Our trip to Peru was one of contrasts. We landed in Lima and spent a few days there. Our hosts were gracious, and people were absurdly friendly. Even the cabby who ripped us off (yes, there was one) though a liar and a cretin, was not that much of a jerk. It felt remarkably safe, and people seemed to be enthused – or, at least, not thoroughly annoyed – by tourists. It was a delightful change of pace.

I found the city to be at a crossroads – both striving to preserve its past and ready to launch into the future.

We visited Huaca Pucllana, an ancient ceremonial spot dating back to the 5th century …

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And met with internet entrepreneurs and small business-owners trying to improve their online marketing strategies …

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I struggled through with my mediocre Spanish, but the extreme hospitality and friendliness of many people I met made it easy to get by. I had a Spanish phrasebook with me – one so absurd, that it served more as a conversation piece than anything else.

“I do not think you should use some of these phrases,” a Peruvian colleague of my husband suggested. “While it is Spanish, these aren’t things people say.”

And while I’m sure he’s right, I can’t believe I never had the opportunity to ask, “How much is this table?” and “Can you please leave? I have an early flight in the morning.”

From there we headed to Cuzco. High up in the Andean mountains, I sat in the lobby of a posh hotel, sipping mate de coca – a tea derived from leaves of the coca plant (yes, that plant) that’s been consumed by locals for centuries to combat altitude sickness. We ate traditional cuisine like llama and cuy (guinea pig) in a swank Italian-Peruvian fusion restaurant. We took two tours – an expensive one that included fantastic food and a cozy train ride to Macchu Picchu, and an absurdly cheap one that took us through mountain villages on bumpy roads.

Mate de coca. It tasted a lot like green tea.

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We spoke to tour guide who told me that he chastised Spanish tourists whenever he got them (“They don’t like me very much,” he said), and that many people in Peru felt similarly to him. But when I asked what the predominant religion was, he looked at me as though I were nuts.

“Catholic,” he said. Obviously. Hate the Spanish, but keep their religion.

The contrasts of the country followed me everywhere. I expressed concern about the poverty of the villages, and yet found myself haggling over what would amount to a few dollars or cents.

And then we went back to Lima, and back home.

While I had one of the best trips of my life, I spent more than one night crying in my hotel room (in case you weren’t aware, this is what privileged white women do when faced with worldly problems like child labor and teenage pregnancy. We cry in our hotel rooms at night, and then we feel better because HEY WE CRIED SO WE OBVIOUSLY CARE and then we can go back to doing absolutely NOTHING to make the world a better place and not feel guilty about it).

It was my first time in Peru, and my first time in South America. And while I felt like I returned home with my eyes slightly more open, with my mind slightly more aware of the goings-on beyond my borders, I feel it pertinent to note that this photo was among those I took during my trip. Despite everything I saw, it still makes me cackle like a madwoman.

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That’s right: Wiener University. I’ve got to hand it to Peru: it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think (and then it made me not think). There’s little else you can ask of a destination.

As a kid, I never understood the expression “You can’t go home again”. I thought it was idiotic. After sleepovers at friends’ houses, after long afternoons at band practice, after a week at SeaCamp (oh, don’t act so surprised: I was and still am a dork), home was always waiting for me. No matter how much time had passed, I’d reasoned that the one thing that you could always go back to was go home.

As I grew older, my understanding of this concept changed slightly. You could still go home, but you might find that someone else lives there. Or that you aren’t welcome any more. Or that your room has been turned into a storage closet and all of your personal possessions are “in the attic” or were “given to the Goodwill.”

Time passes, people change, and sometimes home is no longer that. This realization hit me a few weeks ago, when I returned to the only place besides Seattle that I’ve ever called home: Indialantic, Florida.

What’s that? … Oh, please. You have NOT heard of it. You are thinking of Indiana. Or possibly Atlantis. Both of which have a larger population of residents/mer-people than Indialatic (pop: 3,000).

Indialantic lies on a spit of land sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River, and its name is as portmanteau of those two bodies of water. It is not vibrant or bustling. There’s no movie theater. I don’t know what kids nowadays do on a Saturday night (I know what we did. We rented Jeff Goldblum movies and giggled at his impossibly small waist. Kids today now ogle hairless, poreless young men who were probably genetically engineered by Disney. How sad.)

