flirtation

I awoke to rain, a couple of nights ago. Real rain. Hard rain. 

It rains a lot here, but rarely does it pour. It mists, mostly. You will be damp if you are out there long enough, but it's mostly by osmosis, not patter. It seeps into you. The rain does, and also the cold.

But it was pouring the other night, and the wind blew almost violently through my open windows. 

There was lightning, off somewhere. This is probably the third time in my eight years in State of Happiness that I have seen lightning on this side of the mountains. We live in a sheltered valley, and the weather fronts generally do not collide here in such a way as to cause lightning. I've seen lightning at the coast, and lightning over the mountains, but rarely lightning here.

And then there was lightning close by - blocks away, maybe - and roaring thunder. 

In the moments after the nearby lightning strike, a couple ran out into the street, dancing and shouting in the rain.*

It was 4:28 am.

I got up, finally, and closed the windows most of the way. It was too late for the rug by the window and the duvet that I had folded next to the bed. They were already wet. I spread the duvet out on the floor and went to close the bathroom window, too. 

All night and the next morning, I kept hearing sounds as if there was someone walking in the house. My roommate is out of state, so I couldn't think of who was making the creaking noises, save the wind.

In the morning, I found the little diamond window in one of my closets open, blown by the wind because I hadn't secured it, and blowing the closet door in its frame. Mystery solved.

...

* When I was in the Mitten earlier in the month, there was a huge storm Up North where we were staying. It had been threatening all day, but when it became clear that the storm was really on its way, my mom got in the car to go find my dad, who was jogging, and the rest of us were inside the cottage when we heard a huge crack - it wasn't clear if it was wind or thunder - and the lights went out.

The wind started raging. My brother ran out onto the dock to secure the boat, and my sister and sister-in-law and I ran out to grab the plastic chairs and toys from the beach. 

We all made it back just before the real rain started, with the accompanying lightning and thunder.

We were safely inside, watching the storm, when we saw the neighbors tootling along in their boat, heading back toward shore. They anchored the boat in the shallows rather than tying it to their dock.

AND THEN THEY SPENT TEN MINUTES PUTTING THE COVER ON THE BOAT WHILE THE LIGHTNING FLASHED AROUND THEM.

It was just about intolerable to watch their flirtation with death. I don't even bite my nails, but I wanted to nibble on my fingers from sheer nerves.

At one point, lightning struck out in the middle of the lake. And they were still there! In the water! Calmly covering the boat so it wouldn't get wet! The boat which was made to be in water!

"We can't even help them if they get struck by lightning," we kept saying. "We can't go out there. You can't help someone if you put yourself at risk of dying, too. Even calling paramedics wouldn't help. No one in their right mind would go out there in this weather."

We finally resorted to yelling, from the safety of our cottage (they couldn't hear us), "Leave the boat! Go inside! Save yourselves!"

Finally they finished up and WADED SLOWLY BACK THROUGH THE WATER instead of heading straight to the dock and running for their lives. 

The anxiety of it all took years off my life. 

little me

When I was growing up, computers were just starting to be widely available. We had an Apple computer in our dry room in Liberia (the room with air conditioning and no windows to keep things from molding in the edge of the rainforest, one mile from the salty ocean damp). I would sit at it and laboriously type out answers to the questions asked by girls in Sunday schools at churches back in the US. They always wanted to know how the weird missionary girl lived over there in Africa. 

"Yes, I like M&Ms. I like the green ones best."

Then we would print out the letter on the dot matrix printer and I could make chains out of the side paper with the little holes in it.

Also, cameras involved film. We still have very few pictures of my little sister as a tiny baby, because the rolls of film got lost in the mail on their way to my grandparents in the US. 

The pictures from when I was really little are still those old ones that came in squares, and the color is all a bit yellow. 

The first time I remember being recorded on video was in junior high, when my friend and I interviewed my Oma and Pops about their experiences in the Netherlands when it was occupied during World War II. 

I never imagined seeing myself on video as a little kid. It just wasn't a thing that was possible, so I never thought about it.

Enter the Dutch relatives. 

I know that we US Americans like to think that we are on the cutting edge of technology, but my experience is that the Dutch relatives have us beat every time. They are also way ahead of us in fashion, but I digress.

My mom sent out a video this morning from one of our Dutch relatives that was made for my great-grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary in early 1983. I was three. 

