I live too many miles from the ocean, and I'm getting older and odd*

Wow, so...long time no see?


I guess two months went by, and I had nothing to say.


Or, actually, I had things to say, and I felt I didn't have enough time to say the things I wanted to say eloquently enough to do them justice, so I said nothing at all.


And the longer I didn't write anything, the more difficult it came to conceive of writing anything...


It occurred to me the other day that if I didn't start writing again, this little corner outlet for my creative juices might dry up completely - which led me to worry that all those creative juices might dry up as well.


Time to get back up on that horse, as they say.


Some bullet points, because I'm not sure how else to sum up 2 months of time:



1. I had a birthday. It wasn't a "big" birthday, but the birthday right before the big birthday. I spent a few days moping about feeling old, but then:


2. We went on vacation to an island where the water is so blue it looks like raspberry kool-aid. I walked around all week in a daze, awed by the crazy delicious beauty. (And, okay, the rum helped a bit with the daze.) The sand was so fine it was almost like powdered sugar, and the water was so clear it felt like you could see straight to the bottom of the sea. I spent 7 days floating in the surf, and walking on the beach, and watching my kids (and Husband) build fabulous and complex sand castles, and it was perfection.


3. Attempting to return home from the isle of paradise, Delta Airlines did it's very best to drive me to the cliffs of insanity, leaving me sitting on the floor of not one, but two airports with my head in my hands, trying hard not to bawl. We ended up stranded in Atlanta overnight, re-routed in a wholly irrational way, and literally running at full speed through the Baltimore (Baltimore, yes, Baltimore) airport so as not to miss our (new! re-routed!) connecting flight, and arriving at the airport in Detroit fully 22 hours after we were supposed to, only to find that, not only had Delta lost our luggage, but they made a valiant effort to deny that some of our luggage even existed. That was...not ideal.

I declared that I was never going to get on another Delta flight as long as I lived, but then I remembered that we had already booked a flight to Husband's brother's wedding in Seattle, which includes a plan to spend some time in Oregon visiting Groucho's Family, so I guess I probably will get back on a Delta flight.


4. My husband ran his second marathon in a storm of wind and freezing rain, immediately after which he declared that he had, "never felt so awful in his entire life." Four hours later he was discussing when he would run his next one. Runners are masochists, apparently.

5. Work is busy. Like, completely, insanely, "can't catch my breath, feel like I'm drowning in paper" - busy. There are a lot of attorneys who don't have enough work right now, so I'm not complaining, I'm just...expressing my feelings that there aren't enough hours in the day.

6. My new cat is on a quest to keep me from sleeping more than three hours at a time. I feel a little like I'm living with a newborn, except one who meows and licks and my face a lot.

7. My old cat is very sick. He's been hospitalized two nights this week. He is 15 years old, and he seems to have a sinus infection. Also, the vet suggests he is a grieving the loss of our cat who died just before Christmas. (They had been companions for more than 12 years, so...the vet might be right about that.) I'm very worried about my little guy.

8. In about 10 days my son is going to be finished with elementary school and moving up to the big junior high school and I'm a bit...sad, nostalgic, worried about the whole thing. Junior high was pretty much the three very worst, wretched, horrifying years of my entire life, and I am hoping that he will have a much better time than I did.

I'm hoping to be back here and writing more frequently.

* Patty Griffin, Mother of God