restrooms with me. I told him I'd meet him right there in the hallway, and we'd walk out together. That would keep him from going back by the main entrance to sit on a slot machine stool turned the wrong way, watching people cash out their tickets. I find that kind of creepy. I don't even want Hick watching ME! You don't want to make people nervous in a casino.

Let the record show that I prefer to use the handicap stalls. The toilets are higher, and the walls have handles to hoist myself off the throne. I have no desire to squat over a hole in the ground like I'm an exotic world traveler. I like my toilets high, like Hick likes his bowls of vegetable beef soup.

The restrooms at this casino are pretty nice, as restrooms go. Not Shoji Tabuchi Theater in Branson nice, but still better than most public facilities. The stalls go almost all the way to the floor, the doors have latches that show a red bar when occupied, they have regular door handles, not those little turny disk kind of things where the bar never quite fits in the slot. Pretty nice. No billiards table in the men's room like at Shoji's theater (that I know of), but still nice. I planned to make a brief pit stop, count up my money to see how much I lost, and rejoin Hick in the hall to head home.

There are many stalls in the ladies' room here. Probably 20 or more. The last two on each side are the handicap stalls. Which seems kind of cruel, making the differently-abled hike all that distance to use the facilities. But still, there are four.

I breezed in, ready to commandeer a comfortable seat. And was shocked to see a corridor of old ladies waiting for stalls to become unoccupied! I have NEVER seen so many ladies in that room in my whole casino life! It's like there was a nursing home convention. At least they were mobile, or it would have reminded me of that Gone With the Wind scene of soldiers stretched out on the ground as far as the eye could see!

There was a logjam in the crapper, by cracky!

The old ladies with walkers ambled along as if they were pacing that narrow passageway. One old lady in a wheelchair, being pushed by another old lady who was probably using her as a walker, was jiggling door handles!

"No. It's full, too."

I saw the writing on the wall. Figuratively. I knew I wasn't getting into a handicap stall anytime soon. But Hick was outside waiting. I ducked into the first stall on the right. A regular stall. The toilet appeared to be a height that could be utilized by a pre-schooler. I wasn't lowering plopping my ample butt onto that tiny thing. I could hold it. But I could also use this privacy to count up my leftover gambling stake. When I came out, those hobbling non-wounded were out of sight. I went all the way to the end. I knew better than to try the last handicap stall on the left.

I'd tried that very stall upon arrival. THE HORROR! I got so far as to enter and close the door behind me and turn the lock. EEK! Goldilocks, or more likely Thinning Platinum Locks, had been there. And let's just say that Thomas Jefferson, allowed into that ladies' room by way of his powdered wig, sitting on that toilet instead of his boot to take a crap, would have needed a laundress to scrub the coattails of his waistcoat, had he sat down before looking at the toilet seat. I tore out of there like a cat tossed into a running shower.

So now, I chose the last stall on the right. It has a problem self-flushing sometimes. But it's workable. Myself relieved, I washed up and found Hick, standing forlornly, nobody's business to mind but his own.

Seriously. You'd think a casino would make even MORE handicap stalls, what with the slot aisles clogged with various ambulatory-aided septuagenarians all the livelong day.