Whoever made the video had filmed my Oma and Pops and their kids and grandkids at their house in the Mitten, and suddenly there was a little blonde bob of hair above a red plaid overall dress, mostly ignoring the camera to play. For a split second, when my cousin D. looked up at the camera, three-year-old me turned toward it, too, unsmiling, just looking.

It was the weirdest sensation. I didn't know that little girl was still out there. 

I remember being her. I even remember that party in the Netherlands, I think (unless we were at the 65th anniversary - was there a 65th anniversary party?). I remember crowds and stairs and being small among a bunch of Dutch relatives and playing with other kids. 

I just never thought I would see her again.

My mom said she cried when she saw it. 

week's end

Every Friday, on my way back to Gone West, I stop at C0stC0 to fill my car up with gas. I don't always need a full tank (today I filled it with 7.717 gallons*), but I drive my carpool on Monday, so I like to have it full. 

Today I called the Ethiopian restaurant while my car was filling, to ask if they would have enough injera if I stopped by to eat dinner before my friend's birthday party. 

They did, so I drove straight there and sat at the bar with my sudoku puzzle.

"Come on a Tuesday or Wednesday," P. said, so we have time to chat.

My food came quickly, which was good because after a day that starts at 5:30 am, I am ridiculously hungry by 6:45 pm. 

I never get tired of ye doro tibs and kik alecha wat. Never, ever. When my mom came last winter, when I was going to drive back to the Mitten** with her and then never picked up the rental truck because I could not leave Gone West, we went to the Ethiopian restaurant twice, and each time we got enough for leftovers. I ate Ethiopian four days in a row. Actually, maybe six, because I think I had it the two days before she arrived, too. I was not tired of it.

I had enough time to stop at home before the birthday party, which is where I am now. This is a problem, because I'm not sure I can move again now that I have let myself lie down.

* My old friend SHO from Universe City recently bought a hybrid SUV, and he proudly announced that he'd gotten 32 miles to the gallon. "Me, too," I said. "And my car is a '97 Civic."

** Random story: the Mitten license plate has always, naturally, been the one that is most familiar to me. (I have an inexplicable interest in license plates, the numbering thereof, so I pay attention to them.) The State of Happiness license plate, though, is catching up, and a few times recently I have caught site of a State of Happiness plate and, because of its familiarity, thought, "Hey, it's someone from the Mitten!" Only, of course, it isn't. It's just that the State of Happiness license plate is replacing the Mitten as the most familiar in my brain.

what ended up happening

What ended up happening is that A. got sicker and sicker until we had to take her to urgent care, where they discovered that her sodium was low, gave her a liter of IV fluids and some anti-nausea medication, and told us it was probably a virus. Then I got on a plane back to Gone West.

It's a longer story than that, of course. Our parents brought her to the airport early on Monday, where she had to be wheeled to the plane and the gate agent finally rebooked her flight when she realized that A. would be flying alone (rather than with the accompaniment of the airport staff who pushed her through security). Our mom and I brought her to the airport early on Tuesday, where she ended up laying on the ground next to a trash can while the desk agent changed her flight, and then when the airport staff wanted to call medics, we put her back in the car. And apparently our parents brought her to the airport again this morning, where she was still too weak sit up long enough to get on the plane.

It's scary that you can be a healthy adult one day and then five days later be so weak that you can't sit up in a wheelchair. It's given me a whole new perspective on ebola, and how losing fluids can end so badly so quickly.

Meanwhile, my cold got better until I stayed up for almost 24 hours between waking at 4:45 am Mitten time to drive A. to the airport, spending the day at urgent care, and flying to Gone West. Now it is dramatically worse, again, at least in the throat region (my throat is my weak spot) and I talk with a croak. 

More tea, please. 

more illness

We are severely pathetic over here. There is a lot of napping and tea, and virtually nothing else going on. We moved the party that was supposed to be held here, and my dad went to it alone.

Last night I could not sleep for the coughing. Well, first for the coughing and then for the force of will it took not to cough. It is really incredibly hard not to cough when your body wants to cough. And yet, in some cases, coughing is doing nothing but hurting you, but it won't stop. So I just decided not to cough. That... sort of worked? It was virtually impossible to maintain that kind of control over my throat while I slept, so I just didn't sleep very much or very well.

My mom's and my colds have diverged. Largely this is because I was awake for four and a half hours this morning and then took a three and a half hour nap. I had to take a nap because my eyes hurt too much to keep them open. But after 3.5 hours, I woke up feeling sort of almost human. Not really, you know, because there is still the sore throat and the headache and the sneezing, but at least my arms and torso and eyes do not ache like they did this morning.

