So Friday morning, I woke early and did my best at clearing and sorting and packing. The kennel only does admitting for boarding pets between 12pm - 5pm, so I didn't worry about getting P.Roy all bathed and clipped and ready to go until later in the afternoon. I'd pre-sprayed his carrier pad and his two cozy carrier blankets with this "No Stress" pet calming spray and let it all air out to dry. I'd given him two "herbal calming chews for cats" when I'd fed him earlier that afternoon. When it was finally time to go, he climbed into his travel carrier willingly and was a really good sport all the way to the kennel on 5th Ave. & E. 20th St. Roy gets car sick, without fail, every time I have to take him somewhere by car or bus that takes longer than 15 minutes. He did really well on this particular trip. I really do think the calming spray helped a lot. He kept himself low, laying down in the carrier instead of spazzing out and jumping all over the place, trying to get out like he usually would, with his head down and his nose buried in the calm-scented blankets. The driver had decided to take the Williamsburg Bridge into the city, which is the farthest one from my house, so at some point while we were crossing the bridge (about 20 minutes into the trip), Roy started meowing plaintively and licking his lips a lot. These are his signs that he's going to be sick. I was ready this time. He had an absorbent disposable pad lining the bottom of his carrier, and I opened the door and laid down a towel under his front paws and waited for it. He sicked up a pile of food and fluids (overshare?) and I folded up the towel carefully and put it aside on the floor of the taxi until we got to The Cat Practice. Poor baby. He was calm again after it happened, still laying down with his face buried in the blanket, but you could see his stomach heaving and his breathing going a mile a minute the whole time.
When I got him upstairs (after disembarking the taxi and shaking the puke towel into a garbage can on the street corner), I was informed by Sophia that to admit him for boarding, I was supposed to bring him in by 12pm! What?! I was positive the website said admitting was from 12 - 5pm! Nope. That's for Saturdays. Monday through Friday, it's 8am - 12pm...Dumbass!!! Fortunately, Sophia took pity on me and my kittie and let us in. In retrospect, my Saturday departure day was so insane, there is no way that I could have possibly brought Roy in and still gotten to the airport on time. Sophia, you angel!!! Of course in my push to get us out of the house, I'd left P.Roy's vaccination record/rabies certificate tacked to the cork board in the kitchen. Fortunately, my vet's office was able to fax them over right away. Phew! Another crisis averted. Finally, I was taken into the back of the practice to get Roy settled in and talk with one of the techs/nurses/assistants (not sure of her title) about his needs, likes, and my preferences. I gave him some last cuddles and kisses before putting him in his kennel cage (with his favorite purple Snuggie) and heading back to Brooklyn to make more vain attempts to get my sh*t together. I did shed a few tears then. I'd just found out I wasn't having a baby that I had prayed and wished for, and here I was putting my "baby" in a kennel for someone else to look after for a month while I jetted off to France to raise someone else's children. Let's just say it was an emotional low point for the day and leave it at that.
I got home and just managed to get some more things packed, and some more things sorted out for donation to Goodwill, before getting in the shower and heading out the door to meet my cousin at Mid-Town for Cirque du Soleil. I'd barely eaten a thing all day, and there was no time to stop and grab something before the show (you absolutely, positively, do not want to be late for a Cirque show). Fortunately, though everything at/near/under Rockefellar Center seems to close around 6pm when the office workers go home, Dunkin' Donuts was still lit up like Christmas tree in the underground, so I hit them up for a blueberry muffin and ate it out in front of the theatre while I waited for my cousin to materialize. What I didn't realize was that this was a show in preview. I mean, I did think it was peculiar that Cirque was at Radio City instead of in its own trademark blue and yellow tents on Governor's Island. I just didn't think it all the way through. The Music Hall was decorated from head to toe with Cirque props and lighting. And wandering about were various performers mingling with the throngs of people for photo opportunities, some of them mic'd and singing the entire time! It was like a faerie land! I was in heaven...When my cousin and I finally made it to our seats (front row center of the 1st mezzanine), we were both all giddy and excited. I hadn't realized that she'd never been to a Cirque show before! I love it when I'm the one to introduce someone to Cirque! I've been the gateway for my father, my brother & his wife & kids, my Auntie, and my other cousin (present company cousin's older sister who was like an older sister to me growing up)....and now this cousin, too! Score! They are all now officially addicted to the magic of these fabulous French Canadian productions.
