"Oh..my..GOD! I feel disgusting!" said Claudia.

"Me too," I replied, I raising my arms to show some pretty large wet stains.

Claudia laughed and said, "Holy sh-" before I cut her profanity off."

I put my hands on my hips and asked, "have you looked under YOUR arms?"

She giggled and said "Um, I'd rather not. Seriously, though. Have you EVER been in heat like this?"

It was about 108, according to the thermometer stuck on the kitchen window of Mom's new house. California summers were definitely hot, but NOTHING compared to this dry heat. I knew it would take my mom a lot of getting used to and I hope she could handle it.

"No way. We gotta take a break," I replied. My mom already ordered a few new things and had them delivered, including a new kitchen table and a refrigerator so Claudia at least had somewhere to sit while we both drank water, trying to rehydrate. We had spent about 3 hours unpacking the boxes of stuff my mom had sent to her new house from Connecticut, including her clothes, pictures, kitchen stuff, etc. I'm just glad nothing got damaged or broken along the way. We finished setting up the kitchen and I really hoped she liked how we arranged it. We also hung up all of her clothes in her new walk-in closet and put away a bunch of stuff in her bathroom too. There were still a few things left to do but since my mom wasn't flying in for a few more days, I asked Claudia, "do you want to call it a day? I'm exhausted."

"Yeah," she replied. "I think we can get everything else done by tomorrow."

Still feeling gross, despite being in the air conditioning, I decided I should take a shower.

"I'm going to go clean up," I told her. Then maybe we can find a place to have lunch?"

"Sounds good to me. I'll go take a shower in the second bathroom," said Claudia.

After cleaning ourselves up, we headed out and after driving around for a bit, we found a sandwich shop in a nearby strip mall that suited our needs just fine. As we ate, Claudia said, "I don't know about you but I can use a nap."

Realizing I could use one as well, I said, "Me too. I think that will be the extent of my plans for the rest of the day."

Claudia responded with, "Oh, come on! You'll be up for something once you're rested."

"Something?" I asked. "Like what?"

Claudia raised an eyebrow and said, "Umm..we're in Vegas, Stace. We should go party!"

Party? That word hadn't been in my vocabulary in a long time. I thought my last few years of college would be fun and a breeze but they proved to be non-stop work and studying.

I thought for a minute and realized she was right. I had no job, no class to go to, no studying to do..why not live it up tonight? So I sighed and said, "Oh hell, why not?"

She smiled and just said, "Alright, then."

About 5 hours later, I walked out of the bathroom to Claudia saying, "You look GOOD, girl!"

So did she. She styled her stick-straight hair into loose waves and her beautiful Asian eyes were complemented by dark smoky eye makeup. I looked at her in her tight black dress and boots and said, "YOU look even better." I eyeballed her boots for a second and asked, "but is your foot going to be ok in those?"

"I'll live," she said with a smile.

That comment obviously meant a lot more to her than most people. See, Claudia is actually a cancer survivor. She got bone cancer in her foot while she was in college but by some miracle, she managed to kick it's ass. She definitely came out of it with a few battle scars, physically and emotionally but she's doing great these days. Actually, so am I as her battle sure took a toll on me emotionally as well.

"Are you drinking tonight?" she asked.

I rarely drank and neither did Claudia but I thought it would be fun to let loose tonight so I said, "Yeah, I think I'll have one or two."

"Ok. I won't then. I'm going to drive."

Before long, we were off to the strip!