My mom did not nap, at least not for long, and so she went to bed by 7:15. 

A. spent the day either in bed or on the couch (she seems to have taken permanent possession of it, which we are not fighting because it is now fully contaminated with norovirus germs). She went to bed by 7:30. 

That leaves only me in the dark house, which is usual (I am the most night owl one here), but not usual for 7:54 pm.

My eyes are starting to hurt, though. It might be bedtime.

house of sickness

Greetings from the house of sickness. 

Despite the fact that my mom and I have been hacking our lungs out and my sister A. had two rounds of barfing this morning, we tried to go do things like buy 50% off wrapping paper at T@rget and pick up Dutch cheese at C0stC0. 

A. had to turn around and go back to the car a few steps into T@rget. 

Ditto C0stC0, where the third round of barfing occurred in the parking lot.

After C0stC0, we gave up and turned around. We did stop for ginger tea and gatorade, but neither A. nor my mom left the car. (Public Service Announcement, gained by 15 minutes of looking and asking: H@rdings does not carry ginger tea. Go to the natural food store.)

A. spent the entire afternoon and evening on the couch, with a pan and some cups of water and tea and ginger ale. There was a round four of barfing. She was so cold that we had to add a comforter to the two throws under which she was shivering. We finally helped her to bed around 7:30, looking grey and haggard.

"Does your throat really hurt?" my mom asked me, sitting in the living room.

"Yes," I said.

"Does your head really hurt?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Do your eyes really hurt?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "but I do find that my throat hurts a little bit less when I am constantly drinking something."

My mom and I have exactly the same cold. It's almost eery. 

It looks a lot less awful in comparison to a stomach virus, though.

We are supposed to be hosting a Christmas party here tomorrow, but the newspaper informs us that norovirus (which is going around in this town) can live for several days on surfaces. Anyone want to come over to our house and be contaminated? 

Ugh. Assuming neither I nor my mom gets sick (my dad stayed further away), we are, first thing in the morning, washing all the throws and pillows that A. was using. 

12/25

We had one of those Christmas Days wherein several people are regularly dosing themselves or their children with ibuprofen. The baby was still wheezing a little. B. turned lethargic and hot during the meal. I drank so many cups of tea with honey that I might float away on a river of tea, and I napped on the couch in the middle of the post-gift chaos.

We do breakfast food, rather than a dinner. After a church service full of Christmas hymns, my mom whipped up a crustless quiche, and I tried to make my famous coffee cake, but we were out of butter., so I couldn't put it in the oven until my brother and sister-in-law got here, and then brunch was delayed waiting for it to bake. And because I used gluten-free flour, it took an even longer time to bake and at some point we couldn't wait anymore and I flipped it out onto a plate, more like a pudding than a cake. "Candy cake" we called it, scooping it out with a spoon. It was, I cannot lie, incredibly delicious.

Due to the ridiculous quantity of tea I drank today, I cannot tell you whether I overate or not. I felt like I overate. I felt incredibly full, and most of what I ate contained either 1. sugar or 2. chocolate, but I cannot tell whether the fullness was from tea or from food. I guess I will find out if I wake up starving in the middle of the night.

Presents were given and received. Children were overwhelmed. Adults were pleased. I have a new blanket scarf that will probably become my signature piece for the winter because now that I have discovered how much cozier life is with a blanket scarf about one's shoulders, I can not return to the chill of no blanket scarf. I'm considering having it surgically attached to my shoulders in shawl-fashion, except that the dripping when I get out of the shower might be problematic. 

drop

My mom and I both woke up in the scratchy throat stage of a cold, so when we stopped at T@rget, I picked up some cough drops. It was a big bag of generic cherry ones, and I popped one in my mouth as we left the store.

I put the bag back into the cart, into a plastic bag containing my mom or sister's purchases. 

As we neared the car (my mom has a newer car, so she parks at the far end of the lot far from everyone else), I heard a funny little plop. 

I looked down, and the bag of cough drops had fallen over and about 25 of them had spilled into the cart. From there, they were falling one by one through the holes in the cart. A few had collected above the wheel on a little metal piece a few inches above the ground. A few more had been lost along the way. 

A. and I started collecting all the cough drops from the cart and the nearby ground. Our mom went running back to pick one up off the pavement a dozen feet back. 

We ate the damp ones (from the ground) immediately, or I stuck them in my coat pocket. The rest went back into the bag.

