There’s nothing like the feeling of coming home after a vacation. You get to sleep in your own bed, control the food in the refrigerator, don’t have to be polite to people anymore. Yet there’s also the sense of malaise that kicks in. After all, you’ve probably been looking forward to the trip for several months and now it has come and gone.

I must say, our daughter did phenomenally well on the trip. She survived an extra hour tacked onto the trip to KC with only a slight meltdown. Hell, I was ready to get out of the car by that point too. Curiously, she averaged about an extra hour of sleep each day. Couldn’t have anything to do with the sun coming up later there, now could it? I was also a little surprised at how well she did when forced to interact with lots of strangers. She’s met many people in her 11+ months, but rarely has she had to go through as many large social gatherings as she did last weekend. Kudos to M. for holding it together and generally being quite friendly with people.
As always, going back to KC is a bit weird for me. Lots of nostalgia. This time, I spent a lot of time thinking about how our lives would be if we had not moved to Indy. Where would we eat? Where would we buy groceries? Where would we take our dry cleaning? If we spent most of our time with friends A, B, and C two years ago, would we still be spending a proportional amount of time with the same friends? Or would it now be A, D, and K? (Please note, these letters have no significance, so don’t try to figure out if we’re snubbing anyone.) I mean, our lives did change dramatically when S. ended her residency and began practicing. If we were still in KC, would the only thing that was different now be that we owned a home rather than rented two apartments? And, as we shared with a few of you, we thought it interesting that since we’re leaning towards the Catholic school route for our kids, while we might have enjoyed 3-6 years living with 75% of our friends within walking distance, at the end of the time frame many of you would be moving to the suburbs as your kids started school. Sometimes it feels like not that much changes in our lives, since I think I stay in reasonably good contact with many of you. Then when we see each other, I realize that we’ve all changed a lot. And in very good ways.
S. did express some frustration that each time she tried to tell someone a story, she got this response. “Yeah, I read about that on the blog.” So I’m simultaneously proving how effective I’ve been at accomplishing my biggest goal in blogging and undermining my wife’s story-telling opportunities. Not sure if that’s good or bad in total.
Big thanks to everyone who hosted us at any event last weekend. It made it much easier to see the majority of our friends in a fairly brief visit. As several of us noted, however, with kids to look after and lots of adults to mingle with, at times it was difficult to truly catch-up with each other. My apologies to anyone I didn’t spend quality time with. It was not intentional, I assure you.
On the agenda for this week is finally completing my grad school application and getting that fired off to Bloomington by the end of the week. Cleaning off my desk. Sorting through some boxes of books and other things I brought back from my step-dad’s house. And hopefully some interesting topics to blog about.

Now Playing: <strong>The Stone Roses – I Am The Resurrection</strong>