Abbie's Real Life Blog

Home!  Home, home, home.

It’s alien and raucous, home.  It felt weird to drive into Columbia on Thursday night after driving through so many other cities and towns and states and highways.  I drove so much and so often that I had callouses on my thumb and index finger on my left hand.  Weird, right?  I know.  Yet I never really tired of driving.

I went to my office first to pick up my second backup drive, and my office seemed strange and huge.  Drove home and my house seemed strange and huge.  My dog danced with delight at my arrival after she was certain she’d been abandoned forever.  She quickly settled to chewing a bone loudly and contentedly in my general direction.

I had about eighteen hours between my return and leaving again for a family reunion weekend in Kirksville at Thousand Hills State Park.  This worked out perfectly, scheduling-wise.  I was not yet ready to join the real world (well, when will I be?) but wanted to talk a little and see family and get to still be on vacation, and that’s exactly what the weekend was!  Talk and family and vacation.  Home again yesterday by noon, and then spent the rest of the day moving into ‘normal mode’, real world.  And, today: work.  Actual work.  But a half day of work because I have a doctor appointment this afternoon.  More perfect scheduling, because I am not ready for a full day of work.

Unfortunately, I have returned to computer failure on two fronts (my work laptop had to be rebuilt while I was gone, and it was restored using very old files, apparently, while my home laptop hard drive corrupted after I dropped it on my last day of vacation, so I am feeling bereft of computer), a house that is a mess indoors and outdoors (the weeds, the weeds!), some car issues (my driver’s side window has decided not to roll up anymore without a manual push on the outside- no fun!), and just general things to do, responsibilities.  I am not really ready for adult responsibilities!

I fully intend to write up a summary of my trip and make up a custom Google map and embed it.  I want to do that this week while I can still remember it all.  And I have about 8,000 pictures to process once my home computer is back up and running.  Did you like the tweets?  I did tweet a lot.  I hope to eventually put a photo album together with my pictures and my tweets as captions.  I did upload a lot of iPhone photos to Flickr as well- go and see them if you want.  I thought they were pretty good considering the quality limitations.

So, the vacation.  Was it everything I hoped for and more?  Yes, it was.  There was plenty of rain and frustration to make the wonder seem even more wonderful.  I found happiness in landscapes that are usually overlooked.  I had gorgeous sunsets and plenty of sunrises that happened behind a veil of clouds, allowing me to sleep in late.  I got to wander, meet bears, avoid strangers, eat a lot of sandwiches out of coolers, and drive and drive and drive.  I learned that I don’t get tired of my own company and I don’t get tired of my car.  Maybe a month vacation would do it, and that’s about what I have in mind for next time (Glacier, Banff, Jasper!)

I need to tally up my costs.  I need to go home and pay my bills.  I need to fix what’s needing fixed, and get ready for another few days out of state leaving next week!  And then I get to come home again to stay for awhile, which will be very very good in itself.

So!  Come back.  I will start full-scale updates about my trip this week, I promise.  While it’s all still fresh.