So, I'm kinda homesick. This is the longest I've ever been out of Kentucky, and the longest I've ever gone without seeing my mother. It's now been 65 days.
The prior record was 47 days in the summer of 1995.
"You went away to college."
I was only 75 miles from home. I went back every few weeks, and if I didn't, my mother came around to visit pretty regularly.
Mom and the stepfather want to come to Phoenix for Mom's Spring Break. I'm really hoping that works out... except, they would only be coming in the event that the dog has died.
I'm waiting to hear about when I am returning to Kentucky. I have a cousin who is getting married in May. As of Christmas, I hadn't heard a definitive date for this event. The couple was claiming they were to be wed on a Wednesday, but my aunts and uncles insisted that was not actually going to happen. If it is a Wednesday and I can't get home for it, Shelly and I will just go home for Mother's Day instead.
I know it seems that I always have a cousin getting married... There are 20 grandchildren on Mom's side of the family, and we're all pretty much between the ages of 23 and 33. We've past the halfway mark on weddings.
Anyway, I miss my mom and my Commonwealth.
On a slightly related note, on Sunday Steady took me on the driving tour of his hometown. It was very entertaining.
I saw rabbits! More than one and more than once! There's a real lack of wildlife around here, you know. It's the desert, afterall. But there were bunnies running in the brush and I saw them. I managed not to jump out of the car to chase them. I thought that was very mature of me.
The tour ended with ice cream and a walk around the town's signature item, a very tall fountain in the middle of a lake. There were ducks! If you think I managed not to chase them, you're wrong.
I also saw a goose, but it was far away so I didn't get to chase it.
Somewhere along the way, I mentioned that there just aren't any climbing trees in Arizona. While we were walking, Steady pointed out a few trees in the park that were suitable for climbing. So, my heeled boots and I hopped a few branches up into one... he was right, they are good climbing trees.
There was grass at the park. I think I deserve a few points for not giving in to the compulsion to roll around in it. There was new sod in a few places... it's so weird to see the seams in the grass.
I also saw his many prior homes and hangouts and schools and stuff. Mostly, though, it was the site of wild animals and climbing trees in a grassy place in Arizona that made the day for me. I did work at summer camp for six years afterall.
What else can I tell you? I'm gonna be old in seventeen days. My birthday is on Good Friday this year. Instead of that meaning that we can start the party on Thursday, it actually translates to "Airfare is expensive and no one can come and turn twenty-five with me."
I've been angling since, oh, October or November for people to come to Phoenix for my birthday. I figured out that far back that it was a Friday. I just didn't see that it's Easter Weekend until my sister let me know a couple of weeks ago. I was holding on to hope of houseguests until then. The letdown has contributed to the homesickness.
Anyway, it's Tuesday and that means Gilmore Girls and The Amazing Race. Steady's ordering pizza and I'm due to be leaving right now... surely by now he knows not to expect me on time.
One more time, if you're tired of coming here and not seeing anything new, I really recommend that you learn to use Bloglines. I'll explain it to you, since it seems to be non-obvious...
You sign up. Then you add all the sites that you read. The ones that are regularly updated will more than likely have a feed of some sort, whether they are news, a blog, or an online journal. So, you add them. This really shouldn't take that long. I've got, like, sixty sites on there, and it did not take very long to do this.
Then you go to bloglines when you're ready to sit down and read some pages. It gives you a link to updated material along with some information about the entry (a subtitle, the first X characters, or the whole thing). You click on the link and you read it. Then you don't visit pages that haven't been updated and your life is much more streamlined.
This is particularly useful if, say, you're reading JV's page. He comes and goes. You don't want to check it every day, but then what if he's been writing for a week and you missed it? Or if you're reading this page and you never know what time or what days I'm gonna write something because I don't either. See how bloglines would help you there?
2003: "I've almost entirely rid myself of the lovely parting gifts in the last three and a half years. There was a time when almost everything seemed to have been a lovely parting gift..."
2002: "Whoever it was didn't come around to the back. So I went to bed secure in the knowledge that robbers and rapists don't knock first."
2001: It would take me half an hour to explain what that entry is talking about, and I don't even want to think about the whole fiasco anymore.
