Home again, Home again, Jiggety Jig

Well, boys and girls, I'm home and happy to be so. The Family had done a nice job of keeping the house together and The Spouse was preparing a lovely dinner of pork tenderloin in mustard sauce when I arrived Sunday evening. It felt good to sleep in my own bed and wake up in my own little house.

Yesterday was a loss. I wasn't exactly jet lagged as it's only a two hour difference. But there was a kind of slog about my day. Probably because of the travel on Sunday. Because let me tell you, it is not easy to get an airplane up, keep it up and land it safely - twice - just through sheer force of will! It's exhausting, actually. Plus, on the first leg there was a toddler in the seat in front of me who was just distressed the whole way. Poor thing cried and screamed pretty much for two hours. I felt sorry for her and for her folks. (Frankly, I felt a little jealous. I think crying and screaming are perfectly normal reactions to being confined in a heavy metal object that is expected to hurtle through the air 35,000 miles above the earth. But if I'd been carrying on like that someone probably would have smacked me).

So anyway, I was kinda tired, plus I kept checking CNN to see if I would ever be able to visit New Orleans. My heart goes out to those people in the South, it truly does. But I'm not sure I get them. We have earthquakes in the West but we have building codes that mitigate the damage. In the midwest everyone has storm cellars. It just seems to me that if you live in a place that has a "season" for a recurring natural disaster, you'd do something to protect yourself. Like live underground in concrete bunkers. I realize that doesn't exactly jibe with the notion of gracious antebellum homes that we picture when thinking of the South. But most people there aren't living at Tara anyway. I think there should be a federal law that prohibits living in a double-wide in a hurricane zone. But that's just me.

I'm looking forward to being more productive today. School starts in just one week. We need to get The Child's room cleaned up. We need to get her computer back on line. We need to try on all her uniform bits and see what fits and what doesn't. We need to return books to the library. I need to sweep and mop and get some fruits and vegetables into the house. I want to do some baking. I want to have a meeting with The Child about routines and start putting together her own little Control Journal (www.flylady.net) for the school year. And, it occurs to me that I haven't issued an evite yet for the annual Labor Day BBQ. Plus, I still have tidbits of packing to undo and put away. In short, order must be restored and I'm the gal to do it. I'll just get myself another cup of coffee first...