What an ordeal.

On Sunday I slept in, but I had hundreds of things to do, I had stuff to clear off TiVo so that I will be able to TiVo the things that need TiVoing while I am gone (I can't wait until Colleen helps me install a great big harddrive in that thing! The world will be mine!), I had to clean the house, I had to pack, I had to do laundry and dishes and bathe and go to the supermarket and just everything, but I was planning on staying up all night, so there should be time for everything, right?

O, how young and innocent I was back then.

I spent the day slowly climbing Mount Stuff to Do, but ended up having to skip the afternoon Christmas shows, which included Al and Fran in Pumpin' Gas, which was on at 5p. Our show was at 7p, but the 5p show was two hours long, so the original idea of people being able to run from one show to the next was wrong, and I didn't want to arrive at the theatre too late, even though we were third in the evening, so I didn't so much mind skipping it to wash dishes.

I also had to go to the supermarket, and since I needed cat litter, I wanted to take the car before the Callahans drove into the city for Fran's show, so I borrowed it with strict instructions to have it back by 4p. It was 3.15p, so I didn't think that would be a problem. So I drove to the store, couldn't lock the car, went inside, realized that I had left my purse at home, like a dip, so I drove home and realized that I had better get that car locked or Cynthia would have me for breakfast, so I didn't bother to go back to the store but instead wrestled for twenty minutes with locking the damned door.

Took plenty of muscle and will, but I finally did it, though Fran told me later that I didn't. I maintain that it unlocked itself for spite.

There was another thing I had to do before my show, which was go to Ricky's and get my hair dye, which I had known that I was supposed to do for months, but completely forgot to do on Friday or Saturday, nope, I left it until Sunday because that's what I do, baby.

So I left the house at 6p or so, ran to Ricky's, clock a-tickin', rushed to the Special Effects display and...couldn't find my colour. I took every goddamned bottle off the shelf, but Atomic Pink there was none.

And there wasn't a thing I could do about that, so I went to the theatre to do our last show. Which was just great. The audience was full and responsive, though the temperature had crept up again, not to Wednesday's volcanic level, but pretty close.

We didn't run the lines beforehand, which I wanted to do, but since we had the big dressing room again, everyone wanted to be in there and it was too crowded and noisy for me to run the lines properly and Get Into Character (and don't think I'm not embarrassed by that sentence), so we didn't, but the great audience made it so that we weren't slow and lethargic, but snappy and sharp. It was a good closing night.

I only wish that once, just once, we had all been in the same show. Because I was doing one show, and Brian and Kelly were in my show, which was a drama, but Gemma and Sheryl were in a much lighter, comedic show, and I certainly wasn't going to be in their show when I really was proud of my show, so it was two different shows going on simultaneously. I don't know how obvious that was, but it made me sorry.

Afterwards, I packed up Cynthia's Christmas tree and went downstairs with Mark, who was giving me a ride to the party, and there was Anne waiting! I hadn't seen her in the house, and thought that she hadn't made it, but she had escaped Nairobi (aka the theatre) and was cooling down on the sidewalk.

Mark drove us all to the party, which I basically just ran in to drop the tree and then escaped, it was so crowded and noisy. I talked to Lee Eypper, because I hadn't seen her in awhile, and saw Katie (who had seen my show, seeing me act for the first time ever!) and pointed out the tree to her. I saw Fran and did the same, in case Katie got flighty, and was given a telling off by Le for sipping his show, then Anne and I got the hell out of Dodge.

We went up the street to the newly remodeled Westway, which is now a vision in aqua, and hung out for a few hours, me taking every opportunity to chide her for only updating three times in the last like five months. I even summarized each of the entries. And then she spend two hours telling me hilarious stories of her first semester in the boonies, so I don't want to hear about how there was nothing to write.

My favourite part of the evening, though, was when we were ordering dinner and she got a turkey burger, then asked if it were possible to get fries with said burger, as though no-one had ever suggested such a combination of foodstuffs ever in the history of dinner.

