We are back home after our two-week trip, and having a little trouble with re-entry. Part of it is that we are dropping right into the middle of so many more things than are usually going on:

1. One of the cats (it’s one of the younger ones) is seriously ill. The children had to manage this while we were gone, and no one including the vet thought the cat would live until Paul and I were back from our trip. The cat, however, is attempting to rally (possibly in a cat-like attempt to drain our bank account before perishing anyway), so we are in the midst of ongoing appointments/stress, plus daily medications, plus twice-weekly check-ins with the vet for testing and for support medications (steroids, fluids, anti-nauseants, etc). The vet thinks it is either FIP (potentially/possibly curable) or lymphoma (not curable).

2. Rob arrives today for a three-week visit.

3. Edward’s first intestinal surgery is next week. And Edward has skyed off to visit a friend in another state, returning the day before surgical prep starts. Meanwhile, we received a letter from insurance authorizing an ELEVEN-DAY hospital stay, which is FAR MORE INTENSE than what we were expecting. ALSO: the first day of the new school semester is fourteen days after the surgery, so that seems jeopardous.

4. A toll we can prove we paid (we have one of those auto-pay devices) has GONE TO COLLECTIONS. We have called the toll place REPEATEDLY. We have submitted our paperwork that proves we paid it! When we received the letter that only THREATENED collections, we called and spoke to someone who said our claim HADN’T EVEN BEEN REVIEWED YET (it had been months since we’d submitted the proof). Nevertheless it has gone to collections, and we got the letter when we were opening mail after our trip.

5. Annual family-reunion vacation is the week after next. (This is why Rob is home.)

6. Three kids need to be transported back to school the week after that.

7. William has gotten a job!! It is not at all in his field, but it is a full-time job with benefits!! It starts in a few weeks!!

8. My parents have made the decision to sell their house and move to a retirement community.

Last night, after a little bit of a crabby evening, Paul said wistfully, “I wish we were still just driving around.”

It was a great trip. Everything went well, except for one appalling thing that is already funny: in our first hotel, there was A CLEAR GLASS SHOWER, AT THE FOOT OF THE BED. I went and sat in the lobby in my jammies while Paul showered, and then we switched. We have been together over thirty years, but there is a line.

We saw my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law and niblings. We saw Rob and spent a little time exploring his city. We visited one of my besties who lives where we used to live; I haven’t seen her in person in over 25 years. We visited my favorite cousin who is another of my besties; I haven’t seen her in person for over 25 years. We went to several Interesting Tourist Locations. We discovered that if we eat restaurant food in our usual “Restaurant food is a special treat, so get what you like best instead of aiming for nutrition!!” way for days in a row, we will then consume a 1.5-pound cut-up fruit bowl in about five minutes; and the day after that we will be craving a nice big salad, and the day after that will be the same, until we are basically looking for restaurants that have interesting salads, instead of looking for the ones that have good mozzarella sticks. I started eating the apples from the hotel continental breakfast bars, and those are not good apples.

I was worried that we would not travel well together, but we did. A large amount of the credit for this goes to Paul: I noticed he seemed to be in “defuse don’t escalate” mode for pretty much the whole trip (I can get fretful and touchy if I’m out of my usual element and/or if I get a little bit too hungry; and I am frugal to the point of getting very worked up about the cost of a hotel room), and erred consistently on the side of indulging me. I suspect it is in part because he would like to do a lot more traveling, and I am the more reluctant traveler, so he wanted this to Go Well.