So very home.

So very fried. Oh well. Comes with the territory.

I will be returning phone calls tomorrow AM.

I will also being sleeping as much as possible as I am traveling again tomorrow night, arriving in Oakland after 9:00 PM and then driving up to Rohnert Park after that. I am still working the angle of getting my hair very prettified on Saturday AM, but if I can't lock that down tomorrow, I'm going to have to run out and get the bangs trimmed tomorrow as well. I economized this last month and the result is less than stellar - to say the least.

Taking bottles of oolong tea and onigiri on airline flights is the absolute best revenge on cheap-ass airline cutbacks. That reminds me....

caitlin, I finally got to that "Learn to Knit" book of yours - on the aircraft, parked at the gate in Seattle this afternoon during a one hour delay due to maintenance issues. w00t! (It's not that bad, except I have to build some really different muscles in my hands to do this well. It's a good thing we were nearly alone in the plane - talk about looking like a total spaz.)

I was wondering how it would be. Y'see, this part of Canada was a place Cliff and I had been, once. What would it feel like, going back someplace like that?

Poor Jim - if he had a nickle for every time I said "last time I was here - " - he wouldn't have needed change for another soda. But that wasn't the worst part.

If I've said it once, I'll elaborate on it - one of the last things I ever expected to come back and bite me in the ass was how incredibly useless my own experiences are to anyone else. And frankly, to anyone else? Fecking boring in the bargain.

So skip this if you've heard it before.

And I don't know why I thought that last trip to Canada wasn't that long ago - but when I had to sit down and think about it, I really began to feel old and used up.

We were there in 1987. Think a moment. Matter of fact, go look up a few profiles on my friends list - if you really want confirmation that I'm older (and a little decrepit).

That's eighteen years ago.

I just blinked. I swear it.

It was okay until we went to Lake Louise on Monday. We turned a corner, and hit the intersection - and oh. There was the hotel we'd stayed in. There was the shopping center where I had lusted over a sweatshirt and hadn't bought it - and always regretted it. Both of the gas stations were still there. Nothing more, no less. A couple of the businesses had changed hands, but everyone recalled who had been there the last time I was there - it's a very small town.

I insisted on having lunch up at the chateau. It had been closed, under renovation the last time I was there - and I had always felt cheated.

They had added two-thirds more building - and one of the waitresses remembered the closure. It was being renovated for the 1988 Winter Olympics. She remembered. I almost started crying right there and then. It was the only thing that anyone remembered about my last visit there. I was the only one who remembered any part of us actually being there at all. There was nothing left to show anyone else.

We were here. It wasn't my imagination - and again, I'm bitterly reminded of just how few people are left on the ground who remember Cliff and I, and still speak to me. If I want to talk to anyone from that era, these days, I have to initiate the call. People know Cliff now only through what I tell them about him. And at work? I keep reminding them that was married once before - but they only know Jim.

So anything Cliff and I did seems like a bit of fiction on some days - long time ago in another life. It only lives inside my head. Trying to engage anyone else to express that part of my history is difficult - because they only hear the "late husband" part. I'm just not good at telling them the rest. It takes time to get the textures down - and most people don't have the patience. Really, it's not their fault.

I would have my last big depressive issue in 1988. This trip in 1987 was before that. It was before we moved out of the apartment I rented before we married - less than 600 SF, and we never had a couch while we lived there. Just desks. And a dresser in the living room. To say the least - there was so much more.

We were supposed to go to Easter Island, but Eastern Airlines went out of business and there was no way to book another carrier and we had to forget the whole thing. This trip to Canada was the consolation prize - at least we got to leave the country.

I was 26 years old.

Another life, but I lived it. Cliff was the one who wanted to vanish and be forgotten when he died. I'm insulted, in a way, that he's getting his way in this - and it's only the natural course of events.

At the time, this had been a trip full of New. We burned ten rolls of slides (no digital cameras then) in three days - our whole stock brought with us - because everything was so incredible, we had to take pictures of it.

It was before the wall came down in Germany. It was before so many things.

There's no trace of us there anymore. It's time past, gone and forgotten. I didn't even recognize places we'd been before, except by name. Until we turned that one corner.

