Oh. My. God.

Normally, my plane trips back and forth to places are unremarkable. Maybe one thing annoying happens. This flight, however, is like a nightmare. That I didn't have because I didn't get any sleep last night.

It started like this: So, you remember how I got new luggage the other day so I would have more room to pack stuff? Yeah. Well, that's a total lie. Both bags - the laptop one and the rolling suitcase - have no more room than the previous ones. In fact, the laptop one maybe has less. I spent most of the night packing and re-packing the bags so I could fit everything in. I still managed to not be able to take my straight iron and my shampoo and conditioner that smell really good. Grr. I also had to do this weird thing with all of my prescription drugs since space was at a premium... normally I take the bottles since you're supposed to have the pharmacy labels with the meds. Well, I just couldn't find room to do that so I improvised. I took those tiny snack-size ziploc bags and stuck one of the extra labels in each baggie along with the corresponding medication. Saved me from all the bulky bottles and the tight-ass security guards didn't seem to mind. Hell, in Austin they probably didn't even notice or care. Now, I wouldn't DARE do this in St. Louis... those guys are serious assholes. Anyway... the new bags were not as cool as I thought. But they look great.

So there's no sleep for Em. Then Mom's late. My flight's scheduled for 9:25am. I asked her to pick me up from my apartment at 7am so we'd have plenty of time to get there during the nasty weather and the rush hour commute since the airport is smack-dab on the opposite side of the city from where I live. I start calling her at 7 wondering where she is. I figure she's running late as per usual (I was never on time to anything as a kid because of her... she seems to think that a start time of seven means you can LEAVE at 7). I call. And call. And call. Finally, at 7:25 the phone rings and Mom in a sleepy voice tells me that it's a good thing I called because her alarm didn't go off and she overslept. My first words were, "JESUS, MOM!" Then, of course, I had to apologize to the Lord for taking His name in vain but, Damn. The one day I needed her to be on time. So she says she'll be out the door in five. Finally, she gets to my house at about 7:40. I tell her that we need to go by Walgreens to pick up my pain medication so I can walk such a long way and not die before getting there. I also needed a Red Bull if I was going to make it at all. She started to bitch me out for adding something extra to the plan. Well, it's either do that, or I'm in pain. And, if she'd arrived on time, there'd be no time crunch. We ran to Walgreens - thankfully only a couple of blocks away - I whipped through the store - though slowed down considerably by the new, ancient pharmacy tech at the counter who didn't know how to work the register - and we were on our way. Traffic was slow in spots, but we made good time, only taking about 20 minutes to get there. I arrived about 8:20.

Mom dropped me off at the curbside check-in for Southwest. That was good. I didn't have to wait in a long line inside to check my bag. Which is UT orange. It's at least got that going for it. I hobbled to the "security checkpoint" with my papers waiting. I got through just fine, but was bitched at by the bastards because THEY weren't doing their job of clearing the bins from the rollers after the x-ray machine and so I was instead just packing myself up where the bins were. Well, finally the three guards realized that things were backing up and they needed to stop chatting about their sex lives down at the end of the line and so the guy came up and did that, "Ma'am you need to move down," thing, naturally right in the middle of my packing my things. I had my boarding pass and ID in my TEETH for fuck's sake. I hate them. I'm forced to move my things down mid-pack and end up snagging my thigh on the stupid metal table they provide you (which I swear they buy second-hand from morgues) I'm sure making a nice bruise. I then hobble to the gate.

I have to wait in line on my knee which is now getting quite painful behind an old couple trying to get on my flight. After about 10 minutes of them weaseling their way on board my plane, I finally get to tell the woman at the gate that I need a pre-boarding pass because of my bum leg. I go to sit in the PB area, and guess what I find? Four elderly people, and one woman with her young daughter. Now, I'm sorry, but if you're just old, but still have functioning legs and whatnot, I think you should board regularly like everyone else. If you have to use a wheelchair or a walker or some other device to get around, THEN you can pre-board. I don't think you should be able to just because you hit the ripe old age of 65. Medicare enrollment does not equal pre-board. Oh, then another mom with kids showed up. Except she had three. One was probably about 8, another 4 and one that is probably somewhere around 2.

