just a small family of three

This past weekend, Topher and I traveled to pick up someone very important...

Boomer!

Reuniting with the pup was so much awesome that I can't even explain.  She is currently passed out next to me here on the couch and we have spent the majority of the past few days snuggling, taking many long walks each day and generally loving every minute of her furry butt being back in our lives!

Here is the proof of the passed-out-ness:

And for the final photographic evidence of our past few days:

A Vlog for the Weekend

Cheers to your weekend! I knocked this vlog together this Saturday night (wild things happening here at the home of Kate and Topher, as you can tell) and hope you'll enjoy it, if you please.

It's mostly a rambling of nothings, like how I'm feeling two weeks after my arrival back in the U.S., what I'll be doing tomorrow (Sunday) and when you can expect to see pup Boomer's face 'round these parts!

So, how are you?

ten days home and all you get are these awesome iphone pics

What have you been up to this September so far? Drinking lots of pumpkin spice lattes? Enjoying cooler weather? Mourning summer? Smiling at the school buses and kids as they traipse home each afternoon, their backpacks bigger than 2/3 of their bodies?

Or is that just me?

These past ten days home have been...fantastic. Truly. The perfect balance of a social calendar and chill time.  A good avoidance of the boxes I need to unpack with all of my clothes (I'm going to do it tomorrow, I swear!) (I say this to myself every.single.night without fail.) Some time bumming around Washington, D.C., not enough time in Baltimore (yet!), a re-immersion into the U.S. retail world.  A good number of (unsuccessful) attempts to capture a new LinkedIn picture so that people who will work with me/want to hire me will actually recognize me.

Which brings me to this: coming home to fall is exactly what I would have picked if you would have asked me.  If I could just come home to America in the autumn, always, I will die happy.  Something about the chilly crispness in the air brightens my soul and sharpens my senses.  

It definitely has to do with back to school season, and all the joy that brings.  Back to school shopping was, quite possibly, my favorite part of my childhood.  Scouring the stores for the perfect new outfits.  Choosing a new schoolbag, to be used just for that year.  New notebooks, new pens, new pencils, a whole new set of markers and a whole new chance to organize and arrange and label and begin.

Many say that spring is the season of renewal.  Yet I say, for me, it's autumn which will always be the time of birth, of beginning, of beauty.

Perhaps it's the markedness of this fall that makes it especially poignant, as I feel like I too am shifting colors like the leaves and letting go of built-up frustrations, concerns, baggage like the trees let go of the dead and dying foliage each day, with each gust of wind.

On a lighter note, I am also chilled to the core.  I refuse to admit that I am cold, but I am.  I am cold. I said it.  I love fall, but these 70 degree days...man!

P.S. My new computer makes one picture out of several (see above) and it amazes me. These pictures were all magically uploaded via my phone which I can access on my computer for this blog and it amazes me. I am amazed.

Today, I...

Today, I drove the car around all by myself and did not hurt anyone or anything, though I am weirdly extra cautious on the road now.

Today, I ate a meal I've been dreaming about for two years: soup and salad.  And it was delicious.

Today, I received ninety-five cents in change and truly did not know what to do with it.  It stayed in my hand for a good five minutes.  And then my fingers smelled like coins?! And then I stashed it somewhere in my clutch.

Today, I rode the Metro for the first time in a good number of years and I was that dorky person smiling and looking around me because it was so very wonderful.  And then I was that person taking selfless on the Metro and today, I was ok with that.

Today, I discovered that Pumpkin Spice Lattes are kind of super sweet?! And my new coffee-drinking self struggled to get it all down. And it was five dollars and I am trying not to think about how very expensive that feels to me, five days out of Cambodia.

Today, I walked around Washington in a neck of woods where I interned...oh...eight years ago.  And I remembered it well and it was affirming and fun and fantastic, all wrapped up in one. I reveled in every step today.

Today, I visited Peace Corps Headquarters and took what is probably a shockingly terrible picture for an I.D. badge.

Today I felt even more like I was home. And today was great.

home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Quite officially, I am home again.

Returning 'home' after two years away, without even one small visit in the interim, is a tiny bit like waking from a very long sleep.  Frankly, I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle.  Things are mostly the same but a bit different too.  People have changed a bit and I've missed it all.  I'm not sure if I'm making the mistake of proclaiming to be a loyal subject when I say things like 'I don't know how to use my iPhone' or 'I'm sorry, I have no interest in watching that reality show you are saying is fantastic.'

Yet, home I am and everything is intimately familiar while also being strangely distant.  My house is still home, but Boomer isn't returned yet so if I don't think too hard, I expect to hear her little feet padding after me.  And then they don't and I'm confused, then sad, then weirded out how my brain 'expects' a noise in a familiar place.  The television holds little interest to me, no matter how hard I try to get into the shows I've missed.  And yet the hours drift by and I have no idea where they went.  

At the heart of it though, I feel so completely comfortable and happy.  I didn't experience much of a jet lag- I tried really hard to sleep in sync with America so that would happen smoothly. I still get tired pretty early- around 9:30 or 10 pm, but really, that's the time I was going to bed in Cambodia so I don't attribute that to jet lag.  I wake up at a normal time and drink yummy coffee.  My fingers find things that I thought I'd forgotten if I just let them lead and I don't over think it.  Case in point, I stood in my kitchen looking for the light switch for ten minutes last Sunday.  And then I turned the water on in the shower automatically later that morning, even though it's not the normal 'lefty loosey' situation; my hands just remembered because I did not think about it.

I have boxes upon boxes of things to unpack: clothes I asked Topher to leave for me to go through and other household items that he got tired of unpacking.  I went upstairs to start that process yesterday, saw all that it entailed, and walked right back downstairs.  Well, first I showered and did my hair.  At 3 pm. You know.

Which, I can't really tell you how things have been going without mentioning the small change in hair I decided to go with as I headed home.  Wrapping up chapters and all of that, while opening new ones. I'm a big believer in changing up your style as your lifestyle changes.  So, I decided to mark the occasion of ending my time living in ankle-length skirts and ponytails with a style that doesn't match any of my current makeup and, frankly, won't allow for a ponytail. So, here we are!