As I went to put the cart in the cart corral, I saw, far off toward the door of the store, another cough drop lying wrapped on the ground.  A car ran over it as I watched. I did not go rescue that one.

observations in DTW

It's been a while since I flew through Detroit, it seems. Probably this is because Delt@ doesn't fly to Universe City, so I flew Un1ted for those years, and then I had elite status on Un1ted, and it all snowballed.

I have elite status on no airline at all right now, thanks to having been broke and going nowhere all year. 

DTW used to be my airport. I would fly in here of an evening and pace all 72 gates and have one last US-ian meal and then come back to somewhere in the middle of the terminal, to a big-bellied plane filling with people from the whole world over, heading to Amsterdam. 

When I disembarked from my plane this morning, I caught myself planning to get chai at a particular spot, until I realized that the Bucks of Star of which I was thinking is actually in Chicago-O'Hare. The Bucks of Star is hard to find in DTW (pro tip: down by Gate A61). I had to inspect a map, while thinking to myself, "I can't believe that I need a map in DTW. This is absurd. This is my airport."

I did find the Bucks of Star, and I ended up eating a bag of butter popcorn for either a normal-hour breakfast (DTW time) or a very late night snack (Gone West time). 

...

Observations:

One does not take the tram. (We tried once, on our way to Liberia in 2000. We almost missed our flight and got stuck in the doors of the tram. Never again, no matter how much I was lugging, have I tried that tram.)

The large-disc fountain is still doing its water-leaping thing. Kids are still mesmerized. For some reason, though, they have removed the comfy chairs. I am sitting on a folding chair, which is sub-optimal.

Birds are still trapped in the terminal and drinking from the fountain.

They changed the announcement about carrying an item for someone you do not know, just a tad. Also, I haven't heard the announcement that says, "Detroit, Michigan is in the Eastern Time Zone. Please check a clock or a flight monitor for the correct local time" in several languages. This is unfortunate, because I was close to knowing how to say that in multiple languages.

There appears to be a Spanx store visible from my seat.

That underground hallway with the creepy lights and music is as creepy as ever. They even found creepy Christmas music. Why would you let a hallway get almost completely dark while it is filled with travelers pulling luggage and pushing wheelchairs and carrying children? It's creepy.

...

One time, when I flew through DTW on my way back from Rwanda for Christmas / doing some work here, I found my gate and cast myself upon the ground in a corner to wait for the flight to Greater River City, because it was in the little terminal and there were not enough seats. I ended up talking to the woman sitting on the ground next to me. 

"Where are you coming from?" she asked, in friendly Midwest fashion.

"I live in Rwanda, but I was just on the coast of Kenya," I said, fresh from a delightful week on the beach in Malindi. 

"Oh," she said. "Aren't you scared to live there? Aren't they all terrorists over there?"

I thought about the friendly Muslim Kenyan in the seat next to me on the flight from Malindi to Nairobi, and said, "Nope. I don't worry about that. And if I did, I think that my being friendly and willing to talk about both of our countries does more to prevent terrorism than staying here would."

...

I am also flying into Hometown. That hasn't happened in years. I can't remember the last time I flew into Hometown, although it may have been that time that there was a girl on the plane who was flying to meet her biological father for the first time (she had been adopted at birth). That was a moment. 

She was so nervous that she spent the whole flight into Hometown telling the person next to her (they were in a row adjacent to mine) about her adoption, and so nervous that when we got to Hometown she went straight to the restroom. 

When I came out to baggage claim, my dad had been talking to the girl's dad, and so he wanted to linger to see the reunion, but then the girl didn't come out with the rest of the passengers. Once I got the story, I was able to tell them that she had indeed been on the flight and would probably only be a moment, and she was.

...

I remember flying into Hometown, that time when I was coming from Kenya, and recognizing the scene below me: the roads on which I used to drive kids to school when I worked in social services, the lake with the beach we went to in the summer.

Today, I would recognize everything still, but it's been a dozen years since I lived in Hometown. I've forgotten the names of many of the streets and the parks. It's strange how they leave you.

going

Most years, I end up flying to the Mitten right before Christmas, if not on Christmas Day. Last year, I flew on Christmas Day, and my sister flew on New Year's Eve (well, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, thanks to weather delays). 

This year, if all goes as planned, I will arrive in the Mitten four entire days before Christmas. That is half a week. That is time enough to bake cookies and decorate and wrap presents. It's a whole new and wonderful concept.

