The Pleasure of Puking Things Out

In Review: A long-awaited homecoming
Rating: Comfortably familiar and familiarly uncomfortable

It's our first full week at home since before Thanksgiving. We came home late at night and the house is a disorganized disaster. I can't find my sock, my shoes are scattered around the closet, our passports are on the dinner table, and we haven't even started unpacking. Following our two consecutive weeks out of town around Thanksgiving and our subsequent trip to Costa Rica, we spent (on average between the two of us) two nights at home before heading back down to New Jersey for three nights and then directly to Boston for another two.

So it's nice to relax after all that adventure. Our little bed has a heated mattress pad, and even though we'll be chipping off icicles from various surfaces throughout the house tomorrow morning, at least this night is going to be cozy and warm and comfortable. Pretty comfortable. As comfortable as four mammals together weighing a quarter of a ton on a little full-sized bed is ever going to be. (It's not really that we let the dogs sleep on the bed so much as they sometimes gracefully agree to share pillow space with us.)

It takes a little while to get back into the rhythm of sleeping at home. I'd missed that comforting, familiar trifecta of Oliver's tailing bouncing on my feet as he dreams, Asa's elbow embedded in my spine as he scrabbles for purchase against his precarious perch on the edge of the bed, and Misha's 100+ pound bulk resting peacefully over my face. That rhythm becomes elusive so quickly when we go on vacation, for some reason. But yes, there it is again. I remember how to time my inhalations with Misha's to minimize how much of his terrible breath I intake. I remember how to arch my back like a vaulting pole in mid-jump to minimize the number of vertebrae being coaxed out of alignment by Asa's epiphyseal protuberances. I let the sound of the scampering mice in our ceiling lull me into a deep slumber...

I'm dreaming that the mice have developed the initiative to cooperate and are carrying me on a very uncomfortable palanquin toward what sounds like a great lion having a hair ball, when I start suddenly awake. The lion must still be hacking up this hair ball, though, because the sound hasn't gone anywhere. I look groggily around in the dark, trying to make sense of my current reality. As my eyes adjust, I realize I am looking at Oliver, who has mercifully gotten off the bed and is wreathed in serene moonlight, preparing to embark upon what promises to be an epic vomit-quest. Our eyes meet and he opens his mouth, fixing me with his mournful gaze, and loudly releases a small, wet clump of slimy fabric from the custody of his bowels.

Ah, it feels good to be home. And at least I found my sock.