Happy Birthday, America... (there WILL be profanities)

Hope you had a festive and embarrassingly patriotic 4th of July. Here's how mine went...

Keith had a great evening for us planned. We were going to enjoy the fireworks in Long Beach on the Queen Mary aaaaand do a mini ghost hunt, which is something I've been wanting to do like basically all my life. Dreamy? Check. Festive? Check. Entertaining? Check. Except nobody told the city of Long Beach about these great plans of ours.

As soon as we exited the freeway, traffic is backed up because they have three lanes funneled down to one. As each car is taking it's turn merging, this BITCH in a stupid ugly camaro or avenger or something just as stupid refused to let us in even though it was CLEARLY our turn. Keith stayed calm, cool, and collected and proceeded to let her in front to avoid any roid rages. As she slooooowly crept past our car- while doing her full face of firme vato makeup- she was talking 'ish about how she wasn't even about to let any cars in front of her because "all these cars think they can just cut". Escuuuuuuuuse me?!?! Oh haaaaaails no. I told Keith to step on it and not let her in. I could feel my blood boiling like hot lava about to essplode. I yelled "YOUR MAKEUP ISN'T HELPING!", but probably fortunate for my life, my window was almost all the way up and SnowBird didn't hear me. As Keith weighed the options about how much our deductible would be and if it was worth just going for it and hitting her, that bish made her way to the front of the line. I was seething as I stared with a vengence at her classy diamond-framed licence plate. Ughhhhhhh.... this was NOT a good start to the 4th.

As we get closer to the turn for Queen Mary Lane (or whatever), we realize they're making all the cars turn in the opposite direction. It's finally our turn, we pull up next to the Harbor Patrol cop and ask about the QM. He curtly states that parking is full, they're not letting anyone in, and we have to exit the area. W....T....F.... We have no choice and end up on some long road to nowhere in the middle of all the loading docks. We pull up to another harbor patroller and ask him about our nonrefundable, prepaid tickets. He says that's between us and the QM. We ask about shuttles going to the boat. Nope. We ask about taxis going to the boat. Nope. Ughghghghghghg..... Keith thinks it's worth waiting in line one more time to see if we get lucky.

We double back and wait in line- this time flying up the side lane because we know how this works, we've been here before. They turn us away again, but this time Keith think's it's worth flipping around and going in on the new street we're on. After a few minutes we reach another harbor patroller- except this one asks if we have PREPAID TICKETS. It's about time someone asked a relevant question. So, we're nearly there...

Yessssssss! We're so close now! Right after this picture was taken, a guard girl comes up to our window and directs us through the entry to the right. Except there's nobody there to direct traffic, so we pretty much wing it on where to go. Luckily, we end up finding a primo parking spot right next to the elevator! Yessss- it must be our lucky day!

By the time we make it onto the grounds, it was around 6pm. Both of us had to use the restroom after our stressful journey. I'm going to tell it to you like it is, friends... The toilets smelled like bovine colon cancer. And two of the stalls were completely out of toilet paper. Keith and I reconvened in safer territories and decided we'd never speak of that situation again.

After we locked those memories away, we decided to grab dinner. Well, much to my mouth's dismay, the food options consisted of 4 fair-style food shacks with about a hundred people waiting in each line. Keith suggested I go check out the menu so I don't have a meltdown when we get to the front and realize it isn't what I wanted. It was then that I overheard two of these shithole shanties had run out of food and it was going to be 30-45 min till they refilled. Shiiiiiiits.

Keith and I decide to just find an actual restaurant on the boat and get a real meal. I'm feeling queesy by this point because I was actually under the weather, and couple that with all this physical activity sans food.... it was not looking good. We finally found a restaurant on that floating torture chamber... Only to find out there was a 3 hour wait. Oh.My.Lawd. I was about to lose it.

Keith calmed me down and assured me that by this point, the food huts HAD to have restocked. So. We make our way back down through the boat and proceeded to wait in line. Again. The third food line we'd waited in. By this point, I was near hysterical, starving, annoyed, and not at all amused with the shithole job the QM had done to prepare for this whole event.

This goose was anything but spruce. It was 8:30pm by the time we fiiiiiiinally got to the front of the line... we were the LAST people to get food before they ran out for good. I did a quick Hail Mary for delivering the goods and took a big bite out of my tri tip sandwich. And then proceeded to spit it out. My tri tip sandwich was actually a cemetary of fat and grizzle. Thankfully, Keith's pork sandwich was good enough and he managed to eat half of it. But mine was disgusting and unedible and that's when I officially lost it. I cried. Over my shitty tri tip sandwich. I was starving and there was still 20 minutes to go before the fireworks were scheduled to start. And it seemed like the ghost tours were over for the day. Keith was a great sport for not slapping the shat outta me when I decided I'd had enough of this worst-day-ever.

The silver lining on this disasterous cloud was that we at least got to see fireworks going off all around LA on the drive home. That was cool... everywhere we looked, there was another neon bomb exploding in the sky.

Moral of the story: Do not go to the Queen Mary to celebrate the nation's birthday unless you want to be turned away at the gates, starve to death, and catch toilet malaria.

But other than that, we had a good time.