630 am started Oregon Trail, Day 2. we had until 10 am when Sea World opened to get the kids, fed, and dressed. things were complicated by the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to get shanked by the rouge chicken choker.
breakfast, dressing, and packing were pretty uneventful but took about 5 times longer than we expected. once we loaded up into the car at 950 or so, we headed to sea world. we dropped the cats off at the kennel, set them up with water and food and headed for the entrance. bc we had gotten our tickets online through the here’s to our heroes program, we assumed <- "ass"umed that we'd be waltzing straight in. WRONG.
I guess bc it’s not their busy season, the powers that be of Sea World decided to have 2 windows open for a ratio of about 1 window per 100 people. on a scale from 1 to fun, waiting in line with 3 toddlers in heat akin to satan’s ballsack rated about a negative 3.
once we were finally through the entrance (about 45 minutes later) we saw a giant shamu mascot and just haaaaad to get a picture. I was expecting tears but no one shed any. sea world had a random employee standing by shamu taking pictures. I thought it was pretty impressive that she would work every random cellphone and camera handed to her… and then I saw my ‘picture’. somehow I got back video of our shamu pose even though I handed her my phone all set to camera.
aside from the fact that it was sweat-nasty hot, the sea world experience was pretty ok. we got to the shamu show 30 minutes early and aside from j licking the steel cable in front of him repeatedly, it was pretty ok. the show was great and the kids all loved it.
there really wasn’t much we wanted to do after the show but we were about a breath away from a blood sugar meltdown so we went in search of food. sea world is one huge loop with no cut acrosses bc there are water skiing lakes in the middle. that’s all well and good from a marketing stand point unless you have 3 screaming children. our options for feeding the children were A. funnel cake or B. nachos until we got to the entrance area where there were delis. we did get some turkey sandwiches for the kids about 30 minutes after we set out to feed them. and we all know just how much kids like some stale ass $8 turkey sandwiches.
about 2 bites into his meal, j climbed into my lap and said “ma pickle hurts!” I had been smelling something funk nasty, but I was pretty sure it was just my B.O. uh, no. jack had the rhea alllllllllll over himself, down his legs, and he had a completely rational reason for pickle hurtage. I quickly ran with him into the changing station, stripped him down, and washed his bottom in the sink French bidet style. desperate times, y’all. desperate times. it took about 20 minutes and I was covered in poo from shoulder to thigh, but we got him all cleaned up. as I was giving him the final rinse under the sink, a blissfully unaware couple walked into the cavern of stank and quickly turns around and walked out. whoops.
I think at some point in time, w also schmeared strawberry from top to bottom. he also got a bath in the sink that day. we made it out of sea world 1 minute under our estimated leave time by some miracle. we grabbed the cats and headed for Lafayette, LA.
Houston traffic was whack as per the usual and we called an audible and decided that we were stopping at the next Cracker Barrel we saw. 7 miles later we were eating at the local CB. the food was delicious and we were in and out in 35 minutes. that’s when the fun really started.
I decided to check on the cats to give them a potty break and a little water before getting back on the road. the picture on here is what I found… only not as alive. in other words, Maggie was dead as a door nail. I screamed “oh my God, oh my God, oh my God Maggie’s dead. C quick! Maggie’s dead” C said “no she isn’t-she can’t be.” I said, “um, you are a nurse. you’ve seen dead people! this cat is DEAD!!!!!!!!” when C walked around the car and saw her, she agreed with me that Maggie was 100% dead. Moscow was in the crate with her looking real PTSDalicious. I couldn’t look at Maggie again bc I was afraid I was going to cry and I couldn’t go there.
C gets the friend of a lifetime award because she fetched the PTSD cat out from behind the dead cat, so that I could give him lovies and a Kurt Cobain sized dose of kitty crack (catnip). C just looks and me and says “I cannot deal with you crying, so just keep it together. I cannot deal with that right now” at which point I started hysterically laughing. I was very sad, don’t get me wrong, but I was exhausted and the whole situation was just so ridiculous. I was also terrified I’d killed her from heat stroke. once I got myself together, I called H my BF and vet extraordinaire. idk if she was trying to make me feel better or what but based on the look on Maggie’s face and the fact that other than his PTSD Mossy was fine- she said heart worms. I’m gonna go with that.
C called her husband and told him what had just happened. he said “you’d better put that cat on ice” um no. I just couldn’t handle driving around in my truck with a dead cat in the back on ice like some godfather shit. I told C we had to find a place to leave her body. and the search for a heavily wooded area began. we found one in bay city, tx and we pulled off on a small street on side of the interstate. we turned down another sparsely populated street and decided we ought to turn around. we were driving a uhaul so that bit was super fun. C was driving and asked for a ground guide. I saw a dog about 300 yds away but he appeared to be uninterested. I started ground guiding C and looked down and a Doberman/Devil mix of dog was standing at my feet sniffing. I tried to be really still when the light bulb went on that not only did I smell like cat. I smelled like dead cat. great.
I made it back into the car without injury and we found a bayou where we could bury Maggie. I couldn’t deal with touching a dead cat, so C had to deal. She was still in her crate and C had to just turn it over and shake her out. I was plugging my ears and singing “lalalala” all while watching out for car lights bc our luck we’d put Maggie directly next to a dead body and the cops would come hunting for us.
once we had buried Maggie, we headed out for lafayette once again. 20ish miles down the road, j started saying “I pooped, momma!” C got the joy of changing his clean diaper that had no poop. 10 more miles down the road, j was saying “I pooped momma!” and w started screaming. I thought j was crying wolf, so I ignored his pleas. w’s crying and j’s insistence that he popped made me make a decision we were stopping for the night.
when we exited we could see the hotel, but we couldn’t figure out how to get there. I’m not sure it wasn’t a mirage. 5 minutes of driving through random parking lots later, C just said “let’s stop and get these people situated and lets keep driving” ( I think she wanted to just get home as bad as I did). I pulled into a random Burger king parking lot and when I opened the back door to the truck, I screamed something that sounded like speaking in tongues.
not only had j pooped, but it exploded out both sides of his diaper and he took the opportunity to fingerprint with it allllll over the back and give himself a rhea facial. *retch*. when he saw my disdain, he put his foot up to his bottom and started thrusting his foot and flinging poo. he said “I monkey, momma!”. hurl. there was absolutely no saving the carseat. I started cleaning j and C just took the seat out and put it in the back.
we saw a days inn across the street that looked like they averaged 1 rape a day. we didn’t have any choice, so we’re rolling the dice that neither one of us was the rape of the day. we put j in the back and strapped him in by the seatbelt. we got across the street and I ran in the lobby of the hotel from the shinning half expecting to see ghosts wheel around the corner on tricycles. they had rooms available, so C started to unpack.
we got all unpacked and I went to park the truck. instead of the lot being a complete square, it was a C. I got to the end of the road and realized I had to back up the truck. I tried 4 or 5 times when I yelled out the window “can someone help me?!?” to the random truckers sitting in the parking lot on lawn chairs drinking. some good samaritan came running over and asked me if I wanted him to back it up for me. I just said “yep!” accepted his busch light and let him back up my truck.
we got parked and into the room. the laundry room at the hotel had washing machines and they took quarters which I didn’t have. I said f-it and washed j’s carseat in the bathtub with boxed detergent I got from the front desk.
the next day his carseat wasn’t dry so he got the joy of riding in a wet carseat with a toys r us bag under his bum.
by the grace of God, we made it home by 2 on Thursday and that’s the happiest I have E-VER been to see Mississippi.
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