December 5
Even though it was a Monday, nobody had to go to school or work so it felt like it was a weekend. And I slept in until the sun was in the sky and I might have slept even longer except that Meghan had to get out of bed and I was laying on her breast.
I really didn't want to move.
She grabbed the top blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself and then went out the door, and I stretched my wing over Aric so he wouldn't get cold without it, and then I nuzzled his chin and that woke him up, so he kissed my nose and brushed back my forelock.
Meghan got back in bed still wrapped up in her blanket and I stuck my head under it and pushed it enough out of the way that I could put my head back down on her breast and Aric said that he could tell where my loyalty was, and so I hit him with my tail and said that he'd had them to himself all week and now it was my turn. And then Meghan unwrapped the blanket a little bit further and put it over me, too, and kind of pulled me in a little bit more and wrapped me up with her and Aric didn't think that was fair at all but then he got his hand on my rump and he stopped complaining.
But then Meghan got a little bit mad, until I started teasing her, and pretty soon we'd mostly kicked the covers off the bed 'cause they were in the way, and since nobody had to be anywhere this morning we took our time and then pulled the covers back up and relaxed a little bit and then had sex again.
I really wanted to go on a long flight today, so we ate breakfast at home instead of going to Nina's. Meghan cooked some eggs and Aric made toast and coffee and I didn't have to do anything, even though I wanted to. So I just stayed out of the way and watched the birds on the feeder. There was a blue jay that kept swooping in and scaring all the little birds off until he'd gotten some sunflower seeds, then he'd fly away and they'd all come back until he decided that he wanted some more. If he'd been nicer, he would have just stayed long enough to eat a good meal and then left, but I think that he liked being the boss of the feeder.
After he'd scared off the little birds for the fourth time, I decided that I was going to show him who the boss of the birdfeeder really was, and so I went out the side door and chased him off, and at first he just went up on the garage roof 'cause I guess he didn't know I could follow him. But I did, and I chased him a little ways down the block and when I got back I was going to reward myself with some sunflower seeds, but then I saw all the sparrows lined up and I didn't want to scare them off one more time. Sooner or later the blue jay was going to realize that I wasn't guarding the feeder anymore and he'd be back.
So I went back inside and Aric and Meghan had breakfast ready. Meghan said she wished she'd known that I was going to get into a birdfight, 'cause she would have made a movie of it, and I stuck my tongue out at her.
After we'd eaten, Aric offered to give me a ride to my new apartment so that I could get my flight gear, but it was a nice day and so I thought that I'd fly over there to warm up. And I said that I'd send them a telegram when I got back and we could find something to do, and tonight we could stay over at my apartment 'cause they both wanted to see it.
I kissed them goodbye and went out on the front porch and after I made sure that there weren't any cars coming, I took off and flew right over the street then started to climb.
As soon as I got above the trees, I could sort of see where I needed to go, and it was closer than I'd thought it was, at least if I didn't follow roads. There was a brick building that sort of stood by itself that was really distinctive and I needed to go just a little bit west of it to go straight to my apartment, 'cause from there I could see the signs for Zeigler Lincoln and Zeigler Honda which were right in front of the apartments.
From the backside, though, it didn't look all that distinctive at all, but I could use different landmarks to line up to Aric's house. As long as I could see the bell tower at Stetson Chapel, I could aim a bit west of that and I'd be really close.
I'd forgotten to tell him that he should put Christmas lights on his house, and I thought that I should remember to tell him tonight. Maybe we could get some if he didn't have any; I was probably going to want to go shopping once I thought of things that I'd need for my apartment.
I had to fly along the backside of the apartment complex kinda low until I found my balcony. There were a lot of apartment buildings that all looked the same and I hadn't been smart enough to count them last night to figure out which was mine, just that the backside faced south.
And there was a row of seven apartment buildings that did, so I just got between the trees and the buildings and flew along until I found my snowboard, which I didn't see as quickly as I should have, so I overshot and had to turn around and go back.
The sliding door was even more stuck than it had been last night, and it took me a couple of minutes to get it far enough open that I could jam a hoof in and work it along its tracks. There was a bunch of ice down there, 'cause I guess since it hadn't been closed quite all the way last night the snow had melted and then it had re-frozen when it got colder. Even though it didn't have as big a window, the door in my apartment on Grove Street had been more reliable.
