The boys' bags are packed. Mine, too. We've checked under beds, in the bathrooms, all around the place we've been staying. I've made a mental checklist of toiletries that I'll need to restock when I get home: refill the shampoo and conditioner. Check on the sun-screen. More dramamine for N-son.
The B-stash of trail mix has been divvied up into person-sized bags for the trip home. Our water bottles are in our travel bags, ready to be emptied out before we go through security and refilled once we make it through the metal/etc detectors. I've got a book to read on the airplane. We've checked and double-checked our flight times.
This morning I woke up at 5 a.m. Durango time to watch the sun rise over the mountains, the juniper pines and pinion oaks glowing black and green and a little orange in the cool, early-morning light. That's 7 a.m. Pennsylvania time; if I'd been home I would already have finished my humid morning run with my friend June. And as I think about my friend June, I can tell that I'm in two places right now: my body is still here in Colorado, but already my mind is heading home, eager to drag the rest of me along.
It is good to break routine every once in a while -- I've used this week with my family not only to reconnect with my father and sisters, who I seldom see, but also to talk about the future with two of my daughters. I've started my own New Year's Resolution list (for professors, September is more of a new beginning than January is). I've gotten to see my regular life from a distance, and from other people's eyes, and that helps me to rethink what I'm doing. I like that. I need that.
But I am not very good at just sitting around. I want to jump back into my life and start doing things. Two different editors wrote to me this week and asked me to review papers for their journals; both papers are related to my own work, and I'm intensely curious to see what they'll say. Classes will start in just a few weeks, and I need to put finishing touches on my syllabi. At home, the tomatoes-that-didn't-die are ripening on my vines, and I'm not there to pick them. In our local orchards, the peaches have been ready for two weeks -- we're planning a picking/canning extravaganza with K-daughter and the boys. There are two big sewing projects I've been simultaneously putting off and planning for. And I miss my dog.
Think about your favorite home songs -- those are the ones I'm humming to myself today. Wherever I roam, there's no place like it; I feel so broke-up, I wanna go there.
The B-stash of trail mix has been divvied up into person-sized bags for the trip home. Our water bottles are in our travel bags, ready to be emptied out before we go through security and refilled once we make it through the metal/etc detectors. I've got a book to read on the airplane. We've checked and double-checked our flight times.
This morning I woke up at 5 a.m. Durango time to watch the sun rise over the mountains, the juniper pines and pinion oaks glowing black and green and a little orange in the cool, early-morning light. That's 7 a.m. Pennsylvania time; if I'd been home I would already have finished my humid morning run with my friend June. And as I think about my friend June, I can tell that I'm in two places right now: my body is still here in Colorado, but already my mind is heading home, eager to drag the rest of me along.
It is good to break routine every once in a while -- I've used this week with my family not only to reconnect with my father and sisters, who I seldom see, but also to talk about the future with two of my daughters. I've started my own New Year's Resolution list (for professors, September is more of a new beginning than January is). I've gotten to see my regular life from a distance, and from other people's eyes, and that helps me to rethink what I'm doing. I like that. I need that.
But I am not very good at just sitting around. I want to jump back into my life and start doing things. Two different editors wrote to me this week and asked me to review papers for their journals; both papers are related to my own work, and I'm intensely curious to see what they'll say. Classes will start in just a few weeks, and I need to put finishing touches on my syllabi. At home, the tomatoes-that-didn't-die are ripening on my vines, and I'm not there to pick them. In our local orchards, the peaches have been ready for two weeks -- we're planning a picking/canning extravaganza with K-daughter and the boys. There are two big sewing projects I've been simultaneously putting off and planning for. And I miss my dog.
Think about your favorite home songs -- those are the ones I'm humming to myself today. Wherever I roam, there's no place like it; I feel so broke-up, I wanna go there.
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