Growing up on the Space Coast, I can spot a funnel cloud in the sky, I can do the stingray shuffle, and I know that hurricanes rarely follow the paths predicted by meteorologists. None of this knowledge has ever come in handy living in the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve still managed to retain it, while forgetting all the math I ever learned in high school. So, there’s that.

I don’t have any family left in Indialantic. The few relatives I still have in Florida are in bigger cities, like Orlando or Ft. Lauderdale. But I still have friends there, in the city by the sea. That’s enough to keep me going back. It’s why I was there this past summer – to spend a few days with my friend Giselle, before we headed east to Lake Placid for a wedding reception.

I landed in Orlando, and Giselle drove to pick me up. It is not a short drive. I phoned our friend Desiree and made her meet us for dinner with ZERO notice. That’s the nice thing about old friends: you can inconvenience them whenever you are in town. It’s grand.

Here we are at dinner that night. I spent 6 hours on a plane, which is mostly what’s wrong with my face.

They are going to kill me for posting this.

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Here’s another photo of the three of us, circa 1994. Please observe that I have never been cool.

"I must have missed the cue to ham it up." - Desiree

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I suspect I will be in hot water for posting both of those images, but they have to forgive me. Old friendships are the BEST.

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I crashed on Giselle’s couch for no less than 3 days, and she said nothing when I ate part of her present (I WAS HUNGRY AND IT WAS EDIBLE) and hogged her bathroom. She even made me vegan pancakes with bacon (which is the delightful way that I describe Giselle’s dietary restrictions: vegan + meat). They were delicious, by the way.

Giselle ate vegan food before it was cool.

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Since we were kids, Giselle’s had a severe allergy to milk and eggs. I don’t mean any of this “intolerance” nonsense everyone has these days. No. Giselle has an actual EpiPen in case of emergencies. She never really made a big deal of it, but over the years I’ve decided to stick to her diet whenever we’re together (mostly). It makes it easier to pick food from her plate without killing her. Plus, one time in 5th grade I spilled a Wendy’s baked potato with cheese all over her leg. That was a bad night. I now laugh about it.

Me: Remember that one time I spilled cheese all over you and you instantly broke out into hives and couldn’t breathe?

Giselle: Yes.

Me: Wasn’t that HILARIOUS?

Giselle:  …

(Notice I said I laugh about it.)

My first morning in town, Giselle and I drove out to Flutie Field (now known as Flutie Athletic Complex), where we played softball as kids (it’s named after Doug Flutie, who lived in the area for a years while growing up in the 1970s. He was not born there. He does not live there now.) These days, the fields are much nicer than when we used them. The grass looks healthier, the bleachers less tentanus-y, and there’s an actually playground.

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Walking around, Giselle and I enjoyed a rather lovely round of “Kids these days don’t know how lucky they have it”, after which we headed to the beach. Unlike the fields, it was remarkably unchanged. The lukewarm water, the cumulus clouds on the horizon, the searing hot sand – all the same as I remembered.

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Giselle drove me around for hours. We went by places I knew and recognized, and some which had faded from my memory. We stopped by our old elementary and middle school (an experience which deserves its own post) and we drove by my old house.

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I figured I had no lingering attachment to that small rambler on that dead-end street, but I was wrong. I lived under that roof for six years – longer than any other home I’ve had before or since. I thought of all the times I ran through the front door after school, dropping my ESPRIT bookbag on the ground as I went. The hours spent in my room, talking on the phone with friends (nowadays I cringe when I get voicemail). The moonless nights when I grabbed a ladder and climbed onto the roof to the look at the stars (something so sweet and poetic, I can’t actually believe I did it. I take comfort in knowing I probably farted while I was up there.) And now? I could not even clean up the trash that the current residents had strewn upon lawn, and why the hell was there trash, anyway? WHO WERE THESE PEOPLE IN MY HOUSE?

And then I remembered the obvious: this was not my home. It was someone else’s to do what they wished. They could leave trash in the yard. They could replace the tiki mailbox my mother so adored with a crappy metal one. I couldn’t get mad at people for what they did to their own house.

