The Bubble Room

For me, part of the excitement of going on vacation is the anticipation of the trip. I love to research the hotels, restaurants, shopping, etc. I naturally googled our recent trip to Marco Island on the southwest coast of Florida. Sure, it is mostly just a beach town known for its shelling, but we didn’t care. My boss even mentioned how bored we would probably be. She then suggest a hotel where we should stay for the “most fabulous massages on the planet”. I have a fear of massages – a) the robes never cover my boobs and b) pay someone to knead my fat? I don’t think so. The attraction of going to Marco Island was the fact that it wasn’t Miami. Any boring beautiful beach town would do. Marco Island was only about an hour or two away, but it seemed like a whole other world.


We collect a little thing called POGS. You should google them. They’re little statues of a combination pig, hippo and dog. They’re posed in different ways and they just make me smile. You can only find pogs in certain artsy type stores. I ordered one for Robin for Christmas of a pog reading a book while lying on a couch – very cute. I ordered it from an art gallery in Captiva, FL. I did a quick search and decided that Captiva was only about 15 minutes from Marco Island, so a visit to Captiva was definitely on our to do list. While looking at stuff to do in Captiva, I saw something that literally took my breath away. I think I peed a little in my pants. Thank God I wear my PP pads every day. PP pads are actually panty liners. Been on the Alli for a year, so they have come in quite handy a time or two after Hooters.

What I saw was a website for my most beloved restaurant of all time. Well, it’s definitely in the top ten. Really is it possible to have a favorite child? OK, dumb analogy, look at my brother, Jason. But The Bubble Room is absolutely an unforgettable experience for me. I lived in Orlando for a couple of years in the 80’s. The first time I ever went to The Bubble Room was on a date with a girl who literally turned out to be a stalker. I referred to her as Kathy the Dyke. That’s because her name was (and I assume still is) Kathy and she was a dyke. I cannot believe I ever went out with her, but they say that God brings people in to our lives for a reason. By God introducing me to Kathy the Dyke, God introduced me to The Bubble Room. The restaurant is jammed packed with cute antiques, toys and black and white pictures of glamorous movie stars. There is a toy train that goes around the perimeter of the ceiling of the dining rooms. You can walk around 47 times while 40’s music plays in the background and still see new stuff. The servers are dressed like scouts. But hands down, the most amazing thing I remembered about The Bubble Room was the Bubble Bread. In the 80’s, I was in my early 20’s and cooking was the last thing on my mind, letting alone trying to figure out ingredients in a dish. I was heart broken when the The Bubble Room closed in Orlando. Happily, I quickly recovered by the opening of Campeche Bay Mexican Cantina, but losing The Bubble Room still stings a little.

When I saw that the The Bubble Room lives, I called Robin.

“Oh my God – Oh my God – Oh my God – Oh my God!” I was slightly excited.

“What?”, asked Robin. Actually, it was more like a “What.”, said Robin.

“Do you remember me telling you about The Bubble Room?”, I said, kind of out of breath due to my discovery.

“No.” Her enthusiasm was underwhelming.

“The Bubble Room? Bubble Bread? I went there with Kathy the Dyke?” Surely she’d recall. Robin hangs on to my every word.

"What is it?”, she inquired.

“See, this is what I mean. You never listen to me. I have told you 100 times about The Bubble Room. It’s a restaurant that I used to love in Orlando. Remember I told you about it? Kathy the Dyke took me? She’s the one who used to pose as a flower delivery person and bring me flowers to my office. I was ashamed of her because she was so dykey? The Bubble Room had the best bread in the world. I will never forget it. Well, I was just looking up pogs and there’s a Bubble Room across the street from the pog store. It’s a really cute website. Oh my God! I’ll bet we can figure out how to make the Bubble Bread. I think I’m gonna die if I don’t have this bread tonight”. Too bad we’re leaving tomorrow.

“Send me the link to the website,” she said, again with a (her) general flatness.