"Would it be possible, I know it's a crazy suggestion, to get some, this sounds insane, potatoes cut into strips, deep-fried and served alongside the burger that I so recently ordered mere minutes ago? I know! It's an incredible suggestion! But can you find it in your heart to make it so?"

Okay, perhaps I am exaggerating, but only a very little bit.

After this lovely visit I went home to work! To clean! To pack! And when I got to my door I heard Fran yell, "Kymm, that you? Come up and have a drink!" So there went that idea.

I went up and Cynthia wasn't there.

"Where's Cynthia?"
"Still at her goddamn tech."
"Where's the tree?"
At Zuni's, she'll pick it up in the car."
"Who will tell her where it is?"
"Katie knows where it is."
"You left your thirteen year old daughter alone in a bar in Manhattan in the middle of the night?"
"That's not exactly the way I would put it."

Of course, that sounds worse than it is, because she was in a bar full of Love Creekers who have known her since she was a baby, and Fran had to bring Bonnie and Molly home to bed, so he couldn't stay, and he couldn't bring the tree on the van, so this was how it had to be. Of course, no-one expected Cynthia's tech to go on so long, either.

Anyway, I stayed upstairs for a couple of hours, then went downstairs and it was 1a and I had until 6.30a before I had to leave the house. And somehow staying up all night didn't seem like such alot of time anymore.

And I cleaned and I got stuff off of TiVo and I went to the supermarket at 2a and got my cat litter and cat food and some Jax for the plane (luckily, Fran had to go to the store too, so when he went earlier and I watched the kids, he got me twenty pounds of the thirty pounds of cat litter that I needed), came home and cleaned and TiVoed and did the laundry and time just whizzed by in a ridiculous manner until I thought, "Hey, my flight is at 9.55a, I don't really have to get there two hours ahead of time, I didn't have to when I went to Chicago! I can leave the house at 7p without much difference!"

So I finally was packed and bathed and ready to go, having decided that I wanted to travel in my jammies. Not yummy sushi jammies like Melissa's, even I am not that silly, but my jammies that look kind of like a combination of a sweatsuit and thermal underwear--nobody seeing me walking around the street in them would say, "Why on earth is that woman walking around in her pyjamas? Has she escaped from an institution?"

Anyway, it was 7a and I really had to go, so I piled my luggage up by the door, and all I needed was my purse. Which I couldn't find. Which not only had my electronic ticket receipt, but also my driver's license and my bank card and my money and everything I needed to get on that plane, and I couldn't find it. And I had just cleaned up the apartment, so it was not as though it could be under a pile of crap. Could I have left it at the store? Could I have been that dumb? Better find out.

"Hi, I was there shopping earlier, and I might have left my purse there."
"Okay, I'll check."
long pause.
"Yes, it's here."
"O thank God! I'm not usually this stupid, honestly!"
"Just bring some i.d.!"
"But all of my i.d. is in that purse!"
"It's okay, we know who you are."

Being the pink-haired person in town is a handy thing at times. So I went back to the store, and the woman at the help desk saw me coming and unlocked the drawer and handed me my purse to my great joy. Of course, it was 7.20a at this point, which was later than I meant, but I thought that I could still make it okay. Then I decided to check my ticket receipt to make certain that I was going to LaGuardia, and there was the time of my flight. Not 9.55a, but 9.25a. Whoops.

So I ran back to the house and got my bags and staggered out to the bus stop, thinking that it would be difficult to fit everything onto the van without getting kicked to death by my infuriated fellow passengers, but when I got to the stop there was a man there with a very sad expression on his face.

"Excuse me, are you going to the city?"
"Yes."
"Well, I need a second passenger for my car, because I forgot that I couldn't go through the tunnel with only one person before 11a, and I really have to go to town! Can I give you a ride?"
"Sure!"

So I got into his car and got a free ride into the city. In a BMW, even. Very fancy, and the guy was really nice. It was so fast that I thought that I probably was in pretty good shape.

Got to the Port Authority at ten to eight, and I didn't have enough money for a cab, and my bank account was actually empty, so I decided to take the bus. There was enough time for the bus, wasn't there? It was 7.50a, my flight was at 9.25a, if I got there at 8.30a I would probably still be okay, wouldn't I?