A glutton for punishment, I asked Giselle to swing by my grandparents’ old place as well. It had fared much better. The yard and the house were clearly loved. But I still felt sad. I missed the life we had breathed into that home, the specific personality that we gave it when it was ours. I missed my grandparents. I missed my uncle. I missed our calico cat, that kept the yard clear of lizards and snakes.

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I even missed my hamster, whose mummified remains lie somewhere in that backyard (we buried her in her beloved plastic ball, which I’m sure delayed the decomposition process).

Hell, I missed everything. The now-defunct Winn Dixie grocery store, which has been turned into some sort of super-gym. The Italian bakery that made BITE-SIZED CHEESECAKES. The TCBY which, weirdly, we’d stop at after dental appointments. All these places were now gone. Was my hometown simply devoid of life? Or was it merely devoid of the glow of the childhood, which casts everything in a more vibrant light?

Adages are adages for a reason – everyone knows you can’t go home again, so why was I even trying? What the hell was I doing here, ANYWAY?

Oh, right.

I didn’t tell Giselle any of the craziness that was going through my head. How I had been sad to leave Florida in the first place, and sad to return to find it so changed. She’d have probably said, “Oh, Deenie, come on. Everything changes after 20 years.” And she’d have been right.

That night, as I curled up on her couch, under crisp sheets and the ticking of an overhead fan, I watched Giselle wander around, covering up anything in her living room that emitted light. She draped a sweater over the glowing display of her cable box, placed a pillow over the blinking light of her laptop. It’s something Rand begrudgingly does for me whenever we travel.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I remember how you can’t sleep if there are any lights,” she said.

“You remember that?”

“Yeah.”

I get it: you can’t go home again. But you can go back to your friends’ houses. And if you are very, very lucky, you will find that it’s basically the same thing.

While I can’t say that my compulsions are as strong as Kelsey’s, I, too, find that in the days and hours before I’m about to leave for a trip I get, as I like to call it, “a little buggy.” As I say this, please note that I in no way intend to trivialized the difficulties of living with OCD. So please, save that hate email for a post in which I truly deserve it. There are many.

I’m merely saying that to a very small, small degree, I empathize.

My pre-trip compulsion is this: I obsessively clean my home from top to bottom. I dust. I polish. I organize. I place items at right angles, and indiscriminately shred documents, prompting my husband to ask, “Um, are you making sure the house is spotless for anyone who breaks in while we’re away?”

“Yes,” I respond, scrubbing behind the guest toilet that never gets used. I’ll proceed to wash every bit of laundry I can find, including pulling just-washed throw blankets off the couch and tossing them into the machine, thankfully stopping before I get to the pillows (which reminds me – I need to fluff those).

“Baby,” Rand will say, gently, “The house looks great. Please stop.”

“Whatever. Hand me the vacuum and that bottle of bleach. I need to go brush my teeth.”

Excuse me a moment while I clean parts of the stove no one will ever use or see.

Now, some of this behavior falls within the realm of normal, or so I’ve been told. Many people get nervous before trips, and they all do things to alleviate said nervousness. My friend Laura packs her bag twice. My other friend Laura makes checklists. Rand does absolutely nothing because he’s reached a level of zen that few people can hope to experience in their lifetimes, and I clean house like a madwoman.

And yes, I do windows.

I've been known to polish faucets, too.

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The logic behind my frantic quest for an immaculate domicile is a simple one: Soon, I’ll be traveling. I’ll be at the mercy of groping TSA agents, Air France employees who’ve gone rogue, and Alaska Airline flight crew members who think banging on bathroom doors while screaming that the plane is landing makes for a fun joke (spoiler: it does not). Soon, I’ll be in situations where my big mouth might get me arrested or deported. But my home is something I can control. I can exert my will over every inch of it: polishing and scrubbing, rearranging and straightening. And if, while traveling, I end up in a Turkish prison, I’ll do so knowing that my bathroom is clean.

It’s an incredibly comforting thought. So much so, that I start to wonder if I should leave my home at all.  On more than one occasion, I’ve taken a break from touching up paint scuffs on the underside of drawers and said to my husband, “Maybe I should just skip this trip. If I stay here, I can finish ironing the bath towels.”

“Um, no,” he replies.

