The Most Absurd Thing I Did on Vacation

My two week vacation ends today, and I don’t regret a single part of it. I feel refreshed and excited about new projects.

I also feel a few pounds heavier, but that’s a different story.

Some things I did on vacation:

1. An absurd amount of cleaning

Sparkling clean

2. Played a lot of goofy card games

Kitty #2, hard at work playing Apples to Apples

3. Saw How To Train Your Dragon 2. Twice. And cried. Twice. Both times. I even hatched my own dragon!

Tiny Night Fury

4. Went to RTX in Austin, TX

5. Made some super yummy cupcakes. Seriously. They’re wonderful. I mostly followed the recipe on Sally’s Baking Addiction, and made some minor changes based on what I had in my house, plus changed the icing for my own.

6. Watched a ton of The Legend of Korra. I’m loving this season, which is nice. I felt like I spent season 2 trying to convince myself that I liked it. Considering my husband and I joke that we don’t have a song, we have an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s nice to be enjoying the sequel so much again.

7. Opened an Etsy store, and made my first sale! I’m going to work on restocking/prices this week.

8. Promised a cat I’d buy her a new shower curtain

Ummmm…

Yeah. That happened.

The Shower Curtain

In brief explanation, Kitty 1 was tiny when we got her – too tiny to be separated from her mother. For the first couple of days we had her, we kept her locked in a bathroom while we were at work so she wouldn’t kill herself falling off something or knocking something onto her 15 ounce body. As a result, she’s unusually comfortable with bathrooms, and similarly, with water.

Kitty #1 in her natural environment

She has a morning routine, part of which is to sit between the shower curtain and the curtain liner while the shower runs. Those running beads of water are a ton of fun, it turns out. We had to replace the liner before we went on vacation, and the store was out of clear liners, so we had to get a cloudy one.

Fast-forward to our return home. We expected her to be pretty angry at us for leaving her for so long, but rather than give us the cold shoulder, she was clingy for a solid two days. She took turns chasing each of us around the house, and even her naps were within two feet of one of us. When I ran out to the store that first night, she was running around the door meowing like a mad kitty when I came back.

In case you were wondering, Kitty #2 ran up to us with about as much excitement as she does when one of us gets home from work, then went about her life.

That first evening, Kitty #1 followed me into the shower as usual, but when she climbed between the curtain and the liner, she couldn’t see. I’m not sure if she was complaining, or if she wanted to make sure I knew she was there. Maybe she was playing a game I couldn’t see. Whatever it was, she meowed repeatedly through the whole shower.

And that is how my pet-owner guilt triggered. The next morning, I promptly ran out and got a new liner.

My cats totally don’t control me.

Geekmoon Prep Part 1: Apologizing to Mom

I smell like every kind of cleaning product on the planet.

Aside from the hyperbole, I’m tired. It’s amazing how gross you can feel after cleaning. Here I’ve put all of this time and energy into making my home nice and well-scented, and now I’m disgusting. If I want to get clean, I have to go use the clean shower, ruining its perfect state.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: Apologizing to Mom

When I was a kid, we went to Lake Erie for a week every summer. This is the way Ohioans do the beach on a budget, the great lake being the nearest significant body of water. Pretend it isn’t brown and gross. It gets the job done.

For the most part, I looked forward to said vacation, but my mom had a way of ruining the start: We always had to clean.

“We’ll all feel so much better coming home to a clean house.”

No, Mom, we won’t, I’d think. I like my messy room. You’re just doing this as an excuse to make us all work.

I was a charming child.

The day before vacation was awful. I always seemed to end up in charge of the bathrooms, which was as regular a chore as I had growing up. For years, it seemed I couldn’t get it clean enough. Mom would come in and inspect the room, then find a spot I’d missed. Vacation Inspector Mom was even more critical of my bathroom cleaning skills than regular Inspector Mom. I’d clean and clean. One year, I spent what felt like an eternity (probably 5 minutes) cleaning the vent. I proudly told Mom that I’d cleaned spots she wouldn’t have even considered.

Sparkling clean

I was wrong. She’d thought of it. And found more.

It’s been 10+ since I had a pre-vacation cleaning session with my mother, and I realize how right she was. I’m typing with dry, lemon/bleach/Windex/Comet scented hands, because it’s the day before my trip and I just finished scrubbing my home, ending with the bathrooms.

Why? The idea of coming home from vacation to a dirty house – one that would need any kind of cleaning – sounds stressful and miserable. I don’t know if I became this way because of my mother, or if I would have anyway. Still, I feel the need to apologize.

You were right, Mom. It’s always better to come home to a clean house than not.

Okay, I’m going to go hope the fumes have cleared so I can shower and finish packing. If anything, this makes the first day of the trip all the sweeter. Sure, I’ll be on a plane, but I won’t smell like I fell into a supply closet.

***I’ll have a follow-up post tomorrow about the geek side of our prep. It is a honeymoon at a convention, after all.***