how to get to san diego (the hard way)

2 p.m. EST, Midtown Atlanta
Meet your co-worker in the office building turnabout rolling your oversized suitcase, shouldering your laptop bag and strapped with your insane camera bag looking fresh and eager with your matching vintage necklace-and-earring set and your cute t-strap flats.  Load everything in the car and head for the airport.

2:05 p.m. EST, Midtown Atlanta
Traffic.  Ugh

2:45 p.m. EST, Camp Creek Parkway
Climb aboard the Park-and-Fly shuttle with oversized suitcase, laptop bag and insane camera bag.  Note that the air temperature is less than desirable considering the 90-plus-degree weather.  Begin to sweat.

3:05 p.m. EST, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Approach the Frontier Airlines counter and take place in the surprisingly long and slow-moving line.  Keep inching forward and shifting giant bag, camera bag and laptop bag.

3:20 p.m. EST, Frontier Airlines Counter
Get checked in by a curmudgeonly ticket agent who asks you if there's a phone number attached to your oversized suitcase.  Do what now?  Proceed to rattle off your cell phone number.  Receive irritated look from the ticket agent.  Oh, do you mean is my phone number on my bag?  Yes.  Why didn't you ask that question in the first place?

3:25 p.m. EST, Security Line
Feel SO relieved to have lightened your load and only be shouldering the laptop bag and strapped with the insane camera bag.  Clearly, it's going to get easier from here.  Remember you have to remove shoes.  Oh, t-strap flats, don't make me unbuckle you.

3:35 p.m. EST, Underground Train
Move to the back of the car and find a place to stand.  Let the laptop bag rest on the ground.  It is, after all, getting a weeee bit heavy...

3:45 p.m. EST, Concourse D
Walk all...the...way to the end of the terminal to the assigned gate where there appears to be approximately 4,000 people waiting to board the plan.  Dash to newstand to buy guilty-pleasure fashion magazines and a water as an afterthought.

3:50 p.m. EST, Concourse D
Boarding begins with premier customers.  And families with young children.  And the elderly.  And possibly trained chimps.

4:00 p.m. EST, Concourse D
Have they called any other rows?  Nervously check watch and wonder about the 4:09 departure time.

4:10 p.m. EST, Jetway access to the plane
Listen to a Frontier representative repeatedly yell along the line of passengers that the overhead bins are full and as many people as possible need to check the bags they didn't check to avoid the $25 baggage fee.  Consider yelling back, at equal volume, that the plane is late.

4:15 p.m. EST, On plane, in seat
Assume that now that you're buckled in, the show will get on the road

4:55 p.m. EST, On plane, in seat, fuming
The cabin door finally closes after the most disorganized boarding procedure in the history of aviation.  Begin to wonder if you have stumbled into some sort of sociological experiment trying to determine how long the passengers will wait to overthrow the crew.

5:30 p.m., MST, On plane, in seat, considering barfing
Due to some unspecified weather condition, the Denver airport is closed.  And even though this moment marks the appointed time of arrival, aimlessly circle the Denver airport instead through teeth-rattling turbulence.  Almost lose it when the guy next to you says he's going to be sick.  (Doesn't he know you never say it out loud???)

6:15 p.m., MST, On ground (thank you, Lord), at arrival gate
Shoulder insane camera bag.  Pull laptop bag out of overhead bin (did it get heavier?).  Run to gate agent.  Connecting flight?  Gone.

6:30 p.m. MST, Frontier Airlines customer service desk
Stand in line behind the other stranded passengers on the flight.  Wonder if those are blisters forming on the top of your feet.  Politely explain your dilemma to the service agent, swallowing the desire to yell or cry.  Or maybe barf (just a little).  Receive transfer ticket to the 9:10 p.m. MST departure.

7:00 p.m., MST, Chef Jimmy's Bistro, Denver Airport
Call friend in San Diego about change of plans.  Discuss that the John Wayne/Santa Ana/Orange County Airport is further from San Diego than she thought.  Consider moving one Hilton night to the Irvine Hilton and journeying south the next morning.  Call Hilton San Diego.  Be told to call the Hilton Irvine.  Call the Hilton Irvine.  Be told that because you are a deal-seeker and pre-paid for the room to get a discount, that adjustments to the reservation can only be made by corporate.  Call corporate.  While on hold, realize that they close at 6 p.m., CST time.

7:15 p.m., MST, Chef Jimmy's Bistro, accompanied by pizza and pasta
Decide in a radical move to rent a car in Orange County and drive to San Diego upon arrival.

8:30 p.m., MST, Frontier Airlines Terminal
Sit in a giant square arena with other angry passengers while the gate agents insist on using the loudspeaker at the same time so that all flight cancellations and gate changes sound like they're being issued by Charlie Brown's teacher.  Laugh or cry?  Eat a cookie.  Realize those are definitely blisters.  And that your laptop may contain lead.

