kiwords

Sorry to disappear! Here I was, supposed to come home, all renewed and refreshed, possibly full of wise insights I'd gleaned from my time alone (note to self: don't expect a great deal of new insight when your company is...you. You pretty much already know what you have to say). Instead, I fell completely silent, leaving a few people wondering if I ever came back at all.

Yes, friends, yes, I came home. I was delighted with my well-rested self, and ever so happy to see my loving family, and ready to tackle love and life at home...and nursing a tiny tickle of a wee cold in my throat.

Can you guess what happened next? Can you? I got SICK. MISERABLE. Coughing, snotting, bleary-eyed, disgustingly ill. Clay must have gazed upon my glassy-eyed, mouth-breathing beauty and patted himself on the back for having the idea to give me a weekend away. "Why didn't I do this sooner?" he asked himself, I'm sure, "when I sent away my lovely but stressed wife and got back this oozing swamp creature of a life partner?"

The best part, of course, was the hourly coughing jags that kept me up all night. Because we all love those, don't we? But then Sophia got in on the act. Not with the cold, but with sleep follies. Just now I was talking to Clay about Sophia's sleep problems, and I suggested maybe it's time to see a sleep specialist. He said, "Why? She doesn't sleep." Oh, it's a good thing I think he's almost as funny as he does.

So anyhow, one of the flavors of Sophia's sleep problems is where she hallucinates. Yes, really. So there we are, with Sophia tucked in between us (what, you're going to leave the hallucinating child all alone with her spiders?), randomly slapping the bugs off our faces. When she settles down, I am gripped by a coughing spasm. I fumble for my cough drops, water, ANYTHING to make it stop, tears streaming. Sophia glares at me, her hands clapped firmly over her ears. Because *I* am the annoying one to sleep with here. On the far edge of the bed, clinging to the generous six inches of sleeping space he's left with, Clay is thanking God that he ever met me and traded the bachelor's life for all this joy.

I have to say, though, that despite the fact that I am currently so tired that I could happily sleep for a month, I still feel better for having taken the time away. On a level that has nothing to do with sleep debt, I really am refreshed. It's good to know my family can survive without me. It's great to know they really don't want to. Something about getting away from home, just for a bit, clarifies for me just where home is.