The return of the Piss Crusader…and other tribulations September 22, 2005 ~ 10:02 am
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , trackbackI spent part of Tuesday carefully typing responses to the comments you all left while I was in Atlanta. Why don’t you see those responses? Because Colleen’s computer decided it hated me about halfway through and shut itself off. And when I finally got it to start up again (there is something weird with the power cord, you have to do the Hokey Pokey and turn yourself around while holding it to get the damn thing to work), I didn’t have the password. And Leenie was in the shower, and then it was time for me to pack, and then we left for the airport. Really. I should have taken that as a sign of how my day was going to be but I walked blithely on, ignoring the Universe’s little warning sign.
When we got to the airport (2 hours early, since Michael’s didn’t have the knitting needle size I was looking for when we stopped there…Note to Michael’s: some of us knit with needles below a size 8, dumbasses) we saw that the hourly parking was full, so Leenie had to drop me off. Not that big of a deal…I was already checked in and had printed out my boarding pass ahead of time, so I figured I was good to go. Wrong.
If you haven’t been through security at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, consider yourself blessed. Colleen had warned me about it, but I figured “What the hell, security was a cakewalk in New York, how bad can it be in Atlanta?”. Mistake. Atlanta’s security is a huge clusterfuck pretending to be organized. You stand in a huge line in an unairconditioned area, and when you get to the front of the line, they just check your boarding pass and ID, then send you on to the actual metal detectors/bag screeners. That’s also unairconditioned. They still make you take off your shoes in Atlanta, something I haven’t had to do since I flew to Nebraska two years ago. After you have spent 45 minutes doing all of this, you are free to go to your gate. Mine was 8 billion light years away in Concourse E. And despite it being Gate #2, it was as far as possible from the main section of the Concourse.
When I got there, I realized that my bag was missing its ID tag. My luck is such that I would be stopped at the door of the plane and told my bag was too big, and in stowing it below the plane they would lose it, and I would never get it back because it had no ID on it. I walked off looking for a little store that would sell luggage tags, and almost to the other end of the Concourse found one. My bag is now emblazoned with a CNN tag, because it was ALL I COULD FIND. So sad.
I made it back to the gate just in time for boarding (my wanderings took a fair amount of time), and all was well until we landed. We even got to watch The Simpsons on the plane’s TVs. And then we landed, and sat on the runway for a very looooong time. Thirty-five minutes, in fact, because they were only letting one plane down it at a time. Thirty-five minutes doesn’t seem like a long time until you are almost home, but still looking at an hour commute till you get home to see how much cats have wrecked your house.
We finally got to the gate and were allowed to get off the damn plane. I tracked down the AirTrain, rode it to the train (a 30 minute ride), then got on the subway. That ride was much shorter, and I was home by 8. I should have been home by 7, but we won’t go there.
I was not in the best frame of mind when I walked into the house. After 6 hours of travel Hell, I wanted nothing more than to give Jesse his shot and go to sleep, but I was hungry and there was unpacking to do. I tested Jesse’s glucose and found that he was at 423 (normal cat level is about 60), so he’d had a few fur shots. His glucose hadn’t been that high since he was diagnosed, and I knew what that meant. There was pee somewhere in my house. Sure enough, I found two spots of it in front of my closets in the living room. And me without vinegar or anything to clean it up. I sopped them up as best I could and ended up using the kitty litter baking soda to try to mask the smell so he wouldn’t go there again. I found another spot on my bedroom carpet and did the same. I was talking to Jordana on the phone and unpacking when I noticed Jesse sniffing at the pillows. I sniffed too, and sure enough found that he had peed on my bed, nailing pillows, sheets, mattress pad, and mattress.
I know he can’t help it when his sugar is high, and I was fairly sure that he had been napping there when the urge hit him and he couldn’t get to the litterbox fast enough. That didn’t stop me from having a little breakdown on the phone with Jordana, since I was now going to have to go do laundry immediately to wash away the smell. Jordana is a true friend, though, and when she found out my neighborhood grocery and bodega were closed, she went out and bought me white vinegar to soak the mattress with. I love that woman. She helped me strip the bed, put the pissed-on bedding in a bag, and soak the mattress, pillows, and wall with vinegar. She convinced me that I didn’t need to do laundry until the next morning, and made me realize that I had one pillow in the house that was piss-free, and I could sleep on the couch that night, not on the piss bed. And she did not once laugh at me for crying, even though I know I look horrendous when I do. That is a true friend.
And that’s how I spent yesterday doing laundry, grocery shopping, and buying Nature’s Miracle to take out the rest of the piss smell from the mattress. And why my mattress now has a vinyl bed condom on it to match the couch condom. But you know, Jesse and Joe were thrilled to see me and spent the day telling me “Never leave us again!”. I missed those little furballs, even the one that pissed all over my pillows.
Tonight or tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my visit with Regan. Now I have to catch up on a week’s worth of work.
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