9:00 p.m., MST, Frontier Airlines Terminal
Hear the announcement that the flight has been moved from gate 26 to 30.  Join the lemmings migrating in that direction.  Wince at the blisters on your feet.  Hate your laptop.  And your camera.  And your life.

9:15 p.m. MST, Flurry of activity
Board the plane in desperate hurry.  Orange County has a curfew and planes that take off after a specified time are rerouted to LAX and bused to Orange County.  Wonder if you will collapse in an apoplectic fit if this happens.

11:00 p.m., PST, Over southern California
Be woken from restless sleep by the flight attendant announcing that the plane is approaching Orange County.  Realize disaster is averted.  Then laugh inside at the thought that this small victory could in any way signify averting disaster.  Feel grossed out by the passenger next to you putting on full makeup at this time of night.  Take off the earrings that are pinching your ears.

11:15 p.m., PST, Alamo Car Rental Kiosk
Sign away your life in order to rent an economy sized car.  No seriously.  Tell them whatever they want to know if they'll give you a car.  Do it.

11:25 p.m., PST, Baggage Carousel #2
Be approached by super chatty Orange County dude.  Consider punching him.  Inwardly mock him instead.  Collect your oversized baggage, crippling laptop and why-did-I-bring-this-camera-bag.

11:35 p.m., PST, John Wayne/Santa Ana/Orange County/Airport of Many Names
Pull out of the parking deck in a shiny yellow VW bug that has difficulty holding everything.  Coworker turns on the radio and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is on.  Sing loudly.  And badly.  Miss the exit ramp for the 405.  Wonder why California hates u-turns so much.

12:15 a.m., PST Somewhere on the 5 south
It's dark.  See the sign for San Diego County.  Applaud.  Attempt to mentally do the math to figure out how many more exits there are between you and sleep.  Fail.

12:35 a.m., PST, Hilton Hotel Gaslight District
Pull up to the curb and give the valet an absurd amount of money to park the car overnight.  When he asks if you need help with your bags, brush him aside.  You've got it.  You've got it as you tug your oversized bag out of the tiny trunk and stumble backward and ouch those blisters hurt and where's your wallet in the insane camera bag and how heavy is this laptop?  Stagger into the hotel and give your name for the reservation.  Discover you're at the wrong Hilton.

12:40 a.m., PST, Curb
Angrily stuff all your crap back into the tiny VW bug and your poor coworker can't buckle her seatbelt because of how you pushed your luggage into the backseat and you promise to drive very carefully for the three blocks to the other Hilton.  And why are there so many Hilton in San Diego?  Wonder is that you that smells so ratty?  Consider that your mascara may be on your chin.

12:45 a.m., PST, Hilton San Diego BAYFRONT
Meet CAMERON who is resplendent in his light blue Hilton jacket and stylish designer glasses and carefully trimmed hair and oh my does he have manicured nails?  Briefly consider what you might look like.  No, bad idea.  Spell your name.  Sag against the counter when he finds it in the computer.  Try to patiently endure the offers of upgrades and sidegrades and as politely as possible, hitching your maddening camera bag up on  your back and your laptop bag straps out of the skin on your shoulder and shift the oversized suitcase so you can reach the counter and don't even think about your feet, reach for the keys that will open a room where there will be a bed.

1:00 a.m., PST, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Room 2210
Laugh maniacally when you see the bed.  Think about the path of least resistance to bed.  Could you forgo washing your face?  Yes.  But not your teeth.  Forage for toothbrush and toothpaste.  Open the bathroom door.  And...oh, sweet fancy Moses.

1:05 a.m., PST, The Smell of Death
Meet your match - the unseen swamp gas rising from some unknown source deep in the bowels of the earth and breathing its pungent, deathly breath right in your face with an intensity that makes your eyes water.  Back away from The Smell of Death and ask co-worker for confirmation.  She confirms and calls the desk about the fouls stench that can only be described as some unholy combination of rotting cabbage, raw sewage and the funk of 40,000 years.  Run for your life.

1:10 a.m., PST, Hallway on the 22nd floor of the Hilton San Diego BAYFRONT
Stand like two bereft hobos in the lamplit corridors with your yes-you-still-are-stuck-with-this-infernal-camera-bag hung askew off one shoulder leaning against the handle of your oversized suitcase that could roll out from under you at any moment with the strap of the laptop bag tangled around your arm, the bag itself precariously perched atop the suitcase.  At least you got to change shoes.  Gaze sadly at the raw red blisters on top of your feet.

1:20 a.m., PST, 24th floor of...Lord, help me, where am I?
In the bathroom, consider that you look like a meth addict.  Washface.  Brushteeth.

