And I'm home

I think I was maybe a bit more distressed in the last post than I might have been. I was concerned; my brother, when he came back to our parents' house after visiting my sister-in-law's family with her (long story short: they leave their cat at our parents' house while they're on the road, because he gets along pretty well with us but does NOT get along with some of her relatives), had some kind of nasty respiratory infection. He tried to isolate himself, but my dad wound up catching it. (And I don't feel too hot myself right now, but if I do get sick, at least I'm home, and it's easier to be sick when you're home than when you're traveling).

For two days after they left, we couldn't reach them on the phone. I was worried that that meant my brother got a lot worse and was in the hospital somewhere, or any other number of things, and also, my mom and I were trying to "encourage" my dad to see a doctor (he's had pneumonia twice and so respiratory infections in him are nothing to mess around with). Finally, we did reach my brother - both he and my sister-in-law wound up getting sick and for a while they were just sleeping with the phone turned off, then he got better enough to go in to his office and do some work while she stayed home and slept...and my dad got diagnosed and got medication.

Also, I always get tense around the time to travel back, because there are just so many things that can go Wrong. Especially this time; trackwork required me to get on a bus in Longview and ride it to where I had left my car in Mineola. (And of course, I worry about whether my car will be OK, and whether my house will be OK...even though I live next door to a police officer, still, there was a break-in on my street this summer).

And I have to admit, there's the whole pulling-the-Band-Aid-off-all-at-once feeling of leaving family. It gets harder as people get older. I remember as a kid being puzzled a how my mom would cry every time we left her mother's house...even as a young teenager, I was puzzled by that. And even as a college student, I didn't really get it. I guess it's only after you've really gone out into the Big World and tried to make a Life for yourself that the whole process of going "home" and then leaving that "home" again for your own home gets difficult. I will admit to fighting a few tears in my compartment on the train as it pulled out. (I try very, very hard not to cry in front of my parents when I leave; we're not that sort of family...strong emotions get awkward).

I also have to admit that, those first few minutes (before immersing myself in a Georgette Heyer novel), thinking about how there would be some appeal, at least for a while, of chucking it all and moving back to my parents' town to be close to them...or even, chucking it all and staying in that quiet back bedroom of their house*. But of course, there's the question of how to make a living (even though the town has two universities, and a couple of community colleges, I so do not want to go through the tenure process again). And I'm sure being totally idle would wear on me after a while...maybe a couple months, I don't know.

(*One of the things I totally envy my parents for, and realize was a flaw in my selection of the house I chose - they live on a street that is NOT a through street, and their house backs up to the grounds of a nursing home on the other side. (And both their neighbors are quiet). So it's super quiet at night, whereas here I'm always getting noise from the two cross streets (I am very nearly at a corner of two of the grid streets in town, and while they're not major streets, still, you hear people driving down them at all hours). And so I'm regularly awakened here - even with a white-noise machine - by people driving loud "duallies" or by dogs barking, or somesuch).

But at any rate, I'm back. It's very warm here for January - about 70 degrees, which just feels wrong to me. (Still, it made taking down the Christmas stuff psychologically easier; if it still looked or felt like Christmas I might have been more loath to do it.) Both my car and my house were OK; and there's even no sign of mice having come in in my absence (perhaps the peppermint oil really does work - or perhaps I finally found the place they were getting in and plugged it up). I stopped off and got groceries at the Kroger in Sherman on my way home, so I've got food ahead for a while.

I've decided that NEXT Saturday - the Saturday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which we get off - I'm going to take a day and go antiquing, probably to McKinney, I haven't got out to do that at all recently, and I think maybe some of the distress I felt this fall was that I was pushing really hard at work and not taking enough time for fun, because I'd get all caught up in the "Oh, but it's an hour's round-trip, I can't afford that time" (or two-hours, in the case of McKinney). (A lot of times I am too good at seeing the potential downsides of things and talking myself out of them. Which is actually probably part of the reason why I haven't dated more than I have....)

I've also decided to try to devote a bit more time this winter to quilting, and to the making of tops...I have several that are partly-sewn that I want to finish up. (I almost said "Should" finish up. I have a habit of saying "I should" when "I want to" is probably a more positive way of saying it...should implies a duty, wanting to implies, well, wanting to.)

Also, maybe it would be good for me to be less rigid about piano practice, and acknowledge that even if I'm doing the last 20 minutes at 9 pm, that's still a perfectly good time to practice. I have a habit of turning things into duties and then letting them run me a bit ragged.