And he’s right. Kelsey noted that she didn’t let her OCD stand in the way of travel, and that in the long run, her trips actually alleviated her symptoms. In that same vein, I realized that if I stayed home to clean house (a statement which, from the sunny peacefulness of a San Francisco hotel room, sounds almost comical), then my cleaning will be a problem. At some point, I have to look at my home and say, “Enough.” I grab my bag, and I leave. Because I have trips to take and a life to live beyond these pristine walls. And when I get back, I’ll tell you all about it from the comfort of my tidy little office and …

DEAR LORD IS THAT A DUSTBALL?!

Please excuse me. I just have one more thing to take care of.

He was honest.

I know, I know – the idiot, right? He has yet to live it down. The date of his grievous error was sometime in 2006. We had had a fantastic time visiting my dad in Germany before driving down to Italy, where we spent a few days hopping around between Milan, Como, and Venice. When we got back, my mother asked Rand how the trip was.

What he said, exactly, when he replied to her, is a subject of debate. I hold to my own, because my memory is a vast and incredible thing, and has rarely let me down. My mother (though she has yet to say it outright) believes that my account of history has been tainted by my feelings of affection towards my husband. And Rand has the memory of a goldfish, so he’s not really part of this discussion, even though he’s the reason for it.

My account is this: Rand told her, truthfully, that he while he enjoyed Italy, he was surprised by how much he loved Germany. Bavaria in particular had started to grow on him.

My mother’s account, however is this: Rand told her, to her face no less, how much he hated Italians, and Italy, and how Germany was far superior. Also, he obviously loves my dad more than her, and apparently, so do I.

Sigh.

I’ve tried clarifying the point with my mother, but trying to change an Italian’s mind when hurt feelings are involved is virtually impossible. Performing a circumcision on a common shrew would be an easier task (I just spent 10 minutes looking up “animal with the smallest penis” and as far as vertebrates go, it’s the shrew. Don’t say my blog never taught you anything. Also, for your own sake, do not attempt to replicate my search, especially if you are at work.) For as long as she lives, she’ll probably believe that Rand hates Italy. Not because he does, but because he admitted to loving another place more.

Why bring this up? Because I suspect that I may have hurt the feelings of a few folks in the last week or so with my posts about Bulgaria. I’ve received a few tweets on the subject …

I always say the wrong thing.

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It’s funny, because I never said that I disliked all of Bulgaria, or that there was no part of it I liked. Just like Rand didn’t say he hated Italy. I made the same error: I was honest. It’s something that I’m compelled to do as a travel writer, but it’s something no one wants to hear about their hometown. As such, I bruised some egos. I hurt some feelings.

And I can’t blame them. It’s hard to read the faults of your town laid bare, especially from someone who knows nothing about it – someone who’s simply spent a few days there, days which might have been rotten or terrible and not at all indicative of all a place has to offer. In short, it’s hard to hear what a travel writer has to say about your home. Anything less than unconditional love and devotion to a place just isn’t acceptable.

Plus, Rand had a lovely in Bulgaria. From what he remembers.

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It’s something that I can’t help but think about when I write a not-so-stellar review of a place: this is someone’s hometown. And it will pain someone to read this. It’s not that I’ve informed them of anything new: they know about their town’s flaws – they’re probably acutely aware of them, and complain about them just as much as anyone. Even I, a born-and bred-Seattlite, lament the Emerald City’s terrible drivers, its tendency to shut down entirely in half an inch of snow, and the ridiculous price of groceries.

But when someone else trash-talks my town (or when they merely say it’s “okay”)?

I want to slap them.

And not just them. I want to slap their parents, and their grandparents. I want to slap their pets and their neighbors, their co-workers and friends. I want to slap people to whom they owe money. Because, to paraphrase something I said a few weeks ago about the Seahawks, Seattle may suck, but it’s my suck.

I suspect many folks have read my posts and felt the same way. Angered, or upset, or wounded. Maybe I was way off base. Or maybe I hit too close to home (pun not intended). I feel badly about it, but I keep doing it, nevertheless. I’ve decided that writing honestly about a place, and bruising a few egos, is better than sugar-coating it and lying to myself and (both of) my readers. And you know what? Me not loving a place (or, indeed, just declaring that the jury is still out) is okay. I’m not the definitive judge on these things. I’m just an opinionated gal who sits at her computer and looks out her dreary window and reflects on where she’s been. That’s it. What I believe isn’t gospel. It’s just what I believe.