All of such little value to anyone. Just memories.

So you make new ones. What choice do you have?

*sighs* There's just something Not Right about this, and I can't put my finger on it. And I'm seriously wondering if returning to Switzerland isn't going to be the Big Mistake of the decade.

I didn't see anyplace Cliff would have been in this trip - he wasn't hiding around the bend, or waiting at a trailhead or scoffing at my shopping habits. There are days where I swear he sits behind me and whispers in my ear - or when I'm certain he's been around, because Things Happen. But not here. Just. Gone. Like it never happened - and maybe that's it.

He was Big - in my life. Something so influential can't disappear like this. Not supposed to. Not without even a ghost to haunt the place.

Am I supposed to forget, and just overwrite the memories? Is that the lesson? What I did before age 37 doesn't count? He didn't count? I can't buy it.

The time is different, hell - I'm different. Much stronger, resilient and wise.

Dammit, we were supposed to go to Easter Island. He never made it. And I'm still here.

Jim absolutely loved Lake Louise and all the places we went in Canada. We have officially dubbed 2005 the Year of the Bear, and there will much more on the why of that later - but his take is completely separate, and the experience is different, entirely different. The priorities are not the same - the interests are not the same. The trip was not the same kind of trip.

It smarts a bit when I can draw the distinctions so clearly, I guess.

But it really was a long time ago.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. So there.

Crap.

So very home.

So very fried. Oh well. Comes with the territory.

I will be returning phone calls tomorrow AM.

I will also being sleeping as much as possible as I am traveling again tomorrow night, arriving in Oakland after 9:00 PM and then driving up to Rohnert Park after that. I am still working the angle of getting my hair very prettified on Saturday AM, but if I can't lock that down tomorrow, I'm going to have to run out and get the bangs trimmed tomorrow as well. I economized this last month and the result is less than stellar - to say the least.

Taking bottles of oolong tea and onigiri on airline flights is the absolute best revenge on cheap-ass airline cutbacks. That reminds me....

caitlin, I finally got to that "Learn to Knit" book of yours - on the aircraft, parked at the gate in Seattle this afternoon during a one hour delay due to maintenance issues. w00t! (It's not that bad, except I have to build some really different muscles in my hands to do this well. It's a good thing we were nearly alone in the plane - talk about looking like a total spaz.)

I was wondering how it would be. Y'see, this part of Canada was a place Cliff and I had been, once. What would it feel like, going back someplace like that?

Poor Jim - if he had a nickle for every time I said "last time I was here - " - he wouldn't have needed change for another soda. But that wasn't the worst part.

If I've said it once, I'll elaborate on it - one of the last things I ever expected to come back and bite me in the ass was how incredibly useless my own experiences are to anyone else. And frankly, to anyone else? Fecking boring in the bargain.

So skip this if you've heard it before.

And I don't know why I thought that last trip to Canada wasn't that long ago - but when I had to sit down and think about it, I really began to feel old and used up.

We were there in 1987. Think a moment. Matter of fact, go look up a few profiles on my friends list - if you really want confirmation that I'm older (and a little decrepit).

That's eighteen years ago.

I just blinked. I swear it.

It was okay until we went to Lake Louise on Monday. We turned a corner, and hit the intersection - and oh. There was the hotel we'd stayed in. There was the shopping center where I had lusted over a sweatshirt and hadn't bought it - and always regretted it. Both of the gas stations were still there. Nothing more, no less. A couple of the businesses had changed hands, but everyone recalled who had been there the last time I was there - it's a very small town.

I insisted on having lunch up at the chateau. It had been closed, under renovation the last time I was there - and I had always felt cheated.

They had added two-thirds more building - and one of the waitresses remembered the closure. It was being renovated for the 1988 Winter Olympics. She remembered. I almost started crying right there and then. It was the only thing that anyone remembered about my last visit there. I was the only one who remembered any part of us actually being there at all. There was nothing left to show anyone else.

We were here. It wasn't my imagination - and again, I'm bitterly reminded of just how few people are left on the ground who remember Cliff and I, and still speak to me. If I want to talk to anyone from that era, these days, I have to initiate the call. People know Cliff now only through what I tell them about him. And at work? I keep reminding them that was married once before - but they only know Jim.

