Off The Road Again...

I'm on a musical theme here for subject titles in case you wonder why they are slightly odd.

I woke up at 6 something this morning with a raging headache complete with stuffed-up head. I ignored it for an hour or two, then got up and took some Excedrin Migraine I had with me and waited for it to work. Suddenly I'm sneezing, eyes watering, and runny nose along with the stuffy head, and I figure it must be sinuses. I'm not alone-Steve had the sinus headache yesterday, Kaylee's been stuffy all week, and Richard woke up at six a.m. with a stuffed head too. Something wicked that way blows! :O Anyway, finally by later in the morning I felt back to normal.

Richard and Ann headed back to Florida this morning, and Steve, Kaylee and I left at high noon our time for the drive back. I'm sure Cathy is probably glad to have her house back to herself, but we all had quite a great time. Kaylee was not pleased in the least to be gone.

The drive started off uneventfully. Well, except I let Steve drive my car for the first time ever, which is slightly monumental. Of course I was sitting there right seat to make sure he did it properly. ;) Unfortunately, about 90 miles south of Louisville, we ended up in another traffic jam, one bad enough that we parked for about 30 minutes. Finally, finally we got moving again, and we took the next exit for a bathroom, gas and food break. Naturally we weren't the only ones with that idea, and the line for the 4-stall women's bathroom was all the way out into the convenience store. As I was muttering to myself, I heard one of the ladies talking about the accident that had blocked us all up, which made me quit muttering quite so much. The men's room door was open constantly as people went in and out, but they never did form a line, much to the men's amusement as they would walk by and make snide comments to their spouses/female travelers standing out in the hall waiting. Kaylee even noted it. She came up to me in line and said "Why are the boys going right in? How come they don't have a line?" I said "Because they don't have to get undressed to go to the bathroom like the rest of us." This caused some more snickering in both directions. I finally make it out of the bathroom, and we go to McDonald's, where I was pleased to see Steve had already ordered for us. Twenty Minutes Later I'm still waiting for my food, and by now I'm unhappily noting that people who ordered after me are all getting their food. Steve and Kaylee are waiting in the car, so I finally step up and try to politely ask about my food, and I get ignored, so the next time I wasn't quite so...sweet...about it. Of course I'm not rude, but my tone of voice along with a firm and slightly loud "Excuse me. I've been waiting 20 minutes, I don't see my order on the screen any longer..." etc. One lady asked me what I had, I told her, and I was out the door a minute later. I don't like crowds or lines. Ugh.

We were past Louisville when another accident happened, this time a 4-car one. It shut down the lanes going south, and they were going to be closed for a long time. I hate to be grateful at anyone else's delay, but I was admittedly thankful this one didn't happen heading north. I try not to get cranky at any delay because it does no good, changes nothing, and leaves you feeling annoyed and slightly hostile. But I *really* can't feel cranky when it's an accident. For heaven's sake, someone else's Really Bad Day, possibly being hurt, puts any inconvenience to me for an hour well into perspective. I could see people were okay in the second one, and can only hope as much for the first.

As we got into Indianapolis, suddenly there was snow. And then there was kind of a lot of snow. Not Wisconsin-style snow, but a couple of inches, and a lot of blowing wind. Visibilities dropped, temperatures dropped, the roads got a little icy, and we saw several vehicles off the side of the road, including an ambulance. So our last hour home took more like 90 minutes as we took it a little easy. However, we did indeed make it home.

The cats were quite happy to see us, and still alive. One of them had somehow managed to tip over the litter box, so litter and poo was spilled all over the kitchen floor. Which is nice. So I took care of feeding and watering the cats and getting that done, Steve worked on the litter boxes and the floor, and I unpacked most of the small bags/stuff. We played Wii for a few minutes with Kaylee to relax, and then I've started in on my photos. I have over 300 of them, with mine combined with Cathy's. There are some neat shots in there, I can't wait to get them up. But that won't happen tonight!

Tomorrow I think I'm going to Florida and back in the Cheyenne, so I think I'll try to finish one last thing here then head off to bed. It's good to be home, but it's been great being with family these last two weeks. It was a good Christmas/New Year. :)