Hiatus

Sorry about the long gap between posts, but I had a brief hiatus on the West Coast (of the US!), and didn’t seem to get around to writing anything. But now that I am in the Cayman Islands with nothing to do but sit on the beach and get sunburned with two of my teacher friends from home, I think I probably can find the time to jot something down.

I arrived in San Francisco after about 30 hours of traveling (ugh) and was met at the airport by a friend of mine from college (same friend I called when I had my little meltdown in the town square in Christchurch, so I was happy to thank him in person, as well as to show him that I came through all right). I managed not to fall asleep in the subway, so was coherent enough to appreciate when he said to me, “You’ll like this…” and pulled a dead bird out of his backpack. (No, nothing to worry about there—I don’t think. He’s just a bit of a bird nerd. So you never really want to go diving into his freezer in search of ice cream. Of course that could just be his ploy to keep the ice cream all to himself.) Although he was pretty busy with school work, he managed to find some time to hang out with me. (And when he couldn’t, he distracted me with a large pile of saved NYTimes puzzles.) He’s pretty calm and quiet, so let my stories pour forth as I saw fit. Luckily (I guess), he doesn’t read my blog, so all of my stories were new to him.

After just two days with him I headed back to the airport to go up to Portland, Oregon , to meet my mom and see some other friends. When I checked in at the San Francisco Airport, I saw that the gate assigned on my boarding pass was different from the one on the board (but only by one). I headed to gate 48, and there was the flight to Portland. Out of curiosity, I checked to see where the plane at gate 49 was headed. Saint Louis. I smiled, and checked my ticket to make sure that I was indeed heading to Portland.

While standing outside of security in the Portland Airport awaiting the arrival of my mother, I was surprised at how unexcited I felt. It’s not that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my mom, I just wasn’t as giddy as I’d expected. Mind you, it could have been that I had absolutely no feelings whatsoever at that time, for jetlag was seriously kicking my butt, which really hasn’t ever happened to me before. I wasn’t managing to fall asleep until 2 am, and then my friend and his housemate were both up and functioning (and therefore I was as well) by 7 am. Ugh. But when my mother did appear, we both got a little teary-eyed, so I knew that all was well in my world.

We had a nice few days up there (COLD! I haven’t been in cold weather since England in October. But mom had brought me jeans), although I did try to get in on the wrong side of the car a number of times. On Sunday I went back to the airport (another flight… sigh) and flew back to San Francisco for a couple more days with my friend. Getting on the plane (Alaska Airways) in Portland, I had to walk out onto the tarmac… in the hail. I gave the guy ahead of me a good long headstart to get up the ramp into the plane, but I still was way faster than him and was standing in the rain and hail trying to protect my head with the Sunday Times (but not the magazine… that was safely tucked away from the elements so that the puzzle would be undisturbed). Once on the plane, I heard the guy behind me say “Let me try to get this hail out of my ear.”

Two more days of calm and quiet in San Francisco, and then I was back on the road. It was nice to be home (of sorts), I think, but it was a bit weird. My packing system was all thrown off. My sleep was a mess. And I constantly was confused as to where I was. (That has, surprisingly, only happened ONCE thus far, until now.)

And I did have many times where I wondered about the fact that I had thrown myself off the merry-go-round of life, and whether I would actually be able to get back on. Has my job gone by, and do I care? Do my friends still remember and need me? It may seem silly, but it’s true. But seeing my friend in SF, and getting to talk to friends on the phone whom I haven’t spoken to in months really helped allay my fears. I think it will be all right. And even if I can’t get back on the merry-go-round of my former life, I think that will be okay.

But I’ll deal with that all later. Now I think there’s a bottle of wine being opened by DeAnn and Claire (it’s 4:15, and I am colada behind them)…