Home

Thursday was another long, long day of planes and airports. JFK, either Dallas or Houston (for some reason we're not sure which), and Reno. Jeff was waiting in the airport for us holding a huge "Welcome Home" sign. Behind the sign was Rosie. Behind both Jeff and Rosie was a fairly large crowd of people, mostly women, who thought the whole thing was so adorably sweet that they had stuck around to watch the reunion. Uhm, this is my husband we're talking about - did I really expect anything less embarrassing!? But yes, it was also adorably sweet. Rosie didn't see us until Jeff whipped the sign away and then it was pure puppy bliss to a chorus of "Ahhhhh's" from Jeff's fan club. Jeff got a kiss or two as well when Rosie was finished with us.

On the way to England, our trip was broken in half by a long stay in New York and the travel itself was a lot less stressful. In contrast, the return trip consisted of two back-to-back days of stress and exhaustion. When we finally got home I fell asleep before I was even horizontal in my own bed.

Woke up in the wee hours of Friday morning in the dark. I could see a bit of dim square shaped light, I was being held down by something, couldn't really move, and I was laying down. Beyond that minimal information I had no clue what was happening. It seemed to me that the light I could make out was far above me and my first thought was that I must be in a cathedral. But that didn't make sense, why would I be laying down in a cathedral? I must be in a train station then. But I didn't think I'd be horizontal in a train station either. Did I faint? Why couldn't I move? Was I in a hotel room? Where was I? For starters, what country was I even in?

It took what seemed like a minute, maybe longer, to realize I was laying in my own bed under a layer of heavy blankets and quilts. Even when I figured that out, sitting up and walking the few steps to the bathroom nearby was a frightening experience. I shuffled my feet and walked with my arms stretched out before me with the contrary ideas that because the room seemed so large, that I might get out of bed and fall into a deep hole or, conversely, immediately walk into something solid. I slowly managed the ten foot round trip from bed to bathroom to bed again and woke up a few hours later feeling a lot less confused, if not a lot more rested.

Today was filled with breakfast and dinner out (I was too tired to start cooking again, even if I was sure I remembered how, plus eating out at our Mexican restaurant is a grounding get-back-to-normal tradition for us whenever we've been out of town), uploading photos, unpacking and sorting out the trinkets and gifts we'd bought, and presenting Jeff with his goodies. All this set to a constant conversation about what we did and where we went, William and I alternating as main speaker. Between little bursts of story inspired enthusiasms, both of us dipped yawningly close to needing a nap every few hours. We stuck it out though until tonight. In fact, ultimately Jeff and I stayed up rather late so I could watch (fast forwarding through the boring bits and commercials) the last three weeks of American Idol that I had missed before I could accidentally find out who had won. Yah Taylor!!!! Whoooooooo! Even wanting to fall asleep very, very badly, I couldn't close my eyes when he was on the television screen. William tried to watch with us, but fell asleep face first on the livingroom rug before the first elimination.

Tomorrow, still exhausted or no, it's back to as much routine as I can manage. I've got phone calls to make, Wordplay participants to add, even cooking and cleaning to attempt. Sigh.

Jeff asked if I was going to go back, now that I had photos to share, and add some of them to the matching past blog entries I've written. I said no, that no one goes back and checks old entries, it's hard enough keeping up with all the new ones one wants to find time to read. So, I've decided that I'll add a Holiday Photo section to each blog entry for a while. In fact, I'll share two photos a day, a touristy "Here's me/us/William standing in front/besides/under ___(insert famous city/building/statue)." I'll put those kind of photos here on Beach Treasure.

Photos that do not include us, but instead that are of art or beautiful scenery, or perhaps I took in or for artistic purposes, I'll post over on my art blog, Laume's Studio. That will give me something to blog about over there until I can get back into the swing of things creatively here at home and it will reduce the number of years I'll need to share all the photos I took! Yes, I took a lot of photos.

I'll keep it up until either I run out of images, get bored with it all, or folks scream for me to stop, please stop, for the love of god please move on or just pack up, have another holiday, and leave us alone!!! Or maybe I'll keep adding them even then. After all this is my blog and I can do whatever I want. Phbbt. But I will be nice and clearly label them as Holiday Photos so you can quickly avert your eyes or scroll fast to avoid them if you want.

With no further ado.....

Holiday Photo Share #1

Here's William standing inside the ruins of the roman baths in Bath, England.