So I am packing, and running through the rain to the recycling bin with bags of recycling, and washing all those dishes in the sink. I'm hoping to leave the house in a condition that will not horrify me when I come back (good luck with that, right?). 

My flight is a red-eye, of course. They always seem to be, lately. Flights are expensive, and somehow one night of sleep always seems less important than a day of work or several hundred dollars.

And so, as always, I will pace the Gone West airport for a while, all the way down to the end where there are only a few flights a day - S. and I left from there when we went to Vietnam - and then back to the other end, where all the late night flights are boarding. I will spend a few uncomfortable hours upright in the air, and then a few delirious hours of half-sleep on my parents' comfortable couch, and then the house will be full of kids and hugs, and I will be home for Christmas.

glad

I heard an African filmmaker talk about a movie she made, and she said, "One thing about me is that I'm not afraid to be broke. A lot of people are really afraid of being broke, but I'm not. I could do what other filmmakers do. They apply for grants, mostly from France, but it can take three years to get the money that way, and I'm impatient."

I love this.

I especially love it right now, because I need it. 

...

I'm not glad to be far away from my family - that pang still comes. But this place. I can't describe what it means to me.

I'm so glad to be here.

I walk the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, and I'm so glad to be here.

I stand on the bustling streets downtown, and I'm so glad to be here.

I go see an African movie, and I'm so glad to be here.

When I think about it, this is the first place in this country where I've felt like I belong. I was 10-and-a-half when we left Liberia and moved to the Mitten, and I tell people sometimes that it was like Mean Girls, the movie, except that I never became the top Mean Girl. 

We moved to a place where everyone was the same, particularly in our religious community, and the penalty for being different was high. The place I came from didn't matter: no one cared about the tiny articles I found and cut out and kept, the ones that told me what was happening back in Liberia. I had to beat Liberia out of myself in order to be part of the sameness, in order to have friends, in order to be not-alone. (The guilt of doing that, by the way, when the place you are beating out of yourself is in the middle of a terrible war, is also bad.)

In college, I reached back and found Liberia again, and I held it close. I found other people who had lived in other countries. I took classes about African history and politics. I went back to the continent: to Kenya, to Liberia, and then, later, to Rwanda and Tanzania and Liberia and South Sudan and Ethiopia. But the truth about being an ex-pat in Africa is that you are always from somewhere else. I will always be white and US American. No one will ever mistake me for belonging there.

My first week in Gone West, I went to a New Year's Eve party. There was an Afro-beat band playing, and everyone dressed differently. There were women in sweatpants, in evening dresses, in white pants suits, in jeans, in long hippie skirts. There, finally, it didn't matter whether I'd figured out the right thing to wear. It didn't matter if I fit in. Gone West is sort of like that. It's a big enough city to accommodate all crowds, and yet it is not focused enough to have a thing, like the Big Apple has fashion and finance or LA has movies and suntans (I stereotype; I've never been to LA). Gone West is like a big overgrown town, where everyone does their own thing without much caring what everyone else does.

The relief of that pressure to fit in has given me the freedom to figure out who I want to be. I can wear what I want. I can be who I want. I can be a lawyer who is good at what I do without being too educated or too opinionated. I can do martial arts and wear dresses. I can be a single 30-something professional who has a full, happy life. I can be a woman who lived in several countries and misses them, but who is exactly where she wants to be.

It maybe isn't fair to the Mitten - my dad tells me how much it has changed, and how much bigger the world is there now - but when I go back, I feel those walls closing around me again. I feel too educated, too dressed up, too foreign, too single, too loud, too different. It puts me right back into that high school despair of feeling like I'll always be on the outside. Or at least, that I have to pretend to be someone else in order to be on the inside.

I've created my own inside, here, party of one, and I like who I am in it.

back

Very rarely do I write about writing. If I haven't posted anything here in a while, I figure that it's my blog, and I can write when and what I want to write. I find posts about why people haven't posted extremely boring, because I don't see any reason to make excuses about why you haven't written in a space you choose to write in or not. We are all busy. It happens. Move on.

But again, it's my blog, and I can write what I want to write, and so I will.

I haven't been able to write here for some time now, because I was too conflicted. 

I took a job back in the Mitten because ending up back there, someday, seemed inevitable, and why not now? I have a little niece and nephew to play with, and another of one or the other on the way. My parents are still young and mostly healthy. I was dating someone there. I got a job there. I was working so many hours in Gone West that it seemed to make sense to move now.

But then I went home for Christmas. The dating situation evaporated. I realized that the only people I know in that town are my family. Family is great, but I can't build my entire social life on them unless I want them to continue to be the only people I know, which means no other friends and no dating prospects. 

