Hey, yeah. There's no place like home. I wanted to kiss the front porch when we arrived yesterday. I took a huge turn for the worse after Day 8, below. Woke up Day 9 with all the same headache, cough, sore throat issues as the previous few days. But the recipe now included nausea, vomiting, and severe vertigo. (Suffice it to say that a weeks' worth of gourmet meals resulted in not even a tenth of a pound gained on the scale today.) I was a sick puppy. Could not function. Poor Sparky had to do all the packing of the suitcases, the cottage, loading of the car, and driving to Portland about 4 hours away. When we arrived, it was all I could do to make my way to the room where I basically spent the next 18 hours in bed. I was reading a Linda Greenlaw book earlier in the week where she spoke of the old sailor's adage about seasickness: There's one thing worse than being so sick you want to die, and that's knowing you probably won't. Pretty much explains how how I felt.
Anyway, yesterday morning was a bit better and after about 48 hours sans food, I was able to eat again. Gingerly. We drove the rest of the way home and arrived here around 4:30. Unpacked, relaxed, and decided to hit the hay early so as to be rested and ready for the return to work. We retired at 9:45.
I next opened my eyes at midnight.
WIDE AWAKE.
Still that way at 1:00. And 2:00. 2:30. 3:05. 3:50. 4:15. 4:35.
At 4:45 I decided to get up, an hour and 15 minutes early, but HEY . . . since I was wide awake at this point, it would feel better than having the alarm clock smash me into consciousness at 6:00 if I happened to fall asleep at this point. What would have been welcome at 2:00 became very undesirable at near 5:00.
So I gathered myself and launched into the dark kitchen, and three steps in my right foot hits what I try to deny is warm cat puke, but when I turn on the light, even at the dimmer switch's half-watt strength I can tell that my toes were pretty good at identifying precisely what they stepped in. GREAT start to my day.
In the end, it wasn't all that bad. I went to work early, struggled to get the laptop there to rise from the near-dead state it had lapsed into while I was away, and 90 minutes later, I managed to be productive. Am now caught up, pretty much recovered, feeling like . . . what vacation? I had a VACATION? You're kidding me, right? I did NOT just use up 6 vacation days for that?
But you know what? We had a few spectacular days and some good experiences even when the weather wasn't stellar. It was worth it for the pictures and the hugs and the memories we got.
True, there's no place like home, but there's also no place quite like being up in that tornado.
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