So we all get on board. Were does the mommy with the little kids sit? You guessed it. Directly behind me. With the 1 1/2 year old right behind me at the window. And, like any little boy, he WILL NOT BEHAVE AT ALL. He has no inside voice. He's squealing all the time. Talking a hell of a lot of baby jibberish for a kid that old. KICKING THE BACK OF MY SEAT. I had to turn around and ask the mommy to ask her kid to not do that because DAMN. I shouldn't have to ask that. He's just so loud. And I have such a headache. The flight is completely full so I am forced to sit with someone next to me. And she's not small. And neither am I. Let's just say I'm getting claustrophobic. OMG. She just turned on her cell phone. We're going to go down and it'll be her fault. Maybe the NTSB will recover my computer and this writing and realize that it was the chick in 3B who did it by turning on her cell phone.

I was so excited. I had a new MP3 player that Mom got me for Christmas/Birthday to use while flying for the first time so I had something to listen to besides the hum of the engines and the squealing of the kid behind me. Of course, this being the WORST FLIGHT EVAR, it gets messed up after three songs and gets stuck to the point I can't even turn it off. I have NO idea what's going on. I'm really pissed. At least I actually have that extended warranty at Best Buy that everyone says not to buy. If it is actually broken I can replace it. I may get an iPod though, since it's been a real pain in the ass with this thing. More that I thought it'd be.

I can't wait to see Heather. It'll be just a little while now. We've been in the air for about an hour. Which means I get an hour-and-a-half more of squealing kid and claustrophobia induced by tiny seats not meant to fit people over 150 lbs. I will need quiet. And a nap. Because I have a migraine and it hurts. All loud sounds are killing me. And the glare of the sun off of the cloud cover below? Dude. Owie.

Maybe I'll take a nap and pray that it'll be over soon. If this KID WILL EVER STOP KICKING THE BACK OF MY SEAT.

Oh, God. Now he's CRYING. Just what I need. CRYING KID. Shit. Kill me.

Okay, she quieted him down by reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories to him. She has a good reading voice. Soothing. I might actually be able to take a nap now. Nope. Didn't last long enough.

Ugh. Every time I get comfortable enough, the chick next to me shifts. Because she just can't stand her thigh barely touching mine. I'm not crossing the armrest line of demarcation any more with my thick thigh than she is. So she needs to stop it. Seriously.

Okay. It seems I'm not going to get a nap before I land. Grr. After deplaning... I start to try to hobble my way to Heather myself. I make it two gates before the pain kicks in. So I ask the chick to get me a person with a wheelchair so I don't have to wobble it there. It takes twenty minutes to have someone finally get to me. I had time to get a drink and a Cinnabon and eat the whole thing before the woman showed up. Then it was a straight shot to the place where Heather was waiting. She called me to find out what I was wearing. "Red and a wheelchair." She loved that description. Poor girl had to take over the pushing me everywhere after we passed the security area and we had to grab my rolling bag from baggage claim and have me hold it while she carried my carry-on and pushed me to the car.

We got to her house and I crashed for a while. So nice to finally get my nap. And see Heather. And be around her again. Life feels much better again.

So Friday was "See where Heather (georion23) works and meet all her school peeps" day. We drove up to her school - Arizona State, School of Earth and Space Exploration. I got to see her lab. It was neat to finally get to see how she will be conducting her experiments for her thesis. Don't ask me how it all works... I understand it on a superficial level, but not enough to fully explain it to someone else. I got to meet her officemate, Jeremy, and see her office, a.k.a. "The Dungeon."

After hanging out there for a few, we went upstairs to the meteorite museum. It's little-known, but ASU has the largest college-based meteorite collection in the world. And because Heather rocks (get it? She's a geologist... so she rocks?) so much, she got us an appointment with the curator, Lora. She took us back into the storage room to look at the main bulk of the collection. You can see her and a little of the room in a two-hour meteorite special that plays every now and then on the History Channel. So, she explained about the different types of meteorites and pointed out some. Then she handed me one, known as a chondrite. I wish I had a picture. You should have seen the look on my face. I held a rock from outer space that formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. About the same time that the Earth did. How mind-blowing is that? I know it took me the rest of the day to wrap my brain around the fact that I'd held a piece of rock from the beginning of our solar system in my hands. She also showed us a Martian meteorite (that was really cool since Heather's working on one), and a meteorite from the moon. What made the lunar meteorite really spiffy is that they believe it comes from the side of the moon that constantly faces away from us (a.k.a. "The Dark Side of the Moon.") I made a joke about Pink Floyd feeling really freaked out, and both Lora and Heather just looked at me like, "Ugh. Bad joke." Anyway... holding meteorites in your hand? Awesome.

