Tired of eating, yet feeling hungry

Dateline: Back in the Shire, Indy, 3 January 2005

Drove home yesterday from my Mom's place in Wisconsin. As always, a bit bittersweet. My Mom contemplates moving on to something else, so she actively encourages her kids to slowly pillage her possessions, which can feel a bit ghoulish -- but far less so than your typical estate auction (man, did I go to a lot of those with my Dad as a kid!).

So you pack up a lot of memories. You look through photos, recognizing most but not all, selecting the most precious for yourself (beggars can't be choosers when you're the 8th of 9 kids, because if it wasn't a group shot, you're not in it!). Fortunately, my Mom always seemed to make copies of the group shots, so there's plenty to go around.

But sometimes you can't help wondering, "Do I just take these to my place, store them on shelves for X years, and then my kids go through them as adults, selecting their favorites and wondering about all the ones they can't identify?" I mean, it all has a somewhat scary, why-bother(?) feeling to it. When no one's around to say, "Oh, that's your Uncle SoAndSo!" Well, then no one knows what that image means, and so it's lost to all, save those who can recall on the spot.

And I guess that speaks to the importance of labeling, or providing the context. Connect the image or the content dies.

Today was a complete disaster: strep throat for one kid, the music teacher who left town on another kid, a campaign for "judge" at school for another kid, and stitches out for Jerry.

Oh, and my car broke down. And they screwed up our mail. And the WSJ delivery is likewise screwed. And there was a drainage issue at the new house today that disturbed me.

And so on and so on.

Stepping back into life, so it seems.

Fun to travel around for so long, but nice to sleep again on that memory foam. I mean, like sex-without-a-condom-good compared to all the beds I've slept in over the past month of travels.

January will be slower for me, and I like the sound of that.

Need to get organized. Got a bunch of interviews to give. Need to raise some BFA profile. Need to get deeper into the Enterra stuff, like the new gig at Oak Ridge.

So I'm feeling hungry despite all that eating out.

Oh, Jerry's stitches were ones he took on the bridge on his nose thanks to a nosedive he took on some stairs at Camp Snoopy inside Mall of America. Got us an afternoon at the emergency room at St. Paul's Children's Hospital (first rate). Nasty time, but looks like Jer walks with just a slight horizontal scar that will someday be lost behind glasses or a good wrinkle.

Still, reminds me to love the ones I'm with (stemming the profuse blood flow with your fingers does that). We are all pretty fragile, pretty temporary, and far more ethereal than we realize.

And maybe that's why I feel so funky now: I haven't really had my office for over a year now (all of it sits in boxes still) and we've collectively been living out of containers and suitcases since we put the house up for sale back in March.

I don't feel particularly connected to my surroundings, so little vertical shocks pack more punch, and confronting long horizontal realities seems more depressing.

Then again, there's the sense of starting the new year. 2005 was a year of transitions, some pretty substantial, like losing Art Cebrowski. Hopefully, 2006 becomes a year of settling in.