Just walked in the door of my apartment… ah, home sweet home.

The trip was pretty fun overall, I guess. A bit more drama than I’m used to. I’m not going to get into most of it because it’s internal family stuff that I don’t think I need to share with the whole world, y’know? Christmas was good. The family is doing well, all things considered.

The trip to New Orleans was great too, because it was really awesome to get to see my extended family. It’s been 2 years since I’ve been to one of these shindigs, and it hit me that I don’t realize how much I miss a lot of them until I see them again. Particularly a couple of my cousins. Kris totally blended right in and everyone loved her, as I knew they would, although I’m pretty sure that at least a couple of people thought that she was my girlfriend, not just my friend. Ah well, no biggie. If that’s the worst thing they think of me, I think I’ll be ok.

As for going out with Kris in New Orleans on Friday night — hmmm… Well, we had a lot of fun for the first couple of hours, but after that, everything gets hazy for me. I will say that I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk to the point of being psychotic before. I’m almost exclusively a happy drunk, so this was very weird. I was crying & screaming, and my skin felt like it was going to crawl off of me. Kris actually had to go get my mother in the hotel room next door (apparently I asked her to, but I don’t remember the majority of that part of the evening) and my mom had to lie on top of me to make me stop shaking. It scared the hell out of me, and I decided that I’m going to stop drinking as of now. There were a couple of guys that I had been talking to and kind of flirting with, and I’m guessing that one of them could very likely have put something in one of my drinks because I have never had that kind of reaction (or anything even vaguely like that) with alcohol before. But even if that’s true, the fact that my judgment was impaired to the point where I left my beverage unattended and didn’t have my guard up is proof enough that I need to watch myself.

So that’s it. I’m volunteering to be designated driver on New Year’s Eve. I can’t afford the cab fare anyhow.

Anyway, we left New Orleans kinda late last night & drove back to Jackson. I think I got about 2 1/2 hours of sleep before I had to get up to catch my 6:50 a.m. flight back to Seattle this morning. Bah. At this point, my plan for the rest of the day is to eat something, take a shower, crawl in bed & stay there until tomorrow morning.

For the record, Teenie had fun too. She doesn’t care much for flying, but she never makes so much as a peep. She just quietly shakes in her kitty carrier under the seat in front of me. But there’s a lot of room for her to run around at my mom’s house, so she got lots of exercise, and she played with my mom’s cat a bit. She seems happy to be home, though. She’s currently making the rounds of the apartment, rubbing her scent on all the furniture again (as if it all might have faded in the past 5 days).