Who was watching over me during vacation?
Left my purse ON THE FLOOR of the pharmacy aisle in one of the million billion Target stores we visited during the past 4 weeks. Didn’t discover it was missing until I had finished with pharmacy, noodled through cosmetics, spent ages picking out random greeting cards, strolled through housewares (finally! sheets are in my colors again!) side-stopped in groceries, wandered over to music/books and then had a complete and total heart attack when the fact that my purse was not in the seat of the shopping cart with its strap wrapped around my wrist NOR on my shoulder dawned on me. Raced up to the Guest Services Desk in a stuttering panic: someone had found it and turned it in.
3 weeks later: Took out my wallet at REI to pay for the clothes and shoes my husband and I had picked out on the last day of shopping in the US only to realize that my VISA card was not in its accustomed slot. If I had been in a movie, the wallet would have gone into Xtreme Tight Closeup on the empty slot because that is exactly what my optic nerve & brain did to me. OMFG! Hyperventilated for several minutes trying to remember when I had last used it and finally came to the conclusion that I must have left it in the ATM in (a different) Target the day before. Called Guest Services at the store in question: someone had found it and turned it in.
Thank you, honest people.
The math thing? It’s worse
I spent several conversations telling people that my friends Kathey & Russell, who flew up from Dallas to spend several days with us in Chicago, had lived in Sweden for 5 years before moving to Australia for 5 years and then back home to Dallas where they’ve now been about 5 years. Turns out they only lived in Sweden for 3 years. No wonder that 5 years went so fast!
Kept telling people that we’d been in Sweden for 15 years. It’s only been 13. And a half.
Also spent several conversations telling people that we hadn’t been back to Chicago since I was pregnant with Karin who turned 11 while we were in the States. After much confusion and backtracking we figured out that we were in Chicago both when I was pregnant with her AND the following year when she was a baby. Only I don’t remember it. In fact, I don’t remember going to Chicago that second time AT ALL.
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I ate everything in sight before and during the trip. Not one person told me how great I was looking, which is understandable, because URGH. Also, *sigh* …time to get salad-serious-walking again. It’s incredibly hard NOT to eat all those things that I never get to eat, or at least only get to eat once a year (twice, if I’m as unrestrained in Boston), if that. On the plus side (haaaa! *snort*), I did stock up on Green Goddess salad dressing so I’m all set to start over.
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There is so much to set down, so much to remember, to write about. Chicory and cattails. The way my mom’s massage therapist gave my neck a workover. The tears that sprang when I saw my aunt & uncle for the first time in 6 years. My grandmother, who turns 94 shortly. The way my daughter’s eyes lit up when she realized one of her birthday presents was a baseball bat. The beach, the rocks, the colors of the waves, the silver streak of light on the horizon after the thunderstorm. The way the thunderstorm moved across the bay toward us, over the water, like the wrath of god. Chasing/watching fireflies, including the one IN the bedroom. Staying up too late talking. Cardinals. Turkey vultures. Airplane chicken at Van Camp’s. The 4th of July parade complete with WWII vets, Shriners on mopeds, donkeys in red white & blue, and water-spewing siren-shrieking fire engines.
Things that were too short: only 1 night at my sister’s place, only 1 week with my brother, only 3 days in Chicago, time with family, time with friends; in short, the whole trip (also the last 48 hours in which we managed to completely kill mom’s Internet while trying to fix it up and make it faster…oops).
Things that were too long: the hot weather front that sat on us forEVER, the 124 minutes of Twilight: Eclipse, the 2 hours and 20 minutes spent sitting in the airplane at the gate before FINALLY departing Atlanta on the 2nd leg of our homeward bound trip today, the amount of time I had to carry the 50 lb suitcase whose pull-handle and wheels finally gave in simultaneously.
I am glad to be home.