I moved to Gone West six years ago because I couldn't keep starting over and over and over the way my kind of international work required. I intended to stay in Gone West. Forever.

But then there were no jobs during the recession, and I moved to Universe City so that I could do the work I wanted to do. I didn't know anyone there. I started over.

Then I moved back to Gone West, even though many of my friends had moved away. I started over.

Moving back to the Mitten meant starting over again, for the third time in four years, the fourth time in six years, the - what, ninth? - time in 12 years.

I knew that I didn't want to go. I knew it through and through, but I convinced myself that it was my only real option, and so I got in my car and I went.

I left most of my belongings in Gone West, a security blanket telling me that I could come back. Just give it the summer, I told myself. Think of it like an internship.

But I kept finding reasons not to arrive. I spent six days on the road getting to the Mitten. I dallied with my sister in Mountain State. When I could have gone on to my parents' house, I stopped with friends in the Windy City. I stopped at an outlet mall just outside the state line.

And when I couldn't delay anymore, I sat in a parking lot one state over, unable to drive forward. "We'll find a way for you to go back right away," my sister promised me when I called her. "We'll find the money. Just go drop off some things at Mom and Dad's, spend the weekend with them, and we'll find a way for you to go back."

When I got to my parents' house, I sat out in the driveway, unable to go in. It wasn't until my mom came out and found me that I could get out of the car.

The only thing that made sense was to stay - I'd spent nearly all my savings (save retirement accounts) to get there.

But I couldn't stay. I couldn't start over again so soon.

It took me three days of driving (plus a day of weather delay in the Plains hanging out with some old Gone West friends) to get back to Gone West. I had to hold myself back from pushing on the accelerator harder and harder as I got close. (Admittedly, the speed limit is also lower here than in some other states *cough - Utah - cough*.)

I cried when I crossed the county line into Gone West's county, because I thought I'd lost all of this. I thought I had let it go. For something I value very deeply, yes, but lost it all the same. 

I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I'm still crying about it as I write. I wanted to be near my family. I still want that. I want to spend holidays with them - not just the big ones, but Mother's and Fathers Days, and the Fourth of July, and everything in between. I can't do that from here.

I have no money, not even enough to pay a month of rent. I can't afford to eat, but I have to do it anyway. There are a lot of lentils and rice in my future.

I don't have a job here. Tomorrow is Monday, and I'm going to get up without a job, and I'm going to go look for one. I'm not a person who likes not having a job. I like purpose. I like structure to my days. In a way, I'm starting over again anyway. 

Everything is uncertain, and I'm not sure what the ending will be. I'm trying to remind myself that, as terrifying as this is right now, it will be only a footnote, if that, in the story of my life. I'm trying to remind myself that I moved here without a job or a professional network in 2007.

I've learned some very important things. Among them is that I probably will end up back in the Mitten, but I have to be sure that I'm ready before I go, that I'm not just letting it happen. Another is (AGAIN - thought I'd learned this in 2007) that it isn't healthy to start over and over in too rapid a succession. Another is that you shouldn't move if it is even the slightest bit for a boy, especially the classic "I will put in no effort" sort of North American boy that makes all of us women crazy, especially if mostly you just felt like it was time for you to give up on all the qualities you really hoped your guy would have and settle for this one. Another is to save more money. Another is not to throw away all those clothes hangers or the drying rack (you'll regret it).

"This [moving back] is the most irresponsible thing I've ever done," I told my mom.

"If this is the most irresponsible thing you've ever done," she said, "you're doing pretty well."

Let's hope that turns out to be true.

so it goes

I was nice to myself this time: I scheduled my flights for two days before I had to go back to work. Plenty of time to get home, get some milk, relax, pack a little, and get some hours of work in on Sunday. 

Oh, the best-laid plans. 

We got to the airport ahead of the weather problems - we saw one rollover crash on the highway, but the vehicle occupants were walking away from it. 

By the time my flight to The Windy City was three hours delayed, I knew I wouldn't make it to Gone West. The last flight of the day out of TWC had already been cancelled, and I'd missed the earlier one.

"My advice is just to get to TWC," the agent said. "They'll prioritize the bigger flights out of a hub over the littler ones from places like this."

He didn't seem the most competent, though, and I wanted to fly out of the Mitten to avoid having my parents drive me so far, so I spent the entire drive home on hold with United. 

They never answered. 