So anything Cliff and I did seems like a bit of fiction on some days - long time ago in another life. It only lives inside my head. Trying to engage anyone else to express that part of my history is difficult - because they only hear the "late husband" part. I'm just not good at telling them the rest. It takes time to get the textures down - and most people don't have the patience. Really, it's not their fault.

I would have my last big depressive issue in 1988. This trip in 1987 was before that. It was before we moved out of the apartment I rented before we married - less than 600 SF, and we never had a couch while we lived there. Just desks. And a dresser in the living room. To say the least - there was so much more.

We were supposed to go to Easter Island, but Eastern Airlines went out of business and there was no way to book another carrier and we had to forget the whole thing. This trip to Canada was the consolation prize - at least we got to leave the country.

I was 26 years old.

Another life, but I lived it. Cliff was the one who wanted to vanish and be forgotten when he died. I'm insulted, in a way, that he's getting his way in this - and it's only the natural course of events.

At the time, this had been a trip full of New. We burned ten rolls of slides (no digital cameras then) in three days - our whole stock brought with us - because everything was so incredible, we had to take pictures of it.

It was before the wall came down in Germany. It was before so many things.

There's no trace of us there anymore. It's time past, gone and forgotten. I didn't even recognize places we'd been before, except by name. Until we turned that one corner.

All of such little value to anyone. Just memories.

So you make new ones. What choice do you have?

*sighs* There's just something Not Right about this, and I can't put my finger on it. And I'm seriously wondering if returning to Switzerland isn't going to be the Big Mistake of the decade.

I didn't see anyplace Cliff would have been in this trip - he wasn't hiding around the bend, or waiting at a trailhead or scoffing at my shopping habits. There are days where I swear he sits behind me and whispers in my ear - or when I'm certain he's been around, because Things Happen. But not here. Just. Gone. Like it never happened - and maybe that's it.

He was Big - in my life. Something so influential can't disappear like this. Not supposed to. Not without even a ghost to haunt the place.

Am I supposed to forget, and just overwrite the memories? Is that the lesson? What I did before age 37 doesn't count? He didn't count? I can't buy it.

The time is different, hell - I'm different. Much stronger, resilient and wise.

Dammit, we were supposed to go to Easter Island. He never made it. And I'm still here.

Jim absolutely loved Lake Louise and all the places we went in Canada. We have officially dubbed 2005 the Year of the Bear, and there will much more on the why of that later - but his take is completely separate, and the experience is different, entirely different. The priorities are not the same - the interests are not the same. The trip was not the same kind of trip.

It smarts a bit when I can draw the distinctions so clearly, I guess.

But it really was a long time ago.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. So there.

Crap.

So very home.

So very fried. Oh well. Comes with the territory.

I will be returning phone calls tomorrow AM.

I will also being sleeping as much as possible as I am traveling again tomorrow night, arriving in Oakland after 9:00 PM and then driving up to Rohnert Park after that. I am still working the angle of getting my hair very prettified on Saturday AM, but if I can't lock that down tomorrow, I'm going to have to run out and get the bangs trimmed tomorrow as well. I economized this last month and the result is less than stellar - to say the least.

Taking bottles of oolong tea and onigiri on airline flights is the absolute best revenge on cheap-ass airline cutbacks. That reminds me....

caitlin, I finally got to that "Learn to Knit" book of yours - on the aircraft, parked at the gate in Seattle this afternoon during a one hour delay due to maintenance issues. w00t! (It's not that bad, except I have to build some really different muscles in my hands to do this well. It's a good thing we were nearly alone in the plane - talk about looking like a total spaz.)

I was wondering how it would be. Y'see, this part of Canada was a place Cliff and I had been, once. What would it feel like, going back someplace like that?

Poor Jim - if he had a nickle for every time I said "last time I was here - " - he wouldn't have needed change for another soda. But that wasn't the worst part.

If I've said it once, I'll elaborate on it - one of the last things I ever expected to come back and bite me in the ass was how incredibly useless my own experiences are to anyone else. And frankly, to anyone else? Fecking boring in the bargain.

