Hello! A couple of people have asked and I didn’t want to leave anyone hanging after you were all so sweet about my jerkface of a dying dog. Duncan is indeed still with us–after the first couple of days home he started eating again (but picky-like, so now he’s getting canned food like the prince he is) and perked up considerably. We all spent several days watching him in amazement and commenting to one another, “He sure doesn’t ACT like he’s dying” and although I publicly declared I wasn’t going to get my hopes up, lo, my hopes were up, because the medication was clearly working and he seemed to feel pretty good. Aaaaaaand then yesterday he peed in the house three times, and this morning when I picked him up to put him back on my bed after the breakfast he’d refused, he did the honking/coughing thing that started all of this. Which—BONUS!—was followed by gagging and then puking an impressive amount of water slime all over my comforter. So! I’m doing laundry, Duncan is still alive, still an asshole, we still don’t really know how long this will continue, and I talked to our regular vet to see if he makes house calls (he does), so we are enjoying (? maybe not the bodily fluids parts) the present and preparing for… you know. Sigh. Thank you all so much for your kind words and sharing about your own beloved pets.

Switching gears (because there is only so much time even I can keep talking about the wonders of canine effluvia): We are currently experiencing some Weather. I mean, we ALL experience weather, but right now the greater Atlanta area is experiencing Weather, by which I mean that water is falling from the sky and people are losing their fool minds.

You know I work from home and am, for the most part, perfectly happy to enjoy the benefits of a hermit lifestyle. It never even reaches unhealthy levels because I don’t get to be a TRUE hermit thanks to my family. Monkey gets up every morning and talks at me about the news until he leaves for work, then comes home later and regales me with tales of his day before disappearing into his cave to game online with his pals. Otto is gone quite a bit but insists on talking to me when he’s not, plus he does things like make me go to faculty dinners and other events which I like to complain about but secretly enjoy. And of course Chickadee texts me 100 times a day and FaceTimes at least twice. My POINT is that I try to live a fairly solitary life and not leave home much BUT my family makes sure I don’t ever achieve that.

Still, generally speaking, if it’s gross outside, I don’t need to leave the house if I don’t feel like it. And (try to contain your shock) if it’s gross outside, I don’t feel like leaving the house. So I don’t. Unless I have to.

Yesterday I had to leave the house while it was raining. Which… okay, let’s pause on that for a moment. Stick a pin in the whole “leaving the house” issue.

Remember my friend Kira? I mean, none of us really blog anymore, but Kira is my sister from another mister or whatever the kids are saying these days. Kira also has the audacity to live all the freakin’ way across the country in Colorado, which is not even in Georgia a little bit. This has always been a problem, but for many, many years, Kira and I managed to visit one another at least once a year, with one of us going to the other’s house or, once, us meeting in Vegas like the party animals we are. One year Kira coordinated with Otto and showed up as a surprise when I was doing a show, and later that year I coordinated with Clay and showed up as a surprise when she was graduating from college. Those were both amazing trips and we saw each other twice that year, but… we haven’t seen each other since. And it’s been three years. This wasn’t on purpose, it’s just that life sometimes overwhelms and she had stuff happening and I had stuff happening and we couldn’t work out the schedules, etc.

A couple of months ago, after months of hinting around that we should schedule something, I told Kira as we were chatting one day that I was just going to buy a ticket and show up on her doorstep. “Oh that would be LOVELY,” she said. “Except that if one more person enters this house I am pretty sure it will explode.” (Remember, Kira has rather a lot of children. Most of them are adults, and all of them are living at home right now, some with extra people. Her house is FULL.) “FINE,” I said. “I’ll buy YOU a ticket to come HERE. Right now. PICK A DATE.”

In conclusion, I am a bully and GUESS WHO CAME TO GEORGIA YESTERDAY?

Back to the rain: Oh, the rain. I knew I would need extra time to get to the airport, because People. Also Kira was delayed in leaving (I don’t know why… maybe snow? gremlins?), so I was checking her flight and calculating my leave time and finally it was time to go. Mind you, I live about 80 minutes from the airport, so it’s A Hike regardless of the time of day or weather. But! Wednesday night! Going against traffic! And her flight was gonna be late, so I was fine. I would leave myself a full hour and forty minutes to arrive, which would be plenty of time.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!

My GPS did that thing. You know the thing? About ten minutes into my drive, she started droning “Ten. Miles. Ahead. On the route. Slow traffic.” And as she repeatedly warned me of slow traffic, my anticipated travel time sat at 1 hour 35 minutes… for an hour. It also offered to reroute me at some point, which I agreed to, and that took me off the main highway through some weird back road situation which would’ve been fine if not for the fact that every other person trying to get to the airport was also going that way.

Mind you, it was BARELY even raining. Like, it was just… moistening. Not a heavy rain or anything. But I passed three car wrecks and one car on fire. (How does a car burst into flames? Why do I always seem to pass a car on fire when I drive to Atlanta? THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT.) I used my voice to text to send Kira an apologetic message letting her know I was likely going to be quite late and I was sorry.

The bad news is that it took me close to three hours to get to the airport. The good news is that Kira’s flight was even later than it was supposed to be, so we arrived at about the same time. And of course once she got into the car we immediately commenced with The Gabbing so the ride home—although also entirely too long—didn’t feel too awful. I did, however, feel my age when we finally got back and I stepped out of the car after close to five hours of sitting and tried to use my legs. Ouch.

But then, we were home! And I had been smart enough to throw food in the crockpot before I left, so we came in and had some dinner and kept gabbing, and then Kira FaceTimed her family and I got to see in real time why she desperately needed a vacation. (Kidding, Kira’s clan! Love you all! ALLLLLL of you, and there are so many! With so many words!) I mean, Sophia wanted to tell her all about something, and Tre was there saying hi, and then Max was dancing around with a freshly-carved pumpkin over his head, and Raphael and his girlfriend were doing something in the kitchen, and Max’s partner was there roasting the pumpkin seeds, and we got to admire everyone’s pumpkins and listen to twelve people talk at once. Clay was in the middle of it all, looking a little tired, but taking it all in stride.

Eventually Kira’s phone died and that was the end of the call. “Wow,” I said. “If you want to just spend your entire trip here in complete silence, I understand.” Then we proceeded to continue gabbing for another hour.

Today it is still raining and Duncan is clearly not doing so hot, so we’ll hang around here (in silence! except when we start gabbing!) and enjoy not having to do anything in particular. I don’t have to go back to Atlanta until Saturday, so fingers crossed it stops raining by then. Or maybe I can just convince Kira to stay here forever. I think that’s fair. I mean, she’s already here. And Duncan hasn’t even peed or puked on anything of hers. Yet.