Neither did they answer after I bought a train ticket to TWC, only to get an email that my flight was cancelled. 

Nor did they answer after I cancelled the train ticket and got an email rebooking me from TWC to Gone West... On Wednesday. At a time that was too early to take the train. 

No one here has six hours to drive me to TWC on Wednesday, and taking the train and then trying to figure out staying somewhere and then getting to the airport in the morning was not happening.

I finally hung up the phone at 3 am. At 9 am, I half-woke up, dialed again, and dozed next to my phone as it continued the horrible five note repeat that is United's hold music. 

I listened to 17 hours of that hold music between last night and tonight, and it's still ringing in my head. 

And I'm still flying out of Chicago on Wednesday. Later on Wednesday, yes, but still on Wednesday. 

Which cuts my finish work, pack, move time in State of Happiness to two weeks.

I'm just trying to ignore the rising feeling of panic and enjoy hours of catching up on Downton Abbey  with breaks to shovel the five inches of snow that accumulated between my dad shoveling the driveway in the morning and us ladies getting out there at 4 pm. 

made it

So that might have been a tad melodramatic. I mean, I went to law school, ended up with debt that I could never expect to pay back on my own, ever, at the salaries I've been making doing my save-the-world law jobs, and took the bar exam right as the economy tanked, so clearly that trumps any mere location mistake I could ever make. (PSA: DON'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL.)

I shoveled the driveway last night, and that put a lot of things into perspective. 

Then I rang in the new year sitting on my parents' couch, because I was supposed to pick my sister up at the airport at 7 something and then 10 something and then her flight got cancelled and there was nothing to do but text a good friend in Universe City. (My sister began the new year not sleeping on a cot in O'Hare airport. It makes me crazy when people say, "It could be worse!" as if that is any consolation when a person is feeling genuine human emotion like loneliness or heartbreak, and mostly I want to do violence upon the person of anyone who flippantly says such things, but there is a time and a place for it, and that is when you are in a warm house getting ready to go to bed in a bed that now contains the right kind of pillow, thanks to a trip to ike@, and the other person is trying to sleep on a cot in an airport. It could be worse.)

A. finally made it to Greater River City this morning, and my dad picked her up in time for the family Christmas party, so we ate and celebrated all afternoon. I got everything I wanted: a green and blue plaid shirt and a cozy cowl and some awesome mittens being the major high points. And I was delighted to have picked the hit of the day for four and five year olds: Magformers.

We went for a walk, all of us underdressed for 12 degree F weather, and when we finally, miserably, got back the kids had bright red cheeks and upon inspection, all potentially frost-bitten parts were red, not white. We made it. 

bleak

I feel like I should be blogging up a storm here in the Mitten. After all, I'm moving here, right? There is so much to figure out!

Deciding to move here may have been the biggest mistake of my life. 

I am not like this place, and it is not like me.

For the last year, I kept busy when I came to the Mitten. This holiday time I do not have the networking meetings or the one single friend I had made, and so I am facing the utter loneliness of living here head on. It is bleak.

The only thing I want to do is flee back to Gone West.

How can I possibly live here?

And yet, the pace that I have been keeping in Gone West is not sustainable, either. I don't have time to exercise, or to eat healthy food, or to be a sane person.

There is no good answer. There is bad, and there is bad. 

I keep wondering if I can un-quit my job, keep my room, cancel it all. I keep wondering if I should. 

endings

After work yesterday, a group of us went to the usual spot: a dive bar a block from the office. A friend from Universe City was in town, and he met us there. 

We moved on to pizza in a (supposedly) haunted building and played arcade games in a dark room full of blue light. My bubble guy died over and over, and I came in third of four in pac-man, ahead only of the friend so drunk that he kept moving the pac-man joystick aimlessly long after his pac-man had disappeared off the screen.

I think I lack the hand-eye coordination most male North Americans develop as children due to the video game craze.

After my friends drifted off to eat more food and return to their hotel, I stopped back at the office for my library books. 

Books in hand, I walked alone to the central square, where couples take pictures of themselves in front of the mammoth Christmas tree. I stood there for a few minutes, taking it all in. The air was warm enough that I didn't have to rush. 

It was beautiful: the fog, the tree, the lights, the people. I wondered if it was the last time I would ever stand in that square under the holiday lights.

Very often lately, I look at parts of this city that I love so much, and I wonder if this is the last time I'll see them.

When I flew to the Mitten, I wondered if this was the last time that I would fly out of Gone West when Gone West was home.

