Good to be home.

I love my family and I love spending time with them, but two weeks is a long time to be away from my own home and my own routine. Not that I have much of a routine. But part of it is NOT living out of a suitcase, and knowing where I'm going to sleep every night.

I layed really low while in New England. Spent most of my time at mom's house helping her out as she recently had back surgery. My threshold in that department is usually reached after about 3 days, but I think I did a good job. Only one confrontation (and it was HUGE, involving my brothers as well) - and it was necessary. Life takes its turns, and sometimes concerned family members need to say something for fear of what will happen if no one says anything. I know I'm being cryptic here. Let's just say that we are worried about our mother - that we all want to see her healthy, self-sufficient, and happy. It's hard to watch a process of self destruction... and it's hard to know if you are doing the right thing, if you are really seeing what you're seeing... especially when you live 2,000 miles away.

Enough of that.

During motorcycle weekend in Laconia (great people watching always!) I went to a wedding of a friend I've known since we were toddlers, basically. I brought my mother as my "guest" - and we both had a great time. We know the entire family - and at the wedding we were seated at a table with the bride's parents, grandmother, aunt, and uncle. That night we stayed at the resort and hung out with the family into the evening as well. I felt like shit driving home Sunday with all the bikers. We stopped at the Banana Republic Factory Store in Tilton and my mother was in the mood for some bigtime shopping. I had to ask for a chair because I thought I was going to pass out.

What else. I got to see my friend Nancy, her beautiful daughter, and her new baby bump - that was fun. We went to Hampton (good old Hampton!) beach and I screwed up because I parked at the wrong end of the beach and dumped all of my quarters into a meter - and THEN I drove to the other end and parked without feeding the meter. That would've been great if my dad's car got towed, but it didn't. Not even a ticket. The next night I went over to her house for a real visit (without chasing a toddler around a beach). I called her because I was going to Kimball's on my way there so I thought it would be polite to ask what she wants. She was like nothing, it'll melt. Well, I was going to eat melted ice cream at her place, so was she sure? Well, why don't you just get me... a double day sundae with coffee oreo and peanut butter cup ice cream, and with hot fudge and strawberry sauce. Ok pregnant girl!

Had dinner with grampy, went to cruise night with Mr. Bob, sat at my brother's pool in Brighton, had breakfast with my cousin and his little one. Oh, and I got a beautiful digital camera - big brother took the first picture...

ok, so I tried to post it but I forget how and don't want to deal with it right now.

I also got to go to my great aunt's condo and look through her things. It is amazing what you can learn about a person after she has passed away. Just from things she kept - and it brings out a lot of questions I wish I could ask her. I knew already that she was interested in ancestry and geneology, but I didn't realize just HOW interested she was. Which is awesome, because I'm interested in it too, and I can piece things together just from the records she kept. She had a box of 50 pairs of long white gloves in her closet, never worn... Why? I found out that she collected coins. And that when she was a schoolgirl, teachers handed out hankerchiefs and put safety pins on them for good behavior points... yup, she kept her hankys. Never used any (but I found a box of about 50 of them, probably gifts).

My mother told me I could take whatever I want. I took the pie tins, kitchen timer, pastry blender, and pie server. Yup. My question to myself was, what means something, and what will I use? And I remember every holiday my great aunts brought pie. Pie, pie, pie. And I also found Gert's recipe for lemon squares. Yum, snatched that. And a collection of old keys. Little keys for trunks, suitcases, cabinets, etc. There must be 50 of them, how quirky is that! I had to have them. Now they are sitting in a little china bowl on my coffee table. Big brother remembers that in their old house, there were random little keys everywhere. My mother found a little safety deposit box, locked. (I'm sure I have the key) - I wonder if at their old house the important keys were hidden with the unimportant ones?

My flight back was almost as annoying as my flight there. I was flying on two different airlines, so I got dropped off at one terminal at Logan only to stand in line and find out that I needed to be at a completely different airline counter, about a 15 minute walk away. Glad Mr. Bob dropped me off NICE and early! So I walked, checked in, and all was good. Except that when I got to LaGuardia I had to come out of security, get on a bus, and check in again at the other airline counter. I was wondering why my layover was over 2 hours! But as I sat and waited for my flight I was right near the runways and I got to watch planes take off and land every 90 seconds. (Well really every 45 - take off... land... take off... land... take off... land.) It was so cool. Then there was a 3 minute break and all of a sudden they started taking off and landing on different runways! How in the world do the flight control centers keep track??

Also, I got to see Mr. Trump's plane parked next to the runway. A big ol' purple jet with the word TRUMP written on it. Yikes.

Got back to Denver and literally crashed for the entire afternoon. The boy had to work and called me 6 times because he wanted me to come have lunch with him and I never woke up. Oh well... family takes a lot out of me!