It's Wednesday afternoon, as I write this, and I am leaving for New York tomorrow. I am probably even on a plane as you read this, with my laptop in front of me and all the best intentions in the world of working very diligently but really wishing I were drowsing my way across the country, because oh man, am I so tired. I predict right now, here on a Wednesday afternoon, that I will have stayed up far too late, will have put packing off to the very last moment, will be scrambling to find something vital that I had totally forgotten to pack at six o'clock in the morning when I should be showered and ready to head out to the airport and get on my flight. I am going to avoid predicting that my flight will be horribly canceled and I will be terribly screwed.  

But right now it is Wednesday afternoon and I am curled up on the couch with two dogs, one on either side of me, and the laundry is churning away downstairs because J. is very generous to allow me to use their machines. It's amazing, how going away will make you suddenly realize how very, very few underpants you actually own, and that going methodically through your entire collection of formal dresses, summer skirts, pajama pants, yoga pants and footie pajamas instead of just washing your jeans already is unhealthy avoidance behavior. It will be nice to have clean things to pack and to maybe not look totally like a hobo when I show up to say hello, friends and family, have you missed me?

I have missed my friends and family very, very much, and I am impatient to get going, already, to be packed, to be on the plane, to be there, finally, throwing my arms around my baby brother and telling him that he looks so different, and what is so different about him? He looks weird! He is so weird looking! And married! Hey, he's still married, and that is so crazy! The way he is married. He actually took off, the day I arrive, and that is such a big deal for him. He is the lead pastry chef at Fancy Pants Restaurant and runs the kitchen too and he is fancy and works a million hours a day and he never takes days off, but he is, and picking me up at the airport, and I am so excited. I am so excited to see my mom, and my aunt, and my sister-in-law, and the friends I only saw briefly, last time I was in town.

It's only a weekend, and I'm already regretting not scheduling a longer visit--staying through Tuesday, or Wednesday or even all the way through Thursday. But I am staying on my brother's futon, and that is probably not polite of me, to camp out for a week. Staying through the week, when everyone's got jobs and busy lives and things to do, and there is my sweet fat cat lonely without me, and dogs who need to be petted, and this guy I know who I'm fond of who I am going to miss like absolute insane crazy, I have just realized, as if I am a 17-year-old girl and he is totally my first real boyfriend, oh my god. Flashbacks, to having had to go home at the end of the weekend and not knowing when we'll see each other next. Remembering that awful feeling in my gut. Eradicated by remembering that I will be coming back, not to visit, but coming home. I'm so impatient to leave, and already looking forward to being home.