So I went out to the curb to wait for the airport bus. And once came almost immediately, hooray! But it was for JFK. Boo. Another woman waiting for the LaGuardia bus asked where it was, and the JFK guy said that it should have been there by now. He called on his walkie-talkie and told us that he was really nearby. Twenty minutes later, he still wasn't there, and it was raining and the JFK driver kept saying, "He's just around the corner!" And finally he was there. I could still make it, I know I could.

Then we drove to Grand Central and filled up there, and the guy came down the aisle, taking everyone's tickets, then turned and made one last announcement, "Everybody is going to LaGuardia, right?" and everybody yelled, "We certainly are!" and the bus started to drive away, and this tiny confused looking Japanese woman near the front said, "JFK?" "NO!" shouted the bus driver, "Get off and go talk to that guy!" so she got off the bus and we drove off.

The driver called the ticket-taker on his walkie-talkie to tell him not to charge her again, because she had paid and gotten on the wrong bus. Then the ticket-taker called back and said, "She has luggage in the hold!" The entire bus groaned. We had gone about two blocks, so we stopped and the driver radioed where he was and told him to tell her to come get her bag.

At this point, I was pretty sure that I had missed my flight. Fifteen minutes later, when she finally managed to find the bus and get her bag, and we at last started heading for Lauardia, I knew I had. And I just let go any thought of making my plane and was perfectly calm and happy. My being tense wasn't going to make me make the plane, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. You learn this attitude quickly when disasters like this happen on a weekly basis.

We finally got to the airport, and my terminal was the third stop, of course, and I walked up to the Frontier desk, the completely empty Frontier desk and said, "Hi, I've missed my plane, what can be done about this?" and she got me on an 11.55a flight on another airline that would get into Los Angeles only one hour later than I was going to get there in the first place!

So I called Mom and woke her up and told her about the change of plans and went to my gate and tried not to fall asleep and waited to get on the plane. When we finally started going on, I was picked randomly for the extry-special security check, where she ran the metal detector over my hair and everything. I wondered if it was because I looked real suspicious, and then I saw the guy after me, who looked pretty much like Opie grown up, all innocent-eyed and freckle-faced.

And I was on the plane! And I had a whole row to myself! And I immediately fell asleep.

We stopped at Chicago, but I was going on on the same plane to LA. They made an announcement, though, "Get off this plane and get something to eat because we certainly aren't going to be feeding you!" It was a little less harsh than that, but not much, so I got off and had a piece of pizza in the airport, then came back inside.

This time, I wasn't lucky enough to have the whole row to myself. Not only that, but I found that I was in the wrong seat all along, that I was at the window, not the aisle. Very cramped and small, and the guy in front of me had his seatback back, which I firmly believe to be the height of bad manners, unless no-one is in the seat behind you. I slept most of the way, so it wasn't so bad.

The guy in my former seat, was interesting, though. He had a moustache waxed and twirled into points. He looked like a bartender in the old west. I suppose I shouldn't talk about looking like a freak, but he appeared to be a real businessman. Although he was flying on a cheap-ass airline, so maybe he wasn't so real.

They were right about not feeding us, though. The drinks cart went by twice, and once they gave us a packet of six peanuts, and the second time, two tiny cookies. Truth in advertising. I'm glad I had those Jax.

But then I was in LA! And Mom picked me up at the baggage claim and took me home, and I told her my long sad tale, and we had yummy beef stroganoff and I was in bed before 9p. And it's Christmas vacation!

And happy 86th birthday, Daddy, I miss you every day.

I haven't been pimping my wish lists this year, I just realized, so just in order to help the people who really want to get me presents, they are here, here and here.

Today's horoscope:
Your dependability is noticed today. You take responsibilities seriously and do what is necessary, steadily and thoroughly.

One year ago today:
"Well, she's the one who writes things like 'I'm ovulating now, which means that all I am wondering is how long it will take to get that cock in my mouth!' "

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Last Updated Fri 21 December 11:40:09 2001