“Why? You’ll just delete it.” She deletes every email I send her, without reading them I might add. My mother’s too. Wish I had a dollar for every time she has asked me, “Why does your mother keep sending me bullshit emails?” To which I respond, “At least my mother has email”. Lame response, I know, but we have practically begged her mother to get a computer. “You can talk to all the yentas. Every day. For free”. She won’t get one.

“Send me the link and I will open it”.

“Swear?”

“Swear.”

I sent her the link.

Literally about a minute and a half later, I received an email saying “Pack your shit. Let’s go today”.

Three hours later, we had checked into The Hilton on Marco Island. We (she) decided that I could live one more day without ingesting Bubble Bread and we just ate dinner at one of the hotel restaurants. The next day was sure to be sunny. Being the sun worshipper I am, I could hardly wait to have nothing but four days of basking in the sun. But my mind was still focused on Bubble Bread. When I woke up, it was the first thing I thought about. As Robin was putting on her bathing suit to head for the beach, I told her that maybe today would be a good day to go to The Bubble Room for lunch, 50% chance of rain. The highest it’s supposed to be all week. I suggested it very nonchalantly, but inside I felt that if I did not get that damn bread today, something bad was going to happen. Something very bad. I felt very anxious. I had to have that bread.

“That’s fine. Whatever you want to do is fine.” Translated that means, “Hell yeah, let’s do that. A day not on the friggen beaches of South Florida in the middle of summer is fine with me”.

Robin is a good sport. She goes to the beach with me and pretends to enjoy it, but I know it’s an act. One of our first beach encounters together resulted in a cold sore around her entire mouth that looked like she was giving a blow job to a welding torch. In my defense, I had warned her to use sun block, if only on her lips. As usual, she didn’t listen.

I looked up The Bubble Room address and did a quick map search. Huh? I thought Captiva and Marco Island were like one in the same. Mapquest sucks. I don’t trust it, never have. I don’t say anything and as soon as we get in the car, she puts the address in the GPS.

“Damn! The Bubble Room is 176 miles away, Kim”, exclaims Robin, although I’m sure she’d drive double that in order to avoid the beach.

“It is?”, I asked ever so coyly. “Huh. We don’t have to go”. Translated that means, “Oh we’re going and why are we still in this parking lot? Step on it Bi-atch”.

“Sweetie, I’ll do whatever you want. You’ve done nothing but talk about this restaurant for the last 24 hours. Plus we’ll go to the eggpod store. We’ll make a day of it. And we’ll still have 3 whole days for the beach”, said nice voice Robin. She can be so sing songy when she tries not to be.

Now it was time for me to be begged. “It’s called a pog. And we can order them online. Seems foolish to drive 352 miles for bread”. I love to throw my math skills around in front of Robin. Half the time I make figures up, but said with enough confidence, it works. Lots of times when watch Jeopardy and if I’m lucky, I’ll get a few right. Whenever I do, I follow the response up with a victorious, “Yes!”. I don’t make eye contact with her because that would be like, “Did you see? Did you see? I got one right?”. Playing it cool is so much smarter. Whenever she’s in another room and Jeopardy is on, I grumble an answer that she can’t make out (and is normally incorrect) and then loudly shout out my “Yes”. It’s amazing how much smarter I am when she’s not in the room. We watched the movie “21” on this vacation. It’s the movie about the math brainiac who counts cards and makes a killing in Vegas. She said 4 different times, “You could so do that”. Poor thing.

“But you said that the pog store has other stuff, too. Come on, Sweetie, don’t you want your Bubble Bread? . The Bubble Room has a cute gift shop, too, did you see?”. Ahhh – puddy in my hands. Who cares that gas is $4.39 per gallon? We were going to The Bubble Room. And this time I wouldn’t leave there without figuring out to make my Bubble Bread.

I get on my own nerves with my backseat driving. I hate the person that I become when seated in that passenger seat. Everyone else on earth is a horrible driver. I am the only person who knows how to drive. And I can’t even blame this on the Miami traffic, which by the way is #1 for the third year in a row for having the worst drivers in the country. I become a nervous wreck and make the air sucking sound about once every mile and a half. The drive on the first half of the trip was on I-75, which was full construction. I start off gently with, “Slow down, Babe” and “That car has is hitting his brakes”. Very soon thereafter, I’m all about the, “Jesus Christ, Robin. PLEASE slow down. “ It usually winds up ending in something like, “If you had any respect for me at all – ANY – you would slow the F down. I’m serious. I don’t like this at all”.

