Special guest apperances by:

Hello dedicated readership. I would now take this opportunity to inform you that your beloved author will NOT be scribing this post. She is, as of this moment, sitting in bed, reading a book and drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Take heart however, for she is not infirm and will be back to dispensing her usual wit in the near future. For now you are stuck with me, T, as a special guest blogger. I will only ask one thing of you, and that is to bear with me because I am not.a.blogger.

With that said, I would like to take you all back to a previous post about a particular trip to a particular place.

Preparations for the trip to see M's mother began some three days before we left. And I'm not talking about lists of things to bring or what chores to do beforehand. For myself my preparation started at my work place. You see my line of work requires me to do shift work. Some people would think "that' not so bad, right?" Fuck that.
I'm not talking only swing shift or even the graveyard.
Let me break it down for you real quick. I work four days every week and I work twelve hours every day and I get four days off in between. Still not bad you say?

Wrong.

Here's how the shifts really work. I show up at 5am my first day shift of twelve hours, and muddle through the day until I finally get to go home at 5pm. THEN, I get twelve hours off, after which I get to do that again. When I get off the second day I then get twenty four hours off, at which point I start work at 5P.M. and go until 5 the next morning. Then I get twelves hours off again and do that for another night. So in one "week" I work two 12hr days get 24hrs off and then work two 12hr nights!

It's a pain in my ass sometimes.

Anyway, our flight for this trip was scheduled for around noon the day after my last night shift. Our ride to get to the airport (because I insisted on getting a towncar to pick us up) was set to pick us up at 9 o'clock.... at my sisters house in our nearby metropolis.

So by now I'm sure you've all figured out this means I would 1) get off work at 5am 2) drive home to get M and our luggage 3) drive the two hours to the city (making it around 8am) and 4) hopefully not misjudge my driving time and thereby missing our only ride to the airport. (we didn't park the car there because I don't trust their security.... and I refuse to). So basically I get to be awake for the near 24 hours it will take us to reach her mom's place.


..............Fuck that.

So I did what all smart and resourceful people do when confronted with this type of situation. I faked being sick.

And I must say that I had a fair few of my co-workers convinced. So I started this ruse on my First night shift, laying the groundwork for the theatrics to come....

So I get off work go home and to bed. And when I wake up I make my move.

*ring*ring*ring*ring* " You've reached the foreman, sorry we missed your call, please leave a message...."
Uh... Hey, yeah, I'm not coming in tonight, I feel like shit. It feels like the eighteenth Russian Calvary spent the night in my head with all their horses. So, yeah.... *click*

I chuckled to myself at that point. Mission accomplished.



And so we arrive at M's mothers, and I am pleasantly refreshed from a good nights rest. She picks us up at the airport and takes us home.

Now, I'm not stupid by any means. I knew what this trip would entail, what environment I was getting myself into. M asserts that I am the hardest person to surprise. Well dear....

We walk in the front door and I am literally STRUCK by the powerful smell of stale cigarettes and cats. This smell was so intense that I was immediately thrust back to my childhood and the memory of one of MY mothers close girlfriends.... who smelled overwhelmingly of stale cigarettes and cats.
This sensation thankfully passed rather quickly as I became more accustomed to it (probably owing to the fact that I am now a smoker too), and I was able to pass the rest of the trip in relative olfactory ease. I did however, have to become a pill popper because as luck would have it, I'm allergic to cats. Thankfully the claretin worked and all I suffered was getting licked and having cat hair on everything I brought with me.

So, with M having gotten as much a dose of her mother as she could stand, we come home. Thank. God. I didn't say anything, but I was going stir crazy having to spend SO much time there.

Within hours of our arrival home we began to get an idea of exactly how bad we really smelled. Having been confined in that RV with three smokers and two cats for four days, my once black fleece pullover had become white and the two of us smelled like ashtrays that have never been cleaned. *sigh*

Well needless to say we avoided as much contact with the public until we were able to make it home...... At which point EVERYTHING got thrown in the washing machine.

I still have cat hair on my pullover.