14 July 2003

Didja miss me?

I actually hoped not to be here today. Mark got to Minneapolis (from Omaha) last Monday to find that they'd overbooked his flight and were offering vouchers for people to stay until midmorning Tuesday. That fabulous offer was not something he could take them up on, for reasons of work. But I was hoping they would extend it to me, and C.J. is five minutes from the airport, and then it would have been good. It just would have. Trust me here.

Instead, I got up at what my mom calls o-dark-thirty (2:55 a.m. California time, if you want to be exact about it) and came back here. I kept looking down out of the airplane window and thinking, "Wrong way! Wrong way!" I was seeing all the right stuff, but in the exact wrong order.

You knew I would be this way when I got back, didn't you?

I wanted nothing more than to doze on the flight from Omaha to Minneapolis, but the rugrat behind me made that impossible. He screamed his demands for most of the flight and kicked my seat. I didn't bother to turn around and snip at his dad, because it seemed clear to me that his dad knew that his kneebiter was being obnoxious. I would have had more sympathy for a fussy kid if that kid hadn't been too big to pitch fits of that kind, screaming demands for impossible things repeatedly (as if the only problem with him not having juice, for example, was that his dad and the rest of the plane didn't properly understand that it as juice he wanted, and if only we had understood him, the juice would appear as if by magic). So after that, I was awake. I'm not expecting a lot of myself today, mentally. I think this is a healthy attitude, and I only hope to maintain it until I keel over into bed.

I read Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley on the plane (when I get around to it, I'll talk about that one over here), and I got into a big chunk of Declare. That's a reread I've been meaning to do for awhile now. I'm enjoying it the second time, too. For all the similarities, it's the differences with the Not The Moose that are jumping out at me, and I think that's a good thing. No one will be able to look at it as a Declare knockoff -- well, no one reasonable -- and, while Declare is muchly good, that makes me happy.

I am waaaaay behind on e-mail. Way. Less than I was when I got here. But still. Way.

I feel entirely scattered. I suppose I should take a page from my mom's book and start at the beginning and go straight on through until the end. When it comes to travel stories, my mom is very much into linear narrative.

And the beginning was: I love Minneapolis so much.

So I can't always start with a shocker. Sue me. I really, really do love it, though. It was hot and thundery, and we went to C.J.'s volleyball game and got rained on, and I got a mosquito bite, and I don't think my tone of delight is clear enough from those italics. Mosquito bites were one of the Signs. I started missing mosquito bites after a four year drought of them. It was a sign that living in California had started to turn my brains, and I needed to move home. Alternately, it was a sign that living in Minnesota had turned my brains years ago, and I needed to move home. All roads lead to etc.

Right, sorry, we were on the linear narrative idea, weren't we? I saw Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil and got suckies and a pannekoeken and some Norse reference books and old family pictures. And walleye and wild rice, which is another thing (or two things, as I also miss them separately) I missed. And I got to see Michelle and Scott, more briefly than I would have liked, and I worked at a nice coffee place, and there were severalmany Coopers. (Probably there were several Mini Coopers, if I'd been paying attention, but I wasn't.) And I am so psyched about the neighborhood we looked at. Reallyreallyreally. I went into it thinking it might be nice. I came out of it feeling like it was home. There are other nice neighborhoods in the Cities, too, if we must, but oh...the houses...the neighbors...the trees and the lakes and oh. Just good. The neighbors, did I say? Oh, yes, right up there, after the houses. Right then.

And also I saw Erica and Dan, and also Jon and Andrew and Jon's fiancé Tessa, whom I had not met but of whom I strongly approved. And there was soup, and also pizza, and much with the hugging, and I got to introduce Timprov's wee cousin to the concept of ducks, and indeed to the ducks themselves, and that's not linear. That went back a ways, before Erica and all, but so did the pizza. Also, there were muffins. Repeatedly. And a danish. Hah! A danish! Take that, California!

Errrrr. One thinks that pressing on might not be the wisest course, that perhaps leaving something for tomorrow might be the thing. (My mom has taken to saying, "Dere's a fing!" Also, she now counts "One, two, many, lots." She's gotten Dad doing it. I would take credit for having created a monster, but why should I, when I can put the blame squarely on Terry Pratchett's shoulders, and he's not even here to feel guilty for it?)

Right then. More on the time away and what I did and who I saw and what I thought about. All of that tomorrow. Plus maybe pictures. The pictures are on my list, but there's a lot of stuff on my list, and I think rather little of it will get done tonight. Ughhhhhhh. Brain working very slowly. I'll see you all in the morning, or at least let you see me.