1:30 a.m., PST, 2:30 a.m., MST, 4:30 a.m. EST; Personal standard time, DOA.
Collapse into bed.  Before letting weary exhaustion take over and relax your throbbing feet, crippled shoulder and aching back, set the alarm for 8 a.m. because after 14 hours, two cars, one train, two planes and your own tortured soles, with God as your witness, you are going to see San Diego in the morning.

Requiescat in pace, Kudzu

My dearest, my most beloved Kudzu, may you rest in peace.

May you rest knowing that you were loved to the greatest depths of the human heart. May you rest knowing that you were and are cherished.

May you rest knowing that your constant companionship warmed even the loneliest, the most sorrowful of hours. May you rest knowing that you were light in a dark and sometimes unkind world.

May you rest knowing that your presence brought joy, comfort, happiness, peace. May you rest knowing that you were all things good (even when you were bad).

May you rest knowing that beyond pet, you were family, as much my lifeblood as anything. That you were my very heart.

May you rest, fully restored to your gray fuzzy bellied glory, with no scars or marks or patches to evidence of your illness.

May you rest knowing that you will never have to endure my picture-taking ever again.

May you rest after your long and hard-fought battle. Having been so brave and true, holding on for so long for me, so that I could accept that it was your time.

May you rest knowing that I never wanted you to die, except that one time you ate my blue merino wool J. Crew sweater (and even then, not really).

May you rest, weary traveler, from all those thousands of miles on the highway between here and North Carolina that would have been so much longer without you.

May you rest, knowing that you will never have to be stuck in the car with me in the McDonald's drive-in in Leland, North Carolina while I have a panic attack over the holiday weekend traffic.

May you rest knowing that you will be remembered in repose on the windowsill, on the kitchen towel, under a blanket nestled against my stomach. 

May you rest gently purring or making sleepy kitty noises as you slumber. With your snaggletooth hanging out.

May you rest having served me well with the greatest devotion and loyalty - no matter what mistakes I made in life.

May you rest from leaping onto the cabinets, the countertops, the bookshelves, the bed with sprightly grace.

May you rest with an endless supply of spider plants whose leaves you may nip to your heart's content.

May you rest from strewing toilet paper from the downstairs bathroom into the kitchen.

May you rest, never to be forgotten.

May you rest, my darling. May you rest from exhaustion, from pain and from this namelessness that has consumed you.

May you rest in the hands of the Heavenly Father who made you.

My dearest, my most beloved Kudzu, may you rest in peace.

Kudzu: A Profile

It's almost been nine years since Mom and I found three little fuzzballs in the garage being nursed by our resident feral cat. By then, experience had taught us that kittens untamed grow up to be wild untouchable things. So we became the surrogates to three little kittens, whom I named Nigel, Mischief and Isabella.

From the beginning, runty Isabella favored me. On stumbly legs, gamboling towards me with a tiny mew and bright blue eyes. Those eyes soon turned a clear, cool green. And when I decided to keep one of the kittens to take to grad school with me, it wasn't as though I had any choosing to do. The choosing had already been done.

Much to my chagrin, I soon found out that Isabella wasn't so much an Isabella. I lamented that I wouldn't have a sweet little girl cat. But a few tears shed, and I realized that I couldn't go on calling him Isabella. Mom, me and my boyfriend at the time tossed around names as we drove home from the vet's office. Looking out the window, he said, "What about Kudzu?" It stuck.

I wasn't even 22 yet. And green. Lord help me, I was green. I remember sitting in my very first apartment at Abbot's Run in Wilmington, NC, with nothing but my belongings and this little scrap of fur and ears and a long, long tail. It was with him and Peter Jennings that I weathered September 11 so far away from home in a strange new city where I knew no one. And my first disastrous creative writing workshop. And the rest of the roller coaster that was grad school - making a place for myself and making friends, through boyfriends, breakups, soul-crushing defeat and loneliness, my first real job and too much growing up to even cover.

In my second apartment, a giant Italiante revival style house built in 1818, he would sit on the wide windowsill in the kitchen facing the street below and wait for me to get home from work. I would sometimes overhear the ghost tours that went by my house during the summer and fall, the tour guide sharing some tale that featured a cat in the window, and I wondered if Kudzu ever scared the breath out of some unsuspecting soul.

Kudzu rode back and forth from North Carolina to Georgia when I'd go - 385 miles one way. He'd sit in the slanted back window when I drove the Corolla and rode shotgun when I bought the Rav. Perched on the gray upholstered seat, lifting his face up to the air conditioning when it was hot.

And when I decided after almost six years on the Carolina coast that it felt like the right time to go back home to Georgia, he was the one thing that seemed to hold steady in a revolving world. He sat in my lap as we crossed the 17th Street bridge, and I wailed like my heart was breaking. He seemed to know that it was all going to work out just fine.

