Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

With our new don’t-mention-that-our-house-is-empty-and-waiting-for-burglars policy, I couldn’t mention that we were heading out on vacation, but you may have noticed since I’ve been so light on posting lately. In the past, I’d ask for help from local readers who might want to write a post about something, but that’s fallen by the wayside a bit, ever since Cute W told me that telling everyone we were out of town freaked him out a bit. However, if you’d love to write a guest post, read a bit more here and send me an email, and maybe I can do some sort of “rolling admissions” summer slacker series.

So! We had a big ol’ road trip. We headed out of town back on Tuesday the 16th toward Chicago, where Cute W was attending a conference that ran from Wednesday through Saturday. Then we spent a lovely 24 hours or so at a lake in Iowa with our very old friends. From there we drove to Kansas City, home of Grandma & Grandpa as well as Cute W’s sister and her family (aka home of the magnificent fort). Yesterday we headed east again with a stop in St. Louis and an overnight in a hotel.

And now everyone’s exhausted and asleep. Except me. I’m exhausted and blogging. Because I am so utterly devoted to you. Also because I’m a night person.

Just before heading off to sleep, all four of us lay down on our bed–a bit squishy because they’re getting big and we’ve only got a queen–to listen to more of our latest Flavia audiobook that we hadn’t finished in the car. Even though it was a family vacation, we were so busy doing super-fun, overstimulating activities (more on all of those later) or hanging out with friends and family or at a hotel where it is apparently impossible to be in the room without turning the tv on (every time I have access to cable it reconfirms my gratitude that it’s not in our house. For the love of peanut and butter sandwiches, why must Disney show the same episode over and over and over again? As if the plots aren’t repetitious and derivative enough? Jeepers!).

Anyway, lying around there listening to the book together was lovely. J was in super-cuddly mode and M was about as cuddly as she gets, and our cat Isis was extraordinarily happy to see us, making the rounds between all of us with head butts and the sort of dramatic sprawling that she does to indicate that the nearest human(s) must stop everything and pet her. At one point J had wrapped her body around me with one hand petting Isis and one hand rubbing one of M’s feet while I rubbed M’s other foot (the only way to get M to cuddle is to give her massages. We know it’s wrong but we’re resigned to it. Come to think of it, M and Isis sort of have that in common.)  Meanwhile Isis was enjoying pets from Cute W and me while flicking the end of her tail in J’s face, making her giggle uncontrollably. So it’s good to be home. More on our adventures later.