Three cats a fighting…
Well, I’m back. The California getaway was wonderful, albeit too short. I hated leaving The Professor behind and returning East yesterday, but at least he’ll be back Saturday. And the time away from the apartment confirmed one important thing for me – any disputes between The Prof and myself are due more to work and stress than to incompatibility. He still does stuff that drives me nuts (as I’m sure I do stuff that drives him nuts) but during our time away from the East Coast it was all in perspective.
I intend to attempt to recount the vacation highlights in diary posts on the appropriate dates. As a warning to anyone on my Notify List, you may end up getting multiple notifies from me once I start getting this stuff updated. Feel free to ignore!
Yesterday was a full day of flying and driving. I like flying, but I’m coming to loathe the West Coast trips. I especially hate flying over the holidays. Flying the weekend before Christmas was worse, but flying January first isn’t any gem of an experience either. Half the adults are hung over, nearly everyone is traveling with children under the age of four, and nobody wants to be in the airport waiting in line on New Year’s Day (except for the previously mentioned under four-years-of-age set, who show an exuberance which can only be described as painful to those of us not sharing the sentiment).
Even getting to the airport yesterday was a bit of an adventure. The Professor provided me absolutely marvelous directions to drive there. He drew out a map, and then wrote out detailed instructions under the map. I had absolutely no excuse for getting lost. So, of course, I did. His instructions said, “turn right”. I, for whatever reason, turned left. Fifteen minutes later, when I still hadn’t encountered Route 55, I figured I must have screwed up some where, and ended up calling him for help. By that time I was in some town he’d never heard of. It was also 5:30 in the morning, and he doesn’t have a huge sense of humor about being aroused at any hour that comes before noon. I did get straightened out, got to the airport later than I expected, but still in good time, with the low fuel warning light blinking on and off in the rental car.
Of course, I couldn’t find the paper work for my rental car when I got there, and it was before the rental car company opened, so there was no one there to help me. I couldn’t wait because I was already running late for my plane, so I had to just dump the car in the return lane, keys in the ignition. When I called the rental car company after I got home last night, they acted like people do that all the time and it wasn’t any big deal. I’d definitely rent from Budget again, given the chance. They went out of their way to make me not feel like an idiot.
During the first leg of my journey it was my misfortune to travel next to a family of five, including three children under the age of six. I managed to lose them in Chicago, where I made my connection to Philadelphia, but I fear the worst of the damage had already been done by that point. I had gotten virtually no sleep the night before (a really bad asthma attack the prior night had quite ruined any chance I might have had of getting any sleep), and I had hopes that I might make up for that on the flight between John Wayne Airport and Chicago. The Kid With The Remarkable Flying Crayons pretty much killed any chances I had of sleep though, since he forced me to spend half my time lifting my feet so he could retrieve his bits of colored wax, while the other half of my time was devoted to catching his Crayolas as they rolled off his tray in an attempt to prevent them from hitting the floor. The scant remaining opportunity I might have had was done in by The Baby with Remarkable Lungs and No Eustachian Tubes, who screamed every time the plane changed altitude by more than about ten feet.
I was astonished to find that they gave us a full complement of plastic spoons, forks and knives on the flight to eat our scrambled egg with the unidentifiable bits mixed in, served on a flaky pseudo-biscuit. Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that a knife wasn’t really necessary to eat that concoction with. Yes, they truly were confiscating fingernail clippers and forbidding ski poles on the plane, but they provided everyone with their own knife. I assume the knife was for purely self-defensive purposes against the banana they also provided at breakfast, which had the gall to counter-attack when I attempted to peel it, squishing its guts out over the remains of my eggs.
On the second leg of my travels, they gave me a tiny little bag of “Savory Mix” along with my diet soda. It was no more than a couple of tablespoons worth of mini-crackers, pretzels and little toasty things. No more than a mouthful, but it had 180 mgs of sodium in it! That’s nearly a fifth of what I’m allowed to have in a single day. To say I was astonished is to severely understate my reaction. And the stuff wasn’t even that good.
I was lucky enough to get out of the Philly airport before the New Year’s Day Parade in center city was over, so I managed to beat much of the traffic home. It was a relief to walk in the front door, but the relief lasted only as long as it took to release Kitten from Hell from one bedroom and Clueless Wonder from the other bedroom. The three cats, reunited, acted like they’d never seen another cat in their lives. Warrior Princess hissed at everyone, including me, and fortressed herself under the coffee table in the living room. CW followed me around rather pathetically, skittering away every time I reached down to touch him and then resuming his position at my heel as soon as I stopped trying to console him. KfH bounded through the apartment, alternately attacking WP and CW. CW finally had enough and tried to hide with WP under the coffee table. WP at that point attempted to take an entrance fee from CW’s hide for the privilege of sharing hidey-hole space. I’ll have to vacuum up all the tufts of cat hair from the resulting fights when I get home tonight. Hopefully everyone will have the pecking order sorted out by then.
As for KfH, she pretty much decimated the Master Bedroom in our absence. She half pulled down a drape we had over one of the windows. She attempted to gut an original, off-the-set Star Trek Tribble that I’ve had for years and value more than most of my other possessions. She knocked over a small bowl of quarters I keep for the washer and drying machines. She took my Admiral Ackabar action figure and dismembered it. My perfume, face cream, a watch and some jewelry all ended up under the dresser. She stole a little glass duck that used to belong to my mother from my dresser and the ribbons from my diploma and I haven’t found either yet. She stole a braid of hair I made from hairs I’d curried out of my old pony’s tail and chewed it to shreds. I had a plastic set of Mardi Gras beads that I’d gotten twenty years ago as a souvenir, and KfH chewed them into little pieces. She knocked over my quilt stand with my grandmother’s quilt on it, and the floor lamp (which was lit at the time). She unplugged the Professor’s alarm clock. I’m finding used tissues stolen from the waste paper basket in all sorts of nooks and crannies in the bedroom. She unrolled the entire roll of toilet paper in the powder room adjoining the bathroom.
Next time I’m shelling out for a kennel and incarcerating her.