This past weekend, we had the pleasure of attending the wedding of my nephew, Craig, and his beautiful bride, Nancy. Since we were heading to Wisconsin for the wedding, we thought that this would be a great time to bring some big items to Taryn, since we could bring Bert to carry them, and Taryn and Wolfe recently moved into a larger apartment just south of Madison. The wedding was in Milwaukee, but close enough. We spent a significant amount of time moving items this way or that. The items included two tall-back, orange chairs (which date back to my mom, who picked them out of someone’s trash when I was in high school, and had them recovered) and an entertainment center (which had to be extracted from the back corner of the garage, where it has been collecting dust since Trent finished college). We also needed two second row seats, for Trent and Tessa, who were joining us for the wedding. We have some mad packing skills!!

Arguably, the most important item was Bruce, the gray cat, which has somehow become Taryn’s cat through the years. We spent Friday morning packing and shifting stuff from Taryn’s list, and hosing down the cat box, before hitting the road just in time for traffic. Okay, on 80/94, there is always traffic. I drove, since I have a higher tolerance for sitting still on the highway. At first, everything was fine. Bruce meowed twice and Travis went on a short tirade that, if he were driving, we would turn around and bring “that cat” back home, and Taryn could retrieve him. We settled Travis back into sleep and soldiered on. We inched along the highway, listening to good music. Trent and Tessa let Bruce out of his carrier, where he was looking out the window on Trent’s lap. At one point, we even got to drive a short distance with a little speed, before hitting the brakes again. It was at this point, just over the Illinois border, when I hit the brakes, that Bruce got startled and sunk his claws into Trent’s thigh and crotch. Trent let out some sort of animalistic high pitched wail that may have included some choice words. It was hard to decipher what, exactly, he was saying, but he nimbly handed the cat back to Tessa to put back into the cat carrier. 

While Trent was muttering about his injuries, Tessa was petting Bruce’s head, which was the only part of him that was sticking out of the carrier. Then, Bruce threw up all over Tessa. Awesome! As the smell took over the car, Tessa was collecting napkins, complaining that her sweatpants were the only pants she brought for the weekend. Now, they were covered with some swill-smelling cat vomit. We opened the windows, but the smell was stronger than the small amounts of air we brought in moving so slowly. I must be a horrible human, because I thought this was hilarious. And it got better! The cat was so car sick, it also pooped in the carrier. The smell in the car was like the monkey house in the zoo, except we were trapped in it for the next three hours. Trent made an argument to stop the car and clean out the carrier, but I rejected it because Bruce would probably continue to be sick, and I didn’t want to chance his getting away from us at a rest stop. 

So, again, we soldiered on! I am not sure if it was worse living with the smell, or if it was worse when we adapted to the smell, and couldn’t notice it anymore. Well, until Bruce added a new contribution to the long-suffering carrier. Since there was no way to eat in a car that stunk so awfully, we pushed through dinner, opting to order from Noodles online and have Wolfe and Taryn pick it up prior to our arrival. Bruce’s welcome to his new apartment home included a bath as his first order of business. Tessa has the war wounds from that bath. Taryn lent Tessa some clothes (after the cat bath) and brought Tessa’s clothes to the machines in the basement to clean them. Finally, we ate! 

Sometime during dinner, I realized that we were supposed to buy Wolfe and Taryn a decent mattress as a housewarming gift. They had been sleeping on a very flat futon mattress on the floor. It was 8:40 on a Friday night. Not to worry! There was a mattress store just seven minutes away that was open until nine. So, Wolfe, Taryn, Travis, and I piled into Bert to rush to the store. As we walked in, Sean, the poor soul who thought he was closing up Mattress Firm, looked a bit sad as he said, “You have seven minutes until close.” I looked at him with sympathy and responded, “We only need five, but I need a mattress that I can strap to the top of the SUV tonight.” We gave him our price range, which fortunately, severely limited our options. We picked a mattress from the ‘Grab and Go, No Return’ section, and were out of the store by 9:05. The payment process took longer than the mattress selection process, so I am not taking the hit for keeping Sean late. Likely, he had already shut the computers down prior to our arrival. Of course, some jerk had stolen the box of twine from the store, so we were trying to figure out how we would hold the mattress on the top of Bert while taking back roads for the short drive. At some point, I remembered thinking that we MAY have put the ratchet straps somewhere in the back of Bert the last time we bought a mattress for Trent, and had to buy a new ratchet strap set to add to our ample collection of such straps that we had at home. And we were in luck, because buried in the belly of the Bert was a set of straps. We were able to avoid the super red-necked (and possibly illegal) mattress drive. Whew! 

After all that, the only pictures from the day were from Trent and Tessa lounging in the orange chairs of questionable origin in the apartment building parking lot, while waiting for Taryn and Wolfe to return with the food, which was held up. Oh, and the four of us at a bar down the street from the hotel that we stayed at that night. Taryn had homework, and needed to wait for the clothes from the dryer, so they stayed home. We have NO pictures of Taryn and Wolfe. I am a horrible mother. The wedding the next day was fun! And we returned home with the cat carrier, after it was hosed down and placed in a plastic bag, so that Tessa and Trent could take Apollo (our other cat) to Indianapolis, where he will hopefully reside for the next few months. The entire weekend, my solution to everything was to ‘hose it down!’ So, that became our theme. 

Have a great week everyone!