BACK on the EASTERN SIDE of THINGS...

We're back on the East Coast, and we had a wonderful time.

It did involve seeing more people than I could really handle in two weeks--new faces almost every day, usually at lunch, and then off to one show or another most evenings--with the result that I came home exhausted from vacation, as I tend to be, and really wanted to take a week off to recover, as I tend to do.

I also lost my temper with the Goat on the last day, for something that was only partly his fault, and which I should have been able to deal with, but I had just walked into what I had thought would be a lunch on a lake and had turned out to be a work-day at the lake with a lunch break...

So I wasn't at my best...

And then yesterday morning, as I drove north from the Big Woods, I realized that I had just let my sense of responsibility towards my mother and my daughter lead me into spending the last weekend before school starts away from the Goat. Which I would never have done if I'd thought it through. When I finally got around to calling to grovel and humbly abase myself about it--not really something I could do with either of the ladies around--he seemed pretty calm, but I could tell he had not been too pleased to begin with... He deals with things better than some people I could mention.

I had a really vivid dream the night before I left the Big Woods: all that happened in it was that Isis had a perfectly friendly, normal conversation with me. However, when I swung by to pick up the Favorite Daughter, she and Isis were loading a half-size refrigerator onto the top of the cellar stairs. I got out of the car to help when the FD went in to get her things, but Isis had gone down the stairs into the cellar as soon as I drove in, and stayed there until I left.

There are dreams... and then there's reality...

I did get things done around the place for my Mom this weekend--like beefing up her screen doors to keep the squirrels out of the birdfeed--but if nothing else, I saw to it that my daughter spent some time with her, as she has been promising to do all summer, but hadn't done yet. But none of it weighs very heavily in the balance compared to how terrible I feel about not having been there for the Man I Love.

Why am I so consistently stupid?
Is there something to do about that?

Well, there's always the next time. So far, at least, he seems to find it all worthwhile. I guess we all take some putting up with.

Hang in there, all.
C