When the sun shines through the windows at the tea shop, I wonder if this is my last sunny day in Gone West. 

When I walk through the marble hallways of the building I've gone into just about every day I've ever worked in Gone West, I wonder if I've been in some of those rooms for the last time.

The fact is that some of my last times in this city have already happened. I resigned from my job yesterday, you see, because I took a job back in My (US American) Hometown. 

I'm moving back to the Mitten.

"It's like breaking up with someone when you are still madly in love with him," I told someone, yesterday.

"But you know it's the right thing to do," she said, as a statement, not a question.

It is.

11: cold

I'm not sure why it feels so very cold to me here in the Mitten. My roommates in Gone West keep the heat on 55 degrees - I get to turn it up to 60 for my shower - and while that is cold, it doesn't feel unbearable.

 

But here, for some reason, when it is 66 degrees in a house, I am downright freezing. Freezing. As in, give me a blanket and a comforter and I will sit on the couch in a huddle.

 

I think it's the outside walls. My parents' house is not so bad for this, because it is reasonably new and efficient and the walls are not icy to the touch, but in an older house, I literally start shivering. INSIDE THE HOUSE.

 

This leads me to something I have thought about many times in the last few years: how entirely different one's wardrobe is, depending on where you live.

 

I've been spoiled, in the last few years, living in a place that doesn't get that cold and where I have a car.

 

I don't need the snowboots I need in the Mitten. I don't need the many thick layers. I don't even have a good warm winter coat.

 

On the other hand, it rains, and so I have many pairs of waterproofed leather boots. I have lots of cardigan sweaters for work. I have sweatertights. I have varying levels of rain gear.

 

When I lived in Rwanda, I didn't have any of that. I had skirts and trousers for the day. I had a light raincoat. I had a fleece for evening. Other than running shoes, I had almost no close-toed shoes.

 

But right now, I live in a place where it rains and it doesn't get that cold. And I kind of forgot, coming to the Mitten, that it would be so very cold. I need to re-think the clothes I bring with me when I come here, and maybe I need to buy some warmer ones.

10: dinner

My mom and I made a big pot of T.'s blog version of West African peanut soup (we used to call this groundpea soup in Liberia, and my mom made it for years after we came back, out of a cookbook, but this version has sweet potato in it and all things with sweet potato are automatically and forever better), and we served it for Sunday dinner. 

The kiddos scorned it, of course. They survive on bread and fruit. But even my brother ate a big plate of it over rice, and when it came supper time, I ate it again. 

I had also seeded four pomegranates (the kids wouldn't touch those, either). My dad's great-aunt asked me if they were hard, and I said no.

Then I ate a forkful of them. 

"They are hard," she said. "I can hear them crunching." 

Is crunchy the same as hard?

My little niece was terrified of me two years ago, but now she takes my hand to walk down the street or through the woods. She drags me over to play snakes and dinosaurs with her. 

And the sun shines, and the days pass. 

9: past

I went to lunch today with a coworker from long, long ago. From the beginning, almost, before State of Happiness, before law school, before Rwanda. 

We talked about the people we knew back then: our coworkers, who we've mostly lost track of. The kids we worked with, who he has kept up on via the state prison website. He rattled off names that I, in leaving for Rwanda and a whole new life, had forgotten. 

We talked about whether the work we did back then gave those kids a chance, or whether it was just too little in the sad stories of their lives. 

We talked about how we ended up in the same career, despite our different paths to it. 

I feel so very different now than I was 11 years ago, the last time I saw him. And yet, he is the same person, only older and more grounded, and he seemed to think I was the same, too. 

He told me that I always have found the interesting people and interesting things to do, and it's funny, because I don't remember that in the girl I was, but then, she flew off to Rwanda alone on 8 weeks notice, so she must have been braver than I remember. 

8: cold

So, the Mitten is cold. It welcomed me with a little spattering of snow this morning, and my ears about froze off when my momma and I went for a walk in the dark.

When I flew in yesterday, everything was rust-colored under a grey sky. This morning, it was all grey and white. And this afternoon, it was back to blue and green and rust.

I got up yesterday morning at 3:45 am Gone West time, for a 4:30 cab to the airport. It felt extremely painfully early and, in fact, it was extremely painfully early.

It worked out great, though, when I fell asleep at 9:30 pm Mitten time last night and slept right on through the night. This is how to overcome jet lag, my people: wake up so insanely early that you can sleep whenever, wherever. Doooo it.

Now I am off to enjoy life off the Internet.