I'd never had to open it when there was snow on the balcony, though, so maybe it didn't work in the wintertime.
I left the door open so that I wouldn't have to fight it and then I went into my bedroom and got unpacked. I was gonna move the futon to the living room later, 'cause there wasn't any point in it being in its own room. Aric and Meghan could help move it tonight—it didn't slide too easily on the carpet.
I filled up my camelback and then got dressed in my flight gear, and then I went back out on the balcony and pushed the sliding door back shut most of the way. It didn't look like it was gonna snow, so I didn't need to worry about any getting inside while I was gone, and it would help cool down the apartment some.
Then I called the airplane directors, and Dori answered. She said that she'd missed me and I told her that I'd been out in Colorado snowboarding and flying around in the mountains, even though I wasn't supposed to talk that much about things that weren't flying. And I told her where my new apartment was so that she'd know where I was flying from, and I said that I was gonna fly south along the 131 Highway maybe all the way to Indiana and then turn around and come back, and she told me that I could.
Because of the way that the 131 Highway curved, I realized that I could go almost due south and I'd cross over it pretty quick, before I could get up to a thousand feet anyways unless I really worked at it, so I didn't have to worry too much about climbing too high.
It was nice, too, that once I got through the trees I was over a little lake and that gave me plenty of room to climb before I got to the trees on the other side, and when I came back I could practically glide to my balcony.
I was just over five hundred feet up when I crossed over the 131 Highway and had just crossed a thousand when I went over the 94 Highway. And then started to follow 12th Street, 'cause instead of curving back and forth like the 131 Highway did, it went straight south.
That road ended just outside of Schoolcraft, so I kept the 131 Highway on my left and kept on going.
All the fresh snow from yesterday made everything look kinda the same when you looked right down on it from above, 'cause most houses had their roofs covered and the only places that were clear were the roads and ponds. I couldn't tell any more what kind of crops fields might have had in them.
When I was getting close enough to Three Rivers that I could see the 131 Highway curving, I angled a bit off to the west, even though I could have crossed back over it if I'd wanted to—I was far enough away from the airport now that it didn't matter.
I'd meant to go further south, but as I got close to town I heard an airplane say that it was taking off from the Three Rivers Airport and was going to be flying to South Bend and that was sort of along the same route I was taking, and I didn't want to get in his way. So I called him and told him where I was and how high I was flying so that he'd know to stay away, and then I kept a good watch over to the airport.
It wasn't too long before I saw him roll out onto the runway and his little airplane sped down the concrete and when he was about halfway down I saw the wings wobble a little bit, 'cause he had started to fly. And he steadied it out and then the airplane started to climb.
I was a ways north of him and a lot higher, but I still kept my eye on him until he'd crossed my flight path and continued southwest, and I decided that I'd follow him for a little bit, just for fun. So I turned west, too, and I stayed behind him for a few miles until I couldn't really see him anymore.
He had a bright blinking light like I did, although his was red, and I did see that one more time and he was further along than I thought he'd be, and I never saw him again after that. Finding a white airplane against a snow-covered Michigan was really hard.
Down below me was I think the 60 Road, so I went that way for a while and it was mostly farmland but then I saw a strange parking lot for houses, and I flew down a little bit lower so that I could get a closer look at it. They were all jammed together and some of them looked like they were in really bad shape, although it was hard to tell with all the snow on everything, and I thought that maybe it was a place that they fixed broken houses. I'd seen some houses being towed behind trucks, so maybe if your house got damaged you could have it towed away and a new one brought to you. That would be pretty convenient.
Right ahead of me was another important-looking road—I'd learned to recognize the signs that identified them, even when I was too far away to read them—and I thought it was probably the 40 Road, 'cause that went back north and crossed the 43 Road, so I could have followed it, but I was starting to get a little bit tired, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to fly that far, especially since I knew that if I flew straight back from where I was it was going to be close to 30 miles, and it would be more if I went north and then east.
So I used my watch to point me in the right direction to get back to the Kalamazoo airport, and then I started looking for landmarks, but with all the snow there wasn't anything too distinctive, so I had to look at my watch a lot, just to make sure that I wasn't wandering off-course too far.