Because Kudzu has always had that look of infinite wisdom about him. In my ordinary, non-superhero life, he's my Alfred, always calm and cool and reliable. His almost royal bearing, front paws pressed together, head held aloft. But lest you think he's got some sort of pedigree, check out the snaggly tooth hanging out on the left side.

Besides Isabella, he's gone by many (many) other monikers, including 'Zu, 'Zu-bug, 'Zubilee 'Zu, Buddy B and Bebo, although I have no idea where the "b's" originated.

And suddenly, my time with this constant companion, whatever his name may have been, is coming to an end. After three month's worth of doctor's visits - an ultrasound, two bone marrow aspirates, an infectious disease panel, antibody assessment, countless CBCs and two blood transfusions later - there is no answer for the chronic anemia.

It's hard to be at peace when losing something so dear. But I have prayed for peace and for acceptance. Over the weekend, I had a dream that Kudzu was sitting in a little woven basket, all his fur regrown, looking quite robust and healthy. And a voice kept saying, "He's ready to go."

There's no way to predict how long he has. We thought he was a goner last week. Every day is a blessing that I try not to take for granted as I wait for the story to come full circle, for the unexpected little fuzzball from the garage to make an exit as unpredictable as his entrance.

The hours are waning between me and my beloved Kudzu. And while the sorrow is palpable, the peace is, too. The peace that the Heavenly Father has a place for him, where he'll wait for me - maybe on the sill of a giant sunny window.

My Big Fat Box of Skinny Gains Weight

As I continue my slow and steady course toward moving into the house that I bought, I've noticed the accumulation of two things in the years since my last big move: clothes and pounds. Upon my arrival home, my wardrobe unfurled into three closets. And my waistline, likewise, has expanded [insert secret number of sizes I am unwilling to disclose on the internets]. It would seem that being reunited with homecooked meals and my boon shopping companion led to weight gain in a number of ways.

Instead of packing up the now ridiculous-sized wardrobe and moving it part-and-parcel over to the new abode, I'm forcing myself to sort through it piece by piece in a harrowing fashion show of the outgrown and simply "out." Those items that fall into the former category and intersect with the "I hope I'll wear it again someday" category get tossed into the box that I started awhile back when I noticed this rotund new trend. I call it "My Big Fat Box of Skinny." Inside are the single-digit-sized cherry red wool pants passed on to me by my sister-in-law. And the gray trousers I purchased on the cusp of fitting, only to tip right over the edge shortly thereafter into the "ain't gonna squeeze in no way no how" and requiring me to fold them neatly and place them in the box never having worn them in public. And the list goes on.

There were also in this hit-parade of fashion memorabilia the gross misfits, those garments I attempted to wear that rendered me flushed, panting and somehow twisted up in armholes and zippers with fabric cutting into all my soft places. The skirts that felt like sausage casings. The dresses I was able to get into but appeared to be related to the Michelin man with all my doughy rolls clearly visible.

And so it went - an extravaganza of ill-fitting. A feast of faux-pas. At the end of it, when the last skirt had been paraded out for review, I tossed the too-small items into the Big Fat Box of Skinny. And I noted, with a grimace, that the only thing that had lost weight was my closet.

Dear Mom, on Mother's Day:

It would have been nice if I had gotten it together and bought you a Hallmark card for the occasion, but I didn't. And even if I had, I might not know where I put it. I might've forgotten to sign it and give it to you. I might find it next month. After all, I'm a chip off the old block.

And I can't imagine any block I'd rather be chipped from than yours. You of primary school car-rider line fame. You the library lady. Famous in Publix checkout lanes - both from your celebrity with the under-7 set and your popularity with all the checkers and baggers. You of bread-making and seamstressing legend. You of Sunday afternoon paper and ice cream from a coffee mug. You of never planning and always flying by the seat of your pants and almost always landing on your feet. You of never being too old to want to ask me how you look in the morning before you leave for work. You who taught me the bliss of the first cup of morning coffee and that anything eaten in tiny, tiny "slivers" does not contribute to your daily caloric intake.

And who taught me other things. Essential things. Like the importance of kindness and never being too busy (or think yourself too important) to offer a smile or a pleasantry. Like the willingness to be behind the scenes, to work for the greater good, to be the one who does the thankless and the unnoticed. Like the perspective needed to make it through this old world, to be grateful for blessings, acknowledge trials and be hopeful for tomorrow. Like to believe, to have faith, to find peace, to pray.

You have never liked recognition - whether because your modesty keeps you from it or your humility keeps you from feeling that you deserve it or your contentment with being behind the scenes keeps you from really needing it. But it's Mother's Day, which is cause for celebrating the one who brought me into this world, shepherded me through it and continues to stand beside me on good days and bad. So, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. You are the best.

Love,
Ashley