Day 666 of Happily Ever After

Sometimes, E gets called to work out of town for a couple of days. On this particular weekend, he was scheduled to work a game in Santa Barbara, just a couple hours away from home. He's worked games at this location before and they're generally pretty easy and relaxed. He gets a nice hotel room for the night plus a little stipend to help cover his food. This was one of three Santa Barbara weekends E had this month so we figured hey! lets make this a romantic little getaway!

Our hotel, it even has a gorgeous koi pond <3 br="">

That's about when things went Wrong. Soooooo very wrong. I'd gone with him before on weekend trips to SB but on this occasion we had literally everything working against us. To start off, we both came down with the flu. The flu sucks at the best of times, but it sucks even more when you're out of town away from your comfy bed. That was strike 1.

So E and I have a nice drive down. The road is mostly clear, the weather nice and the ocean beautiful at our side. We check into our hotel and everything looks rosey. It's the same hotel and almost the same room we stayed in before, perfectly comfy and cozy. We unpack and go out to take a romantic stroll in downtown. We don't pick a restaurant beforehand, figuring we'll pick somewhere on the fly. We haven't eaten lunch, and start to get hungry. This is strike 2.

Beautiful downtown Santa Barbara. How can this not inspire romance?

The first hour of our stroll goes swimmingly, all the shops are adorable and we have a good time. Then, my flu start to get exponentially worse. We start to get hungry-grumpy. And the world explodes. Strike 3, we're OUT! We can't pick a restaurant, we start bickering, E goes into hungry-fail mode and then we have a miscommunication. E ditches me to go back to the car, he thinks I'm following, I think he's left on purpose. I'm now standing in the middle of downtown Santa Barbara without a car and he's not picking up his phone. My flu gets even worse and I just about hit the roof, which is impressive considering that downtown Santa Barbara is open air.

Around this time I walk back to the car, E leaves the lot to drive around looking for me, and we eventually connect. E runs through a drive through just as my flu is moving from bad to worse and I turn down his fast food dinner. He starts to feel a little better since he's eaten and I'm feeling god awful. We get back to the hotel, start arguing, the gloves come off and the low blows start flying. It gets pretty ugly and we're both seriously regretting coming on this trip. It is NOT the romantic, indulgent weekend we pictured.

Somehow, we both pull our heads out of our asses and decide to be grown ups. I am seriously impressed with this, not because adults shouldn't be able to have conversations without arguing, but because I am so sick that I can't even see straight and I know E doesn't feel great either. We talk things through, agree the weekend is an awful failure, and order iHop to go, which I didn't even know was possible. We eat, we take a crapton of medication, and hit the hay.

I have never been so grateful for take out service before

The next day is much better, in that the worst is over for my flu, and we've both had a solid nights sleep. We eat our left overs, pack up and I drop E off at work. I spend the rest of the day puttering around Santa Barbara visiting over-priced thrift stores and as long as I stay topped up on my DayQuil, I'm good. E has a similarly decent day at work, but is anxious when I pick him up around getting out of the lot and on the road. Things get a little tense again but I've got enough DayQuil in me that I don't engage and E relaxes once he realizes I do know where I'm going and we're well on our way home.

Finally, we make it home safe and sound. Huzzah! We're tired, sick and ready to unpack and roll into bed. But no. Oh, no, no, no. This weekend is not over yet! We walk into our bedroom and it smells like pee. Not like, hey we need to change the potty box pee, but like omg a drunk person pissed all over the place pee. Only it's not a drunk person, it's our kitty Button, and she's chosen to pee AND poop on our lovely bed.

And, this doesn't seem to be normal cat pee. This is angry, vengeful, I hate you for leaving cat pee! Rooooaring cat pee! I think hey, we're okay, it sucks but we have that allergy comforter protector on our duvet, remember? We registered for it and it should be all good, right?

Wrong. So. Very. Wrong. The cat pee has soaked through the duvet cover, through the allergy comforter protector and deep into the down comforter. The down comforter that is large, and fluffy and expensive and did I mention so much larger than our washing machine. I can not figure out how our comforter wasn't protected, the comforter protector is supposed to keep out dust mites and air and OMG how can it not have kept out cat pee?!?!  I hop online, check our wedding registry to re-read the fine print and there it is. In big, bold letters right at the top.

Welcome to Day 666 of Happily Ever After.

Well, fuck me. I have never been superstitious or religious, I am a firm believer in the incredible power that is science. But damn, this weekend, this day is the epitome of craptastic, shitty 666. If I believed in any of that I'd be ready to call someone to exorcise the weekend (and the cat pee!) from our house.

Instead of rolling into bed with a NyQuil nightcap to end the weekend, we get to strip the bed and spend the next two days washing our comforter 487634756374563 times until it's clean and dry and fluffy again. I have never been more glad to see the end of a trip and say a firm goodbye and fuck you to this weekend. Also, I cannot recommend Allergy Luxe comforter protectors. They are not waterproof and will not keep the devil cat pee out of your down comforter.