The Equation

So, this is how my tavel home to California is starting to have its own shapes and rituals: As last year, I travel too much, have too much family stress, eat too much food, don't see enough friends, get burned out and exhuasted, and get sick. All the above has happened before and all this happened this trip. I'm currently nursing a cold that came hurdling down on me New Year's Day. I feel weak and exhausted.

After having some guilt over greeting another group of people I love with TILT flashing in my eye sockets, I realized that it isn't that often that I RELATE so INTENSELY and CONSTANTLY the way you do when you VISIT people. Try visiting 5 households, in 5 cities, with a gaggle of loose friends flung from here to there, peppering also family relations and phone calls GALORE, and you have the equation that is making me really want my own bed, just some quiet time to not RELATE and DO and VISIT.

Graham and I are currently holed up and in my friends' Sara & Brian's beautiful pad in San Francisco (hi guys!). After dinner last night, they showed us the maps and book guides and Brian suggested we go see the new museum, and I said thank you, but inside the thought of punding the pavement for anything other than a burrito made me want to PASS OUT. I felt like saying, is it okay, if we do nothing at all, but sit in silence?

I love every single person that we've visited and had planned to visit, but didn't get to (Hi Juju! Hi Vitali!), but if I don't get some alone time soon, I may start resembling something akin to the Wolfman with a bad RASH. I won't know whether to thrash at someone else or my own HORRIFIC SKIN.

For the icing on the cake, we are taking a RED EYE home tomorrow night, just because we haven't done ENOUGH exhausting travel. By the time we land in New York, I expect to be mute, pink eyed, and bald. I think we'll try something different next year.