I’ve been lost in between trying to sleep, sleeping a few hours, being tired as hell, wishing I could sleep, and nothing is coming together quite as it should. I’ve received sage advice, from more than one person, that it will take me awhile to fit back into a niche. Really? I like the night life. I like early a.m. I don’t like the glaring sun and all the confusion in traffic and speeding vehicles on their way to who knows where in the daytime world.

But who knows, when I head north for the reunion, I always change my sleeping patterns and adjust to the rest of the family on being awake by around 6-7 a.m. and falling asleep around 10 or 11 p.m. after the campfire, poker games, and tales of growing up together.

I got the minimum daily adult requirement of sleep over the weekend, just trying to tie loose ends together and get myself and schedule sorted out where things fell into a somewhat orderly pattern. I think I got most of it. I still need to take the Steed in for oil change, etc., etc., etc. That will be sometime this week. Then I think my catch up chores are done for a bit.

I murdered the deep cycle batteries that give the coach auxilary power and had to replace them…lesson learned – pour water into me at least once a month. But I suppose they were coming to end of life anyway, they were over a year and a half old and I’ve been told that’s about the normal life span. Time will tell.

So…Monday was the day that I would fade the processing to leave Bellagio. I started early, about 6 a.m., headed across town determined to take Project City Center pictures. I did. I parked in employee parking, whisked up to the 10th floor by the super speedy elevator system, and walked the expanse of the top floor, taking pictures as I went. Whoa! Just as I finished, a puffing security guard came directly towards me. Yikes! I snapped a picture just as he arrived, greeted him, told him I worked there, and he demanded to see my employee ID. I handed over the card.

He jumped on his radio and informed someone that he had a Linda – I filled in my last name for him since I didn’t want him to call me Green or Greenen – employee ID, blah, blah, blah. He asked me what department I worked in. I told him. He got off the radio and told me that I was not allowed to take pictures up there. It was a PRIVATE project. I told him I had no idea. Truthfully, I didn’t. I’ve taken pictures from the 2nd, 6th, 10th floors for a year now and he’s the first person that went postally job oriented and told me I couldn’t. He also told me that I had to delete the pictures from my memory stick in his presence. PUKE!

I told him that I had pictures that I had taken away from the garage and I didn’t want to format my memory stick to get rid of them. He said I could take all the pictures I wanted if they weren’t from inside the project – like NO SHIT! And how does a parking garage that borders Frank Sinatra Blvd., and anyone can enter right off the street, become ‘inside the project’? I opened the viewer, scanned back over a picture, hit delete, he said something like, “Fine. Have a nice day,” and started booking it back across the 10th floor.

Well…ok. I have about 80 pictures that didn’t disappear. When I got to the elevator, I had another memory stick in my bag and I just swapped them out. The replacement memory stick was empty. I figured if I got tagged elsewhere down the line, they could review it and see there was nothing on it. Sneaky I ain’t, but damn it, it’s not right!

Those pictures will be up shortly. And they will be the last from the garage simply because the buildings around the garage are growing by leaps and bounds and there’s really not a lot to see except them as they block the view of the whole project. The ongoing updating will be from points around the project.

So…into the back of the house I went. I waited about 15 minutes for Uniform Control to open – 7 a.m. – so I could return those damn mud brown shirts and my apron. One piece of the escape hatch opened.

I still had too much time to kill so I booked it up into the and across the casino to the Conservatory and started snapping pictures of the theme Route 66. Those pictures are coming soon.

Then I headed across the casino to the poker room where I visited with Shauna (grave supervisor)for a few minutes and told her I was kaput from the dealer’s chair.

Still too much time to kill, back across the casino, up to the 4th floor (that’s as tall as it gets) of the guest parking garage for more pictures of Project City Center.

It was close to 8 a.m., time to hit employee services. I did. They were late opening the windows and I was first in line. The girl scratched a signature over the bottom line on the form and told me to go next door. Another piece of the escape hatch opened. I went next door, turned in my employee ID card and name badge, and got another signature. The escape hatch was almost there. Then I waited for someone in Human Resources to open their window because the bottom line on the form had to do with my RSVP and COBRA and nothing was checked by the chick that put her name on the line. Got that taken care of.