We just toodled around the rest of the day and then watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was fine until it got to the part where they were readying Aslan for the stone table. The computer animators got the look of pain on his face just right, and it made me start to cry, because I was remembering Shadow. We paused the movie and I cried and cried. Finally, I pulled myself together, and I just didn't watch the rest of the scene. It was a great movie. The effects were stunning. I never thought I'd say this, but they were better than The Lord of the Rings. They were absolutely seamless. The half-human characters (fawns, centaurs, etc) were especially amazing. Thank God for Weta. You could tell the ILM stuff from the Weta stuff just by the quality.

After that it was bedtime because we had to get up kind of early to head to Sunset Crater and Meteor Crater the next morning. More pictures tomorrow.

I left for Arizona with my cat Shadow in the emergency animal hospital. I didn't want to do it, believe me. She'd already been there a week. She had hepatic lipidosis and pancreatitis. Basically, what happened is that somewhere a few weeks ago she stopped eating for some unknown reason. Because she stopped eating (either because of the pancreatitis or otherwise, it's not clear) the fat from her body dissolved and then collected in her liver, clogging it up making her even sicker. By the time I realized how sick she was, she had lost roughly 5 pounds because the disease keeps cats from eating.

She went into the hospital two weeks ago last Wednesday night. I lost her just about one week later. The wonderful doctors at Animal Emergency Hospital of Austin tried everything they could to save her. They let me come in at basically all hours of the day or night to visit. By the end of the week, every single member of the staff knew me as "Shadow's Mommy." The docs and the techs all cared a great deal for her and I know she was in good hands.

Wednesday I called in and was told that she wasn't doing so well. That the progress she had made was basically reversing itself. Thursday afternoon I received a call. It was the vet, Dr. Olivares, telling me that Shadow had just arrested. Did I want to continue CPR, or did I want to give them permission to go ahead and put her to sleep? I knew I had only one choice. I was sitting on Heather's bed when that call came. I told her to go ahead. Shadow should no longer be in pain. Dr. O handed me over to a tech to confirm my voice authorization. The tech told me that Mom was there visiting her when all of this happened. That made me feel a lot better. The tech handed the phone to Mom who told me that it was the best thing to do. I told her I knew and that I had already given the authorization. Mom promised that she would be with Shadow the whole time.

I think it was meant to happen the way it did. I knew the second I hung up the phone and collapsed into Heather's arms wailing that I wouldn't have been able to be there with Shadow when they put her to sleep. Because she would have almost certainly needed that at some point no matter what. She just wasn't getting better. Mom was there, and she was able to deal a lot better than I would have. And I had Heather right there to comfort me as soon as I hung up the phone. We cried together for a long, long time.

I didn't feel like doing anything for the rest of the day, so I slept some. Then we got Olive Garden, and watched V for Vendetta. Great movie. I hadn't seen it yet. And I was dying to read the V for Vendetta in 15 Minutes. So I finally got to do that. I went to bed early.

*I have to note that Heather was absolutely wonderful this entire day. I felt like I had lost one of my best friends. I felt guilty for not being there for Shadow when she needed me. She just held me and held me as I cried. I hurt so much that day, and she helped me through.

** I'd also like to thank Kepler, Heather's cat, for the kitty love. He was very nice and provided some quality petting time and some very lovely hilarious kitten distraction.

( Rest in peace my beautiful Shadow Kitten )

My "Adventures in Arizona" series is the recapping of my vacation last week. I apologize. I should have specified. "Day 1 (Wednesday)" was actually the 30th. I will date them from now on to avoid confusion.

So the flight from Austin to El Paso was wonderful. Almost completely empty. I had an "A" boarding pass, and I was one of those dorks who sat near the front of the boarding area about an hour or so before the plane even arrived. Window seat, baby. And the mountains... whoa.

