We've spent the last couple of weeks on the road, visiting folks.

We stayed in a hotel and several housefuls of children and dogs. We had visits with uncles and aunts and cousins and random relatives from several sides of our families, and an old college friend to top it all off.

We went through seven-plus sleeping venue changes and forty-four people in less than fourteen days.

That count included four uncles, three aunts, five cousins, one niece, two nephews, at least fourteen children, my in-laws, a college friend, and various spouses, relatives, and associates. Oh, and not to mention three dogs, two baby pygmy goats, and approximately twenty-three cats and kittens.

It was a full trip.

The last morning on our way home, I started feeling kinda peckish. My stomach growled and gurgled. I put it down to being absolutely starved. We stopped for a late breakfast, and I ordered some of everything. But the food turned funny in my mouth, and the spinach in my omelet in particular tasted rotten. I didn't finish more than half. As we progressed further down the road, I felt more and more ill. Several hours later, we were finally home.

DH unloaded the car while I languished from room to room feeling disembodied. I felt compelled to sweep the floors, clearing out the dirt and grit that had accumulated while we were gone, but made little headway on the stack of mail or our luggage.

I did rouse myself to nurse between bouts of nausea, but then fell asleep at some indeterminate early-late hour on the couch with a small bowl in my hand. Even when my husband roused me in the wee hours to shuffle back to a real bed, I had to make a pit stop to heave into a wastebasket.

I fell into a deep, semi-dreamy sleep after forcing myself to visualize the faces of friends and family instead of the plate of spinach-laden omelet staring up at me.

When I woke, it was to the tune of cats vying for my ankles and my husband puttering in the front room. The little girl thumped her way down the hallway and into the bedroom to poke her head over the edge of the bed to smile at me. She saw the cats and started mewing at them. Miao, miao.

My husband came in the room. "She keeps saying appul or appun, and I don't know what she means," he said. "She's trying to say 'open,'" I muttered sleepily. She's using the cap on her new water bottle to learn about open and closed.

I sat up and felt, if not well, tolerably vertical. I sipped water, gingerly walked down the hall, and nursed the little girl.


I looked around curiously at the piles of baby toys and shoes, bags and boxes, and the stack of letters and bills still waiting for me. The suitcases hadn't even been unpacked yet.

Everything looked odd. It looked like somebody else's home. The next stop on the road.

Where was I again?

If it's Wednesday, it must be home. It is Wednesday, isn't it?
--