Mixed Feelings

Coming home ought to be a happier experience. Can I go back now? Not that I really want to. I still love Austin.

The kids are fine. The cats are fine. This is the important part. My plants don't look so good; I may take the worst-looking one to work, where I hope I can nurse it back to health. Did I take that much active care of them during the week? I guess I must have. But I haven't had the invalid for long; chances are it just doesn't have much tolerance for heat. It'll probably be happier in a cool, fluorescent-lighted environment, if it survives.

The real bummer is that my bike got stolen. Eric used it for school while I was gone, and it's possible he may have left it unlocked, but I wouldn't accuse him of it; all I had was a cable lock and you can get through those easily enough with a pair of bolt-cutters. Whenever I get a replacement, I'll keep it in back, where you can't see it from the street. Still, I'm kind of down about it. They're just things, but they add up: iPod, cell phone, bike. And I get to feeling like I can't have anything nice that won't be taken away. Which is just petulant: apparently I need to be more careful, huh?

I don't know when it happened: no one noticed it missing till I was getting out of the car yesterday, coming back from the airport, and said, "Hey - where's my bike?!"

And the saddest part - though I feel like a pig for making a big deal of it - is that nobody here was all that happy to see me. No, I lie: Anna really did miss me. Katie is glad to see me. (Eric's at his grandma's.) That should be enough, shouldn't it? I'm just greedy. But it seems hard to leave a place of peace, serenity, and order, where I feel so cherished, where some of the people I love most in the world are really sorry to see me go, and come home to a noisy, chaotic mess where I don't really feel all that welcome. That's life, I guess, but does it have to be?

I'll be glad to go back to work tomorrow. How sad is that?!