home again home again… kinda

I drove from Austin (no longer home) to Baton Rouge (home again) Saturday, hauling a carload of stuff and a very upset kitty who didn’t make it five minutes out of town before she puked right in the middle of her cat carrier.

I played the Alphabet Game to keep myself awake—you know, where you find the letters of the alphabet in order on road signs / passing cars / billboards. Then I played it backwards. Then I played it using only capital letters. Then I played it using only lowercase letters. Lowercase ‘j’ almost ended me (Damn you, Howard Johnson, mocking me with your uppercase ‘J’!). Then, a mere seven letters later, I came up against lowercase ‘q,’ which thwarted me until I reached the Mississippi River bridge and the turnoff for Plaquemine and which ultimately reigned victorious since I was then home before I could find lowercase ‘z.’

So currently Steven’s driving over the Atchafalaya Basin with a carload of my crap (he stopped in College Station on the way here), Squeak is hiding out in my room (on my bed, behind my pillow), Yo Yo the Feline Terror is probably about to attack my leg (his latest trick), and I’m not especially looking forward to seeing today’s drive again, in reverse, early Monday morning (happily, though, it’ll be the first part of a drive to California).

I doubt that I believe I’ve actually left Austin for good.