You may be wondering why I don’t drive if I have such a problem with Robin’s driving. Our conversations regarding this issue are always the same:
Me: “Want me to drive?”
Her: “No.”
Me: “Why not?”
Her: “Cause I wanna get there today. You drive like my dead grandmother.”

The lady on the GPS gets mad because we detoured off the path to get a soda. Normally we would have gotten a snack or two, too, but we were saving ourselves for the Bubble Bread. After she annoyingly says, “ReCALculating”, six or eight times, we are on the right track. After getting off I-75, we were headed west. This juncture is much prettier that the highway. Hell it should be. We had to pay six bucks to get on the Island of Captiva. But we were almost there! Captiva is actually considered Sanibal/Captiva, which unlike Marco Island, is one in the same. We travel through the plush old Florida tropical island. I guess our six bucks goes toward the preservation of the island. Now that I think about it, why does it cost so much to preserve a natural habitat? It’s not like they’re paying people to cut the grass or trim the shrubs. It’s overgrown and natural. They should be paying me to travel here. Well that’s stupid, nobody’s gonna pay me to travel here.
“Destination on right”, says GPS lady! We have arrived! My heart is beating faster and faster.

“Oh isn’t this adorable, Robin? And have I mentioned the bread?”

“This better be some damn good bread.”

She likes the place because she said something about getting a picture of the place before we leave.

The inside was just as I had recalled. Adorable. The servers still wore scout uniforms. We were seated in the back and soon our very own scout had arrived.
“Heeeey. Ma name is Chriiiiss-sstaaayy and Ima be your scout todaaaayyyyy. Y’all been to The Bubble Room befaw?”

We both shook our heads no. I have no idea why I lied.

She explained that they had free refills on water and coffee, but it’d be extra for Coke refills. She talked about some special, but I was looking for the Bubble Bread on the menu. The lunch menu. I felt the same feeling that you feel when you pass a cop going 80 miles per hour (not that I’d know anything about that because, as you know, I drive like Robin’s dead grandmother) in a 55 mile zone.
My voice was shakey. “Um, A friend of mine told me to ask for the Bubble Bread?”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s reeeaaal good. People love our Bubble Bread. I’m afraid we only serve it with dinner, Ma’am”.

Big girls don’t cry. Big girls don’t cry.

Robin is the best! “Look, Sweetie. Let’s just order something little and we’ll stick around the island until 4:00 and come back for dinner”. So, at 1:30, we order out light lunches. Soup and sandwiches. The soup was she crab and not light and one sandwich could have fed Robin, me and her dead grandmother. By 2:30 we had eaten everything in sight, taken some pictures and hit the gift shop. Then we headed toward the pog store.

The pog store was a three room store/art gallery where pogs were abundant. The name of the store is “Jungle Drums Gallery”. We were like dykes at a Home Depot Grand Opening. (Not me in Home Depot. I light up when entering Sephora.) Robin had taken out $2000.00 in cash and we spent more than half of it at Jungle Drums. We got a pog with a chef’s hat and apron (Robin) and a pog in a pool float holding a margarita (me). We each got earrings and also a pair for my friend Betsy, whose birthday had been three weeks prior. We got a “litigator” gator for her office. But the best thing (best meaning most expensive) was a lamp. It was so unusual it’s difficult to describe. It’s like a clay old lady hula dancer. It’s so ugly it’s beautiful. It’s art.

The very nice man/owner took great care in wrapping our treasures. First tissue paper, then bubble wrap (it was a bubble day all the way around), then finally, boxes. It was well after 4:00 when we left Jungle Drums. We were still full from our light lunch that there was no way we could go back to The Bubble Room just yet. We’d venture off toward the east just a little way and come back. Two hours, 30 miles and an outlet mall later, we decided screw the bread. I was probably romanticizing about it anyway. Plus we still had three days of vacation left.