So skip this if you've heard it before.

And I don't know why I thought that last trip to Canada wasn't that long ago - but when I had to sit down and think about it, I really began to feel old and used up.

We were there in 1987. Think a moment. Matter of fact, go look up a few profiles on my friends list - if you really want confirmation that I'm older (and a little decrepit).

That's eighteen years ago.

I just blinked. I swear it.

It was okay until we went to Lake Louise on Monday. We turned a corner, and hit the intersection - and oh. There was the hotel we'd stayed in. There was the shopping center where I had lusted over a sweatshirt and hadn't bought it - and always regretted it. Both of the gas stations were still there. Nothing more, no less. A couple of the businesses had changed hands, but everyone recalled who had been there the last time I was there - it's a very small town.

I insisted on having lunch up at the chateau. It had been closed, under renovation the last time I was there - and I had always felt cheated.

They had added two-thirds more building - and one of the waitresses remembered the closure. It was being renovated for the 1988 Winter Olympics. She remembered. I almost started crying right there and then. It was the only thing that anyone remembered about my last visit there. I was the only one who remembered any part of us actually being there at all. There was nothing left to show anyone else.

We were here. It wasn't my imagination - and again, I'm bitterly reminded of just how few people are left on the ground who remember Cliff and I, and still speak to me. If I want to talk to anyone from that era, these days, I have to initiate the call. People know Cliff now only through what I tell them about him. And at work? I keep reminding them that was married once before - but they only know Jim.

So anything Cliff and I did seems like a bit of fiction on some days - long time ago in another life. It only lives inside my head. Trying to engage anyone else to express that part of my history is difficult - because they only hear the "late husband" part. I'm just not good at telling them the rest. It takes time to get the textures down - and most people don't have the patience. Really, it's not their fault.

I would have my last big depressive issue in 1988. This trip in 1987 was before that. It was before we moved out of the apartment I rented before we married - less than 600 SF, and we never had a couch while we lived there. Just desks. And a dresser in the living room. To say the least - there was so much more.

We were supposed to go to Easter Island, but Eastern Airlines went out of business and there was no way to book another carrier and we had to forget the whole thing. This trip to Canada was the consolation prize - at least we got to leave the country.

I was 26 years old.

Another life, but I lived it. Cliff was the one who wanted to vanish and be forgotten when he died. I'm insulted, in a way, that he's getting his way in this - and it's only the natural course of events.

At the time, this had been a trip full of New. We burned ten rolls of slides (no digital cameras then) in three days - our whole stock brought with us - because everything was so incredible, we had to take pictures of it.

It was before the wall came down in Germany. It was before so many things.

There's no trace of us there anymore. It's time past, gone and forgotten. I didn't even recognize places we'd been before, except by name. Until we turned that one corner.

All of such little value to anyone. Just memories.

So you make new ones. What choice do you have?

*sighs* There's just something Not Right about this, and I can't put my finger on it. And I'm seriously wondering if returning to Switzerland isn't going to be the Big Mistake of the decade.

I didn't see anyplace Cliff would have been in this trip - he wasn't hiding around the bend, or waiting at a trailhead or scoffing at my shopping habits. There are days where I swear he sits behind me and whispers in my ear - or when I'm certain he's been around, because Things Happen. But not here. Just. Gone. Like it never happened - and maybe that's it.

He was Big - in my life. Something so influential can't disappear like this. Not supposed to. Not without even a ghost to haunt the place.

Am I supposed to forget, and just overwrite the memories? Is that the lesson? What I did before age 37 doesn't count? He didn't count? I can't buy it.

The time is different, hell - I'm different. Much stronger, resilient and wise.

Dammit, we were supposed to go to Easter Island. He never made it. And I'm still here.

Jim absolutely loved Lake Louise and all the places we went in Canada. We have officially dubbed 2005 the Year of the Bear, and there will much more on the why of that later - but his take is completely separate, and the experience is different, entirely different. The priorities are not the same - the interests are not the same. The trip was not the same kind of trip.

It smarts a bit when I can draw the distinctions so clearly, I guess.

But it really was a long time ago.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. So there.

Crap.