I leave tomorrow morning to return to Austin. It's a long drive, but I'm looking forward to the solitude. 10 days of people, people everywhere has taken its toll, physically and emotionally.
I require a fair amount of "alone time", and at home in Austin, that's not a problem. Shannon likes to watch his crime shows in the evenings, so I make my nest in the study and either watch PBS or write or work crossword puzzles. Sometimes all three.
I've missed my crosswords most. I usually work several a day (only the good ones though: NY Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post Sunday puzzles and the Wall Street Journal's Friday one), but I've only gotten to two since I've been here.
The trip started with me, my sister and her zoo on the road for 15 hours, then became 5 hour daily commutes from my boyhood home to the hospital in Memphis with a car full of passengers and hours in a busy inner-city hospital where solitude is not an option, and finally became reunions with countless relatives and people I had known growing up. I'm pretty much peopled out.
Suzanne, my older, is not going back with me. Probably just as well. As tends to happen when we spend too much time together, she's gotten her nose out of joint towards me. We don't always see eye to eye over things, and in the decade or so that I've been letting her know when I think she's out of line, she hasn't liked it much.
I've logged over 2000 miles since we left Austin, and still have 750 to go before I'm back home. But home is where I need to be. Home with Shannon and Amanda, our uber-whiny miniature cat. Home where I can sit and think or do nothing while Shannon watches his shoot-em-ups in the next room.
Home where I belong.
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