The sky was kinda hazy, but my watch was smart and didn't let me down. And when I was getting close, I found the 131 Highway and that let me adjust my heading a little bit, since my watch only knew how to point to airports. And then I started descending, making sure that I was under a thousand feet when I crossed over the 131 Highway.
I glided across the little lake and slowed down when I got to the trees, and after I'd gotten through them I looked for my balcony and didn't find it and then I realized that I'd miscounted and was off by one apartment house.
I called the airplane directors to tell them that I'd landed, and then slid the door open so that I could get back in, and I took off my flight gear and just left it all piled on the futon, then I went into the kitchen to get a little snack before I washed off, and I didn't have too much food that was good for a quick snack but I did find a can of anchovies so I ate that and had a glass of water, too.
And then I thought that I ought to tell Aric and Meghan that I was home, too, so that they could come and see my new apartment. So I sent each of them a telegram and then I was about to go in the shower when I remembered that I should tell Meghan to bring her computer so that she could put all the movies on it, so I sent her another telegram and then I went into the bathroom.
I didn't start to wash right away; I just stood in the hot water and let it relax my muscles. So I was still washing off when they came over, and I had to get out of the shower to let them in, then I went back in 'cause I wasn't done washing my mane yet. I was going to show Meghan where the little memory stick that Peggy had given me was, but she said that we'd do that later, and I should finish up in the shower so she could dry me off and brush me and preen me.
Then both of them came into the bathroom so I wouldn't be lonely, and then Meghan said that she thought she ought to join me to make sure that I got clean as long as I had enough towels for her to dry off with, too.
I didn't, but I told her that she could use mine 'cause even with the sliding door open a little bit it was still pretty warm in my apartment. And then Aric said that if she was getting in he ought to as well so that he could supervise, and so the two of them got undressed and joined me in the shower.
We took our time, 'cause there was lots of hot water and it never started to run out. And then everyone shared the towels that I had and they put their clothes back on and we went and sat on my bed and while Meghan was grooming me I told them all about everything that I'd done in Colorado.
I thought that we ought to go shopping together, 'cause I needed a little bit more food and I was hungry, too. Aric said that he was too hungry to go out anywhere, unless it was to pick up a pizza, and Meghan asked him if that meant that he wanted to order a pizza and he said that he did.
She said that we ought to get it delivered, and we could eat it and then go shopping because if we went shopping when we were hungry we'd get more food than we could eat.
So we got a pizza and cheese bread, which was like pizza but it only had cheese on it, and came with a little bowl of pizza sauce to dip the bread in, and it was more food than we wanted 'cause me and Meghan didn't eat all that much of it.
We went down to Winston and I gave my key to Aric because it was easier to let him carry it, even though I was wearing my saddlebags. I didn't really need it anyway, 'cause I could always get in through my balcony.
While we were on our way to Meijer, I told him that I thought he should get some Christmas lights for his house and I also wanted some for my balcony so it would be easier for me to find at night. And something that I could see more easily in the day, too.
I also decided that I wanted another box of hay to snack on. There wasn't any sense in ordering a whole bale, 'cause I wasn't going to be on Earth long enough to eat it all and it was something that you weren't supposed to take back to Equestria.
So we went to Pet Supplies Plus first, and we got a box of timothy hay and they also had bags of it pressed into little cubes which I thought might be convenient to take with me when I was flying, so I got two bags of those, too. And then we went to Meijer, and they had a whole big aisle that was full of different kinds of Christmas lights. I didn't know that there were so many types! They came in nets and strings and dangling strings and some of them had shapes like icicles and snowmen, and there were ones that you could push different buttons to make them do different things. Some of them had really small LED bulbs and others were bigger and there were even giant bulbs that were as tall as I was but you couldn't get them in strings.
Aric bought a bunch of them for his house, and I got two for my balcony which was probably more than I needed but they were cheaper than the hay. And I also found some big red bows that I could put on the balcony so that I could find it easier during the day, too.
They had antlers for a car, so that it would look kind of like a reindeer, and also a headband that had antlers on it, and I got one for me, and then Meghan decided that she'd get one, too.