The show that we saw was Zarkana. It was visually stunning. The music was beautiful (though since it's in previews, the soundtrack was not yet available for purchase. Hmmph!). Costumes, sumptuous enough to make me second-guess my calling as a child caregiver/stand-in mum and wonder if I should have followed my fashion school dream of costume designing and working for the Cirque...*sigh* And every time there was some teeny tiny wisp of a woman doing some impossibly complicated and/or dangerous acrobatic feat, all I could think of was one of my own baby cousins (who's not a baby anymore, btw, she's contemplating grad school at the moment) who grew up as a bit of a gymnastics prodigy, and wondering if she'd ever consider setting aside her psychologist aspirations and run away with the circus. It was a lovely night. However, I will say this: startling lack of contortionists. I mean, it's Cirque du Soleil for goodness sake! Come for the contortionists, stay for the jugglers....But you come for the contortionists! I hope they fix that before the show goes on tour.
All in all, it was beautiful as my last night in New York and I got to spend it with one of my favorite people in the universe. What makes her so special, you ask? Well, part of it is that her mother and my mother were the only two sisters in a brood of six children, and only two years apart in age. They were also both Black, unwed, teen first-time parents at the same time in the 70's. So, my older brother and her older sister are only 2 months apart in age and were raised essentially as twins before I came along four years later. Then this cousin came along four years after me and was the little sister I'd always longed for. Our mothers are very close and so the four of us were raised more like siblings than cousins. Add to that the fact that my mother in all her craziness had us uprooted and moving around so often that I often had to lie about my address to stay in the same good school system with the advanced academic programs, and not end up in the crap schools of some of the slum neighborhoods where we sometimes lived. I was the youngest in my house and deemed too young for my friends to be trusted with such a secret lest I be booted from school. So I was a loner. My two greatest loves, closest comrades, and most up-for-anything playmates were my fat orange tabby cat, and this self-same cousin four years my junior. She's special. She just is. And she reminds me of this by doing things like, kissing & hugging me goodbye after the Cirque show and promising to come to my apartment at 12pm to help me clear out so that I can both make it to the airport in time AND get my deposit back (which could never have happened if I'd left as much undone as was undone when I had to hit the road for JFK on Saturday). She's special.
Saturday morning, I had gone to the post office to mail off a couple of boxes to HK with things that didn't make it into the original shipping day convoy. Silly me, thinking this would be the same as when I'd shipped things from Los Angeles to my new place in Japan 9 years prior, thought I'd get out of this for $100 dollars or less. FAIL! The United States Post Office no longer offers a surface mail/sea mail option for overseas parcels. You can either send it Priority Mail or Express Mail. Priority is cheaper so I did that...$155 for one box. $246 for the other. Plus insurance. $402 dollars later, I emerged from the post office and called a taxi to go to my last massage appointment at Opal. I was exhausted from cleaning/sorting/packing/not sleeping and depressed and achy and emotional from 1) not being pregnant and 2) being on my period. I think my massage therapist (who'd seen me two weeks earlier just before I'd ICI'd) sensed my mood and no-good-news aura. She didn't ask and I didn't offer up any information. She just laid hands on me and made me forget the world for 70 minutes. And I love her for that. I tipped her, drank some water, and gave her big hugs goodbye. Then I rushed outside, called another taxi to take me home and tried to reassure my landlord that I would definitely, DEFINITELY be cleared out and the apartment cleaned by the end of the day. As I sat in the back of the cab home, I dialed a few numbers for Man-With-A-Van that I'd found on craigslist, and made arrangements for someone to come around 12:30pm to cart all my donatables over to the Goodwill on Fulton St. only a 5-minute drive away (but they don't pick up donations & the service where you can arrange for a pick-up doesn't seem to work very well since I could never get an actual person on the phone and no one returned my calls after having left several messages).