And that’s a hard thing for anyone (myself included) to accept. That our opinions of towns are simply opinions. That we’ll never know if we like a place unless we visit it – and even then, we might not like it one bit. After all, not every place can be paradise. Not every place can be the best town in the world.

Unless, of course, it’s your hometown.

Yeah, I know. I’m surprised, too. It’s not that I’ve suddenly started agreeing with what’s going on in our nation’s airports (here I go again …) but rather that Thanksgiving is around the corner, and rather than focus on the bad (of which there is very little in my life) I’d like to talk about the good.

And believe me, there’s a lot of good.

Here’s the thing: life hasn’t always been quite as awesome as it is now, but it’s always been pretty darn good. Despite the few speedbumps of douchebaggery, I’ve enjoyed a rather smooth ride on the highway of existence. And now seems a particularly good time to talk about those wonderful things in my life, as they pertain to travel, among other things.

So, with no further rambling, here are 20 things (travel-related and otherwise) for which I am thankful:

1. My Samsonite spinner suitcase. Not only did I get it for 75% off at Ross (I. LOVE. THAT. PLACE) but it handles better than my KIA (then again, so do most shopping carts).
   

   It has the about the same horsepower as my KIA, too.

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2. The occasional upgrade. They’re all too rare, but when they do come along? FREE HOT NUTS (that’s what I said).
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   Also, silverware! Just like real humans use!

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3. Waking up in time for the hotel buffet breakfast. Oh, and the ubiquity of Nutella in said buffets. HOW HAS AMERICA NOT CAUGHT ON?
   
4. My unofficial editors. You know who you are – those of you who discreetly send emails, tweets, or DMs, letting me know of misspellings, typos, and the like. You class this joint up, and I’m infinitely grateful to you for it.
   
   
5. Avoiding jet-lag. It seldom happens, but when I find myself enjoying 8-hours of solid sleep on my first night in a new time zone? I FEEL LIKE A SUPERHERO.
6. The internet. Dear god, remember when you had to call and talk to a human being in order to book a ticket? EWWWW. Things are ridiculously faster and easier now.
7. Ballet flats. Getting in and out of security has never been easier (not counting the gropings and full-body scans). SUCK IT, MEN OF THE WORLD.
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   On a side note, I want these.

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8. Fart-absorbing airplane seats. This is purely conjecture, but I’m pretty sure they must absorb odor. Otherwise, I’m convinced no one would survive a trans-Atlantic flight during which tandoori is served.
9. Being 5’2″ My relative shortness is never so much of an asset as it is on an airplane. I always have plenty of legroom, I can curl up on my seat, and the folks who sit next to me are always happy to see that it’s me  (and not the Andre-the-Giant-looking dude behind me) who’s sitting next to them.
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   I may be exaggerating here, slightly.

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10. That cell phones are still prohibited on flights. If you’ve ever sat next to someone having a vapid conversation on the bus, you understand why this is so important.
11. The Wire. This show made a last few trips fly by. We’re now done with the series, and I’m worried about what we’ll do if I have to travel without the company of Omar, Bunk, and the rest.
12. Getting to visit family.
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    Notice that the three-year-old is the only one properly posing for the camera.

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13. Getting to visit folks who might as well be family.
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    Pictured: Jon, Lisa, Rand, and the saucy little redhead that stole his heart.

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14. Shower curtains. Seriously, Europe – take note. They keep warmth in, and they prevent the entire bathroom from getting soaked.
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    Explain to me how I get out of this situation without saturating EVERYTHING.