There was a little fake tree that already had lights on it and we got that, too, for my apartment, 'cause they didn't have any real trees. Aric said that they sold real trees at special lots, or there were farms where you could cut down your own, but that seemed like a lot of work.
There were lots of ornaments that you could hang on it and I looked at them but I didn't buy any. And I did get some fluffy shiny rope that was called tinsel 'cause I could put that on my balcony, too. And then I was eager to put it all up in my apartment and so I almost forgot that we were going to get some food, too.
We had to walk all the way across the store to get the food, and then after we'd loaded all of that in the cart we had to go back because I'd forgotten that I was almost out of shampoo and conditioner. And then Meghan said that she could use a new towel anyways so she was going to get one that she could leave over at my apartment and so we took a little detour and she found some that were on clearance because they were ugly. And Aric saw that it was a good deal, so he got one, too.
Then she said that she was going to get some bubblebath for my apartment, too, and got a couple of bottles that were called Mister Bubble and had a funny-looking creature on top who I guess was Mister Bubble.
It was probably more than we should have gotten, but it was going to make my apartment look really festive, and we weren't going to run out of food.
We had to do some sorting when we got to the sales counter, 'cause all three of us had things in the cart, but the woman there was really nice and patient as we arranged everything on the treadmill.
When we got back to my apartment, Aric took his lights out of the back of Winston and put them in the cab, just so they'd be safe, and he said that tomorrow we were probably going to have to stop at the hardware store and get some kind of hooks to hold them up, but there was one that was between my apartment and his house. And then we went out on the balcony and put up the ribbons and the lights and the tinsel and it looked really nice, and I flew out over the lake and I could see them through the trees.
Aric wasn't happy with the first arrangement and he said that if we had some zip ties he could make it better and he should have thought of that before, so he left to get them and me and Meghan put up the Christmas tree and moved the futon into the living room while he was gone.
When he got back, he used the zip ties to make the Christmas lights into a big white 'P' for pegasus, and he put the blue ones around it in a circle, and he said that that made it an official landing spot, and any pegasus who wanted to could land there. I didn't think that anyone besides me was going to, but if I met a new friend 'cause she landed on my balcony I wouldn't mind at all.
We ate the rest of the pizza and cheese bread for a late dinner, and we'd bought some beer, too, so we drank that. And Meghan took my desk and set up her computer on it and copied all of my movies from Colorado onto it, and she said that she'd get them put up on YouTube in the next couple of days.
Then we turned out all the lights in the apartment except for the Christmas lights and it was really pretty. Meghan said that all we were missing was a fire, and Aric said that he could find one on the computer, and so he used mine and pretty soon it was showing a movie of a fire. It wasn't as good as a real one, but if you just saw it out of the corner of your eye it looked pretty real.
The three of us sat together on the futon until it was time for bed, and then we folded it down and it was a little bit short for Aric to fit on it. His feet hit the bottom of it, and it got kind of crowded when we had to crouch, so then he decided that we could take the pad off of it and put it on the floor and sleep on that.
So he moved the futon frame out of the way and then put the mattress on the floor and that was nice, too, 'cause whoever was on the outside didn't have to worry about falling off and it was a little bit easier for me to get into as well, since I could just walk right on.
Meghan wanted to close the curtains over the sliding door and window by the balcony, but Aric convinced her that no one would be looking through it because we were on the third floor and anyways there was nothing out there and Meghan decided that she wanted to look outside just to make sure.
Aric said that we needed to christen the new apartment, and she agreed with him. I wasn't sure what that was, so he told me how when a new ship was launched you gave it a name and then broke a bottle of champagne on the bow for luck, which was how the tradition had gotten started and for apartments you christened them by having sex in them. I thought that you should be able to do the same thing with a ship instead of breaking a bottle of champagne on them, and Meghan said that ships were usually launched by some official person and it was a big ceremony, so they wouldn't want to do that and nobody would want to see it, either. And then Aric said that he thought that there used to be some ceremony in England where the king had sex with a white mare, and I thought that Cayenne would like the idea of that.
The two of them got undressed and then we all got into bed together and I asked Aric if he thought that the apartment was officially christened when we started having sex or when we finished and he said that he didn't know for sure but it was probably when we started and he and Meghan both decided that since it was my apartment I ought to be the one in the middle.