I returned to the Poker Room. I was waiting for one of our toke committee people because I had a toke envelope from dealing tournament downs and the toke committee are the only ones that hand them out. I got that.

Back through the employee area I went. By now the maids were thronging into Mangia and I decided I should have one last meal there. I can tell you the fare on breakfast and days is much better than on swing shift. I settled on a wonderful, buttery croissant, four slices of crispy bacon, and some prefab scrambled eggs. I got through about half of the croissant, all of the bacon, and three to four bites of the eggs as I sat and watched the flood of uniformed humanity filling the tables around me and reflected on trying to imagine how many meals I’ve eaten in Mangia since November of ’98.One more trip up Heart Attack Hill and Payroll opened at9 a.m. also and they were late. Sheesh! I was first in line again. After looking at the form, she asked if I wanted my check mailed to me or what? I figured I’d pick it up. That will be ready after 4 p.m. on Tuesday. Another trip back to Bellagio employee’s area. Oh well.

I was out in the heat of day, jumping gratefully into the shuttle that took me to the bottom floor of the employee garage and the Steed. It was too hot to breathe outside. I made it home, did a few things on the computer and took a nap. Really nice!

For the first time on a Monday (other than vacation or LOA), I didn’t have to be at work. The feeling is priceless.

Instead of fading the screaming noise and confusion of the poker room, I faded Riot’s wrath later. It was too funny for words. I went to Hyman Place around 7 p.m. I had purchased a toddler’s bedroom set with a bed, table and chairs, and toy bins – Spiderman of course – for Riot’s third birthday. Darian and Chad started putting it together…most of it had sat in a box since the end of April. I asked Dan if he wanted to go to Wal-Mart with me to purchase a crib mattress for the bed.

“Hey mom, why don’t you take your grandson?” came from Darian.

OK. We went. I had Riot in the shopping cart, the part where you put the goods. Yeah, I know. But he’s too big to fit in the seat part – his legs won’t fit through the damn slots. When I got the mattress, I turned it on end and put it in beside him. It was the perfect bumper and stood about two and half feet over the top of the side of the cart.

I picked up a mattress pad, a sheet set (Spiderman of course, his ‘fav’) and as we rolled by the toddlers ware, he spied a rack that had umbrellas on it. Some were for little girls but WAIT! One had a Spiderman figure as the handle and he went ballistic for it. Pointing and repeating, “Spiderman! Spiderman!”

I said, “No,” and wheeled away. This is where the wrath of Riot came in. He screamed, he threw himself into the mattress side wall. He beat on it with his fists. He threshed and wiggled, continuing to scream louder and louder. I started laughing.

Dan had been shopping in a separate part of the store and he appeared with his cart to see what was going on. “Temper tantrum!”

I wheeled Riot through various parts of the store with him screaming and throwing his body into the mattress wall, giantly horrific alligator tears ran down his cheeks. As people passing me kept looking at me like I was a child beater, I explained, “Temper tantrum, didn’t get what he wanted,” and continued to laugh. Kee-rist! I wish I had it on video, it was priceless.

The funny part of it is that I had intended to take him by the toy section and get him a toy. I did it with Kayanna when I shopped with her (not every time, but most of the time), and that’s what Grannies do, they spoil a little, love a lot, laugh when the kid goes bonkers in trying to deal with every day set backs.

We wheeled by a stand that held ‘Transformers’. His little eyes jumped on one closest to him as he stood up and drug his hand across the clear plastic case as I went by. I stopped. “Want one of those?”

OMG! He was so happy. He still had big tears setting on his cheeks. When we hit check out, he even gave it up long enough for the cashier to ring it up. I wiped his little cheeks with the tail end of my t-shirt. I love that little boy.

He hugged that Transformer all the way home, sitting strapped into the back seat, only asking once, “Open,” and when I told him he had to wait until we got home, he never uttered another word. Hell, maybe he was worn out from bouncing off that mattress wall. *light bulb* Maybe we need a mattress wall just outside the poker rooms of the world?

*An edit was made in the progression of processing out of Bellagio, Payroll opened at 9 and the order of my exit changed slightly*