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15. My wicked awesome camera. Thanks, Rand. I promise, one day I will learn to use it properly.
16. You. Yes, you. Reading this blog. Give yourself a hug from me … whoa. WHOA. I said a hug, buddy, not a TSA-style groping. Christ.
17. The aisle seat. Please excuse me while I get up to go pee … WHENEVER THE HELL I WANT. I mean, except for when the beverage cart is rolling around.
18. Hotels with decent toiletries. I once found an assortment of Noxema products in the bathroom, and nearly peed my pants. Fortunately, I was in the bathroom, so the toilet was right there. Double score.
19. Growing up bilingual. Thanks for that, Mom. Ditto for making me eligible for an E.U. passport. It makes all those years of trying to explain American humor to you worth it.
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20. And most importantly … the best travel buddy in the world:
    
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    Wait … no, sorry. That’s MacGyver. Though I suspect, he, too, would be awesome to travel with. But I meant this guy:
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    I love you like a mad man.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

It reminded me that even when things are crazy, we occasionally have 6 or 7 hours that we get to spend together. They aren’t conscious, but still: they’re there. And it’s a funny and sweet realization to know that someone loves you, even in their sleep. That they move towards you, hug you, share your pillow, despite the expanse of valuable mattress real estate left empty behind them.

I wish I saw more of my husband. Sometimes, I sit in the floor of his office reading a book while he works. It’s not quite spending time together, but it’s spending time near each other. And sometimes that has to be enough. And it is.

But every now and then, Rand has time to explore a city with me. It’s rare – and that’s probably what makes it so damn special. On the days when he plays hooky, I move between feeling absolutely guilt-ridden for infringing on his work and giggling like a schoolgirl.

There are plenty of joys to seeing a city on your own (just ask Gray from SoloFriendly) – seeing exactly what you want, when you want to. Eating snacks every 10 minutes. Shopping. More shopping.

And yet, and yet, and yet … there is something wonderful about traveling with someone who knows you better that anyone else. Someone who you may see all the time, but rarely get to see.

When Rand’s with me, everything changes …

Candid photos are actually taken of me. Not the one-armed self-portraits that litter my blog and Flickr stream, but actual photos.

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Rand notices things that I otherwise wouldn’t. It usually happens in art galleries and museums. He falls in love with works I would otherwise pass by. He doesn’t overthink art. He either loves it or he doesn’t. No explanation needed.

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And he doesn’t overthink me, or us. We are what we are. There’s nothing really better than that – seeing a city, exploring a town, with someone who knows you better than anyone else. With someone who thinks the things that you do, the things that make you laugh, are perfectly reasonable things. Someone who doesn’t judge your constant and never-ending quest for cake.

Scott Wiener's campaign signs were everywhere in the Castro. Rand and I both found this to be hysterical.

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It’s funny, that sometimes I have to travel far, far from home before I can spend time with my husband. It’s worth it, of course. If the only joy of traveling was to see that look he sometimes gets on his face. It’s part mischievous and part bewildered, and I love it.

It says, "I don't really know where we are, but I'm going to do something ridiculous."

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Like I said, it doesn’t happen often. He’s a busy man. He has stuff to do. But when the great day dawns that he can spend a few hours with me – and conscious ones, no less?

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For a few days like those, I’d travel to the ends of the earth.

My husband travels. A lot. There are days when I forget where he’s gone. Someone will ask, and I’ll stare blankly for a few seconds, before answering, “Um … California?” I live terror of the idea that I’ll be involved in a car accident, after which a doctor will ask me a series of questions to make sure I haven’t completely lost it.  And he or she will ask me where my husband is, or what day it is, and I won’t have the faintest idea (because I also never know what day it is). Then they’ll lock me up someplace quiet and bring me Jell-O in plastic cups.

Which actually wouldn’t be that bad, or that undeserving.

Obviously one of the reasons I travel is in order to be with Rand, and I rarely take trips without him. I can’t actually sleep (and his side of the bed usually remains untouched) when he’s out of town :

I didn't even pull the comforter down ...

But I also travel with him because, when left a home to my own devices, I keep doing things that are evidence of my own crazy.

For example, I wrote this, and seemed to think it was hilarious. Personally, I imagined two military personnel (one high-ranking, one low) having this exchange:

Rand: "I don't get it."

When I showed it to my husband, he quietly shook his head and hugged me. Which is often how it goes.

And then there was this, which didn’t even happen as a result of Rand being out of town. He just stayed at work late, so I had this greeting him on the floor when he came home:

It's a potato. Saying "yo."

It then prompted this exchange:

Rand: Why is the potato saying “yo”?

Me: Damn it. I thought you were going to ask why it was on the floor. I