Then came El Paso. BORING, except my first view of real live mountains. Problem was the time change into Mountain Daylight from Central Daylight. That was fun. I got all kinds of turned around and thought my flight was going to take off really soon, so I scarfed down my quesadilla (cheese, chicken, and sauteed onions - even though I specifically requested NO ONIONS and she promised there would be none - and they were large chunks, too...) and sucked down some of my Coke and went to sit at the head of the line so I could get on the plane first so I could get the best seat and therefore get off the plane fast which meant seeing Heather (georion23) sooner. Called Heather, and together we figured out that I was off by an entire hour (I was asking her, "Why isn't anyone getting in line behind me? And why isn't the plane here yet since we should have taken off by now??") After my wait-of-stupid, I got on the plane, found a window seat, and tried to put my carry-on rolling bag up in the overhead compartment. It's fucking heavy, okay? Big, rolling bag. Everyone, including the flight attendants and the other passengers saw me struggling with the thing. Grunting, cursing, kind of deal. Did anyone reach to help me?? No. I already missed Austin, because there you could always expect the men to help you out, if not the women, too.

The view from El Paso to Phoenix was lovely. Check it out: a golf course, the El Paso way... One giant sand trap.

Tried to get a picture of Sun Devil Stadium (where the Fiesta Bowl is played every year) but I missed it both coming into and leaving the airport, dammit. But I got a picture of its side as we drove to Flagstaff several days later. It's literally wedged in between those two mountains. Kinda cool, huh?

After I touched down and hauled my ass across the entire damn airport, I finally met up with Heather. It was great to see her. We practically ran to her car. Couldn't wait to get out of there. She rented a hotel room so we wouldn't have to deal with her two male roommates on my first evening there. Very cool. And a total surprise.

We had planned a nice dinner, so she rented the room so we wouldn't have to deal with her two guy roommates on my first night there. We dressed up (aren't we pretty?) and went to Morton's. We had the most AMAZING food. The shrimp cocktail? Not shrimp. They were Indonesian prawns that were about 6 or so inches long and about an inch wide. So much meat on them that we only got four. Heather was nice enough to eat two of them even though she's not that much of a seafood person. I was in shrimpy heaven. I wish I had taken a picture, but it was a kinda classy joint and I didn't think taking pictures of our food would be a good idea. Also, all the managers looked like they were straight out of The Godfather, and I didn't want to invite trouble. Oh. My. God. The steak? Melt-in-your-mouth meat. I had their single filet mignon, medium. If it had been a little bit thinner, I could have probably cut it with only my fork. Speaking of the managers, one came up to us after our steaks were served and asked how they were. I told him the steak was the most tender piece of meat I've ever had. He looked like an uglier and meaner version of Andy Garcia, I swear. His answer? "Still can't cut it with a fork, though." He said it very disappointedly, like that was his life's dream to get a filet mignon you could cut with a fork. And there was some closed-door party in the back that was guarded by large men in tuxes. What does that say to me? Phoenix mafia. The other interesting things about dinner: the white trash-y looking women sitting at the bar when we walked in. Seriously, they were wearing K-Mart-type clothing and their hair was up in ratty ponytails, etc. And here Heather and I were in dresses better suited for a wedding. Also, the woman sitting at the table behind Heather during dinner. I had a full look at her, but Heather caught the full brunt of her obnoxiousness. OMG. This woman. She was one of those women who makes you, as a woman, want to go over to, slap across the face, and say, "YOU are the reason women get a reputation of all being obnoxious bitches." And she was. The entire time. And, irony of ironies, at one point during her conversation with her dinner companions, she said to the man sitting next to her, "STOP BEING SO MEAN!!!! YOU'RE SO MEAN!!!" Heather and I had to try our hardest to not laugh out loud. But there was almost uncontrollable snickering.

Once we got back to the hotel, the reason Heather had refused to let me order desert was revealed: chocolate covered strawberries. My favorite food. Not her favorite, but mine. Isn't she sweet? So, as I ate, I gave her all the chocolate that fell off the strawberry, since some of it always eventually falls off, and because she doesn't like strawberries.

A wonderful way to end a long day's journey - excellent food and company.

Stay tuned for day 2.