When my dearest, darlingest cousin arrived a little before 12pm, I nearly burst into tears I was so relieved not to be doing all this by myself. She just grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "What do you need to do to get yourself ready for the airport?" I told her. "Well, you do that, and I'll handle everything else...If I have questions, I'll just ask." ANGEL!!! By 1:15pm, I'd finally squeezed the last of anything squeezable into my three suitcases. I'd just recently bought a new set of luggage (something new and sturdy with 360 degree wheels that would be easily spotted at the airport in a sea of tasteful black suitcases), and I'd only planned to take the the mid-sized one to France. American Airlines only allows one checked bag for economy passengers on international flights, and it seemed stupid to pay for extra luggage going there when I'd just have to pay again to bring it all back. Besides, my work babies' granddad was the one picking me up from the airport on the other end and I had no desire to cause this poor man a cardiac incident for the two other bags full of things I'd only need for Hong Kong. So, my lovely friend ZsaZsa (not her real name, but it's what I've always called her) agreed to let me stash the largest and smallest of the set in the storage closet in her front hallway. ANGEL! By 1:20pm, my cousin was urging me to call the taxi. But there was still so much to do to get the apartment 100% cleared out! She didn't bat an eyelash. "Don't worry. I'll stay and finish up. GO!" So I spoke with the landlord and his brother, and got to okay to leave my cousin at the apartment with the keys and they agreed to turn over my deposit to her (which she then deposited into my account the following Monday - IN CASH, if you can believe it). My landlord is a big guy. Like, 5'10" maybe, and somewhere in the vicinity of 400lbs. It was hot as Hades that day and he and his brother were outside sorting and re-stacking all the junk my cousin and I were hauling out of my apartment. This gentle giant stopped what he was doing and gave me a great big bear hug (hot and sweaty as he was!), and wished me good luck and a good journey. Awwww...Then my cousin put me and my suitcases into a taxi over to ZsaZsa's and wrapped me up in the biggest bear hug her 90lb frame could muster (she's surprisingly strong....). Then, for the first time, I really did let a few tears go. Goodbye New York! Goodbye my life...It still doesn't seem real yet. I got to the first stop and hauled my heaviest bag up the stairs to ZsaZsa's 3rd floor apartment while she took the smallest & lightest. Hugs and kisses again. I raced back down to the waiting taxi and sped off to JFK.
I arrived in record time and, after kiosk check-in, boarding pass printing, and luggage check (my suitcase was exactly at the 50lb limit, by the way...Awesome!), I passed through security and found some inexpensive (by airport standards) and healthy food to eat (my first bite of anything besides water all day so far). I finished what I could (when I don't eat for a while, I feel really hungry, but I usually can't eat a whole lot) and took myself to the bathroom before boarding call for Flight 44 to Paris. I had more time than I'd anticipated actually. At the last minute, they changed the departing gate for the flight from Gate 35 to Gate 12 on the other side of the airport! Needless to say this delayed the flight by about an hour, so I had time to buy a newspaper, magazine, some chocolate (I need chocolate for airplanes worse than I need chocolate for movies), and a little FDNY playset as a surprise for the girls (I was really being hit hard with how much I'd missed them over the past two weeks). I had time to charge my phone and go to the bathroom again before we finally boarded the plane. Finally, I was in my window seat (me and Erykah Badu see eye-to-eye on that one) and watching all my anxieties getting smaller and smaller and disappearing to nothing but blue sky and clouds...*sigh* Sleep....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
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