esrosedotblog

I know it is boring.

I am home and on the family hearth and all. What the hell.

In this day and age, with everyone else running all around, with the world changing every minute?

Imagine how it feels to have gone thousands of miles and back in just over a week and to have so many fine things to keep in my heart. Then, home.

The big thing for me today was to get up and have my yogurt and fruit and grainy cereal breakfast then go to the super market for the Friday shopping and then lie down for the morning nap. Home, sweet home.

Hey, I did get up at 4 AM but that is a bit late for me on the usual basis. It happens that jet lag helped me drop right into my normal schedule here.

No staying in the house that Mick Jagger lived in, no bedroom window looking down on the Thames, boats, water, joggers. No dining al fresco in the suburbs of Plymouth County, no talking the talk at an out of town Meeting (as here, when you are a visitor, you are red meat to lead and speak, not the same old mashed potatoes warmed over).

No visit with one of my life's best friends with the inevitable walk through Toronto to see new and wonderful sights still left on his list of notable places I should see. I know there are more for next time.

No sitting in a tubular box car with strangers and strained conversation flying at 35,000 feet.

I did have a fine ride back with a woman who loaned me her blanket (I was fucking freezing, so desertized) and we had a nice talk about nothing much. Companionship without a lot of blather. The best kind.

Not one delay.

Not one serious encounter with the border police. I was thoroughly rumbled for having a tooth paste tube which was way too big. It is technically liquid. The fucker took it. And something else too just to show me. And a bit of a lecture which one must endure with a smile. Faint.

I am good at the straight face, "yessir" attitude that gets one by these things but the TSA is a formidable group of commissars in the making and I want nothing to do with them anytime soon.

The Brits could show the Americans something about beneficent bureaucratism.

Give a Yank a little power and he is all over himself with what we like to think are Prussian ways.

But that was all coming home.

Going over was lovely.

I had first met with family in Scituate MA where the high point was a cookout with every available kid and some grandkids attending. Even the far flung Australian resident was in town!

Not a lot of time to sit and bobble the grandchildren on my knee but they are all too grown up for that and I am not a knee man.

They are well and I am very proud of each and every one. They all have that look in their eye that tells me they are on the beam.

What have I left out here? A lot probably.

My friend Dennis who is just new to retirement. Only a few months. Boy did I have things to tell him about this life. He is starting well though. I asked what his plan was and he said "to develop a plan" and in the meantime enjoy the freedom of not working in the world of publishing where he spent so many years. Business side which, believe me, ain't arty. Hard as nails those publishing people.

This is a severely disorganized account of my trip. It was glorious. And it is over. And the last words off the plane in Palm Springs with the gorgeous mountains and beautiful plain are "that is the last time I am doing this". I had a great time and I never, ever have to do it again.

Well, no one forced me to do this. I wanted to do it and I loved doing it and I enjoyed every minute of it (really) and I never want to do it again, thank you.

My husband was out front of the airport in the Volvo convertible, lurking just off the premises. When I got to the lobby I called him, he was there in a minute or two and I was away, away back home.

My god, what a wonderful place to live.

And it was hot and it was dry and it was just at sunset.

Home.

Labels: family, Palm Springs, travel