You *can* go home again...unfortunately

This afternoon I leave for another trip home to Cowtown. (And this time maybe I *will* blog from or about the scary giant cross in Effingham, Illinois, where I always stop. Remind me to take Bullock's digital camera with me.) I am NOT looking forward to it.

Actually, scratch that. I'm looking forward to seeing Virgo Sis, who's there through Saturday, and meeting her kitty for the first time. Apparently Sis's cat spent most of their entire roadtrip on Sis's lap! She sounds just adorable. And I'm looking forward to seeing Fast Fizzy and the Fizzy Family. And I'll also be seeing my high school BFF. We really are still friends despite the fact that she's a preppy conservative Catholic and I'm, well, none of the above. I kind of appreciate our differences sometimes and celebrate our continued similarities. I missed her on the last trip -- I really should have called her and asked her to come to the memorial, but I didn't want to burden her -- and I'm looking forward to catching up with her.

As for Dad and home -- not so much. I haven't been back since Mom died and I'm not looking forward to being in that house without her in it. The reason why I'm going back is to collect my old belongings that I really want to keep (beloved childhood books, my prom dress, my old dollhouse, my Star Wars toy collection, etc.) those things of Mom's that were meant to go to me. Why so soon? Because from the moment Mom died (and I'm not exaggerating -- I swear it's the first thing he said when I came back from the hospital and told him Mom was dead) and every day since, Dad has been saying over and over again, "I've got to think about selling this house. You kids need to come get your things and whatever you want from your mother." Of course, he's not actually going to get this process rolling any time soon -- and frankly, that house cannot be sold with him still in it (if you've ever been shown a house that old people had been living in for 50+ years, you know what I mean) -- but that won't stop him from pestering us. A few days after Mom's death, when I said, "Dad, give us some time," he yelled, "The hell with that! I'm on MY time now!" (I really wanted to say, "When has it ever NOT been your time, you selfish old fool?") Of course, collecting my stuff probably won't stop him from pestering me, given his failing memory. Every week we have the same phone conversation in which I say something about packing or unpacking and he asks, "Did you move?" And every time I remind him I sent him my new address. If he weren't so damn pathetic I'd be even angrier with him.

And I'm really sick of organizing, sorting, packing, unpacking, and storing things. Really, really sick of it. I want to be settled in again. I want to get back to work. I haven't done a lick of real work since the semester ended and I've lost all momentum. I keep wanting to comment on people's posts on where the books go (office or home -- Flavia's question) or how much writing they're getting done, but it's all depressing me because I've been so disconnected from work for the past two months. That's also the reason why I haven't done much substantive blogging -- and my readership has fallen off as a result. I just don't have much to say, unless you're interesting in hearing about my methods for packing the dishes!

I'm taking the computer with me and the iPod (with the cool new hot pink tube that Tiruncula sent me -- thanks, Tiruncula!), so I hope to escape to blog, and when Dad's getting to me, I'll just pop the iPod earbuds in. If things are really bumming me out, maybe I'll try to lighten things with nostalgia blogging -- my old room is a veritable palimpsest of my life since I spent the first 18 years of it in one place, and there's some funny shit from my teen years. Yeah, I should defintely take the digital camera with me!

And since I'm only taking a weekend to go through all that crap, it will be a lightening fast exercise in "How much does this really mean to me?" It'll be just like those reality show where they throw someone's entire life into a wood chopper or sell it at a garage sale!

Well, anyway, wish me luck!