back at the ranch

Returned to where I usually live (can't exactly call it "home", both because it doesn't feel like it and because of the second post from yesterday). Hiding out from - or, more accurately, fleeing in advance of - what's supposed to be a major winter storm. It'd damned well better be one, since my vacation's a day short now and I'm in a half-cold house with two crazed cats and a ton of dirty laundry.

In a way, it's better than being home. It just hurt to be there. It hurt to leave, of course. Always does - I always cry, like a freak, a baby, someone who should know better but doesn't. I haven't lived there since 1992. But every time I leave the state after a vacation (even a couple of days) I cry. It's the only place that's ever felt like a part of me. But this trip was tough. I was more melancholy than usual. Moping. No one mentioned it, though, so I may have done a decent job of keeping it to myself. (It's too much ego to imagine that they just don't care enough to notice.)

I read 8 books over the 13 days that I was away. Certainly would have read more if I'd managed to bring better ones along. The House on Eccles Road by Judith Kitchen has potential but is pretty plodding even for a short book. In the Stacks, an anthology of stories about libraries and librarians, is way more esoteric and dull than I'd imagined. (Why must I give the profession more credit than it deserves?!) And The Dictionary of Failed Relationships seemed edgy and fun when I read the blurb - in truth, it's sort of trite and lame. I'm through "D" and have also read "Q" and "T". (There are 26 stories, one for each letter of the alphabet.)

I want to turn the thermostat up to about 72 degrees, eat sour cream & onion potato chips until I'm very sick of them, and either read my old journals (always good for making myself feel worse, i.e. wallowing in self-pity/disgust/woe) or cry. Instead, it looks like a night of the Food Network and Mary Balogh's Slightly Married.

What a stupid title.