Home, Home at last

Home Sweet Home
There's No Place Like Home
Home is where the Heart is

We are finally home. Are we glad? Yes. Are we tired? Yes. Was our dog ecstatic to see us? Yes. Was the Cat? Maybe--she stayed outside to chase bugs instead of coming in to see us!

We got up at 5:30 this morning to catch the 7:15 flight home. Rush, Rush, Rush. You know how it is. It seems like you should have plenty of time but.....You've got to get rid of the rental car. Your husband doesn't believe your directions about where to go to get to the airport and has a slight panic attack in the dark-thirty morning light until the shining beacon of the "Rental Car Return" sign is sighted. We have to go through security. (by the way, do you know that you have to go through this thing that, once you step inside says, jets firing and your are shot all over with little blasts of air? What's up with that?)

So. We are sitting at our gate. Les eating a Pecan Cinnabon and me eating yogurt with granola. Y'all know what happens when we miss our fiber and are traveling, right? And to further set the stage, Les has milk and I'm drinking coffee. Bad coffee. Possibly burnt coffee. But it is caffeine. And it cost a ridiculous amount of money. No, it wasn't Starbucks. I wish. So I get up to go potty one more time before we have to get on the plane (no the fiber had not kicked in) and stop by the Cinnabon place to get more cream and some sugar to try to get the coffee down and I return to the gate just in time for them to say "We have no flight attendants for the flight to Dallas. You must go to blahblahblah. If you have checked luggage....blahblahblah.

Panic ensues. Murmuring drowns out the poor guy behind the check-in counter. The race is on. The blah blah part was not in the above portion because I didn't want to type all the stuff in. No. That part was what we couldn't hear because of the roaring in our ears and the aforementioned panicked murmuring.

So what do we do? Take off. Do we know where we are going? No. We do not. I think they say Gate C1. Les does too. So we walk to C1 and guess what. Now we are out of the secured area and there is no C1. So. We take off our shoes, are directed to the front of the line and go through security AGAIN. The same security station, the same people who passed us through the first time now inform us (very nicely) that we may only have one quart bag of liquids per person and the sweet lady helps us repack the 4 bags we have carelessly filled in our rush that morning. Oh and I did discard the coffee at checkpoint A. It was kind of a relief actually to toss that expensive cup of bad coffee with a reason. And we are directed at last to C9. One and nine sound a lot alike in panic mode.

And we get on a flight to Dallas at last.

Back to the home part. I'm sitting here, lounging at the desk, typing on a real keyboard with a real mouse and I find myself occasionally sniffing my arm.

I can hear you now--"what is she thinking telling us this stuff. First the panties and now the arm sniffing. I'm gonna put that girl on the prayer list."

But aside from the weirdness of it (sniffing my arm), don't you just love it when you come home from a trip and you step inside your house and it's HOME. It smells like your house. The water tastes right. Your stuff is in drawers and closets instead of dumped in a bag.

I love going on trips. I love experiencing new places and discovering new things. But no matter how nice the place is where you stay, it sometimes still smells like cigarette smoke. Or mildew or, just, something they clean with. And the pillows are not right. And the soap dish in the shower is in weird place. Or it is so damp that some things never dry. (by the way about those panties, they were still as damp the next afternoon as they were when I washed them out the night before. And I even used the iron on them. But sadly for you, I didn't take a picture! And no Mandy, I have no idea why it never occured to me to go buy new ones!)

But I really love MY BED and MY SHOWER and MY CLOSET and MY HOUSE! They are so sweet to come HOME to! And even though we took our own soap and shampoo and all that paraphernalia with us on our trip, nothing ever smelled like home. Or felt like home.

So, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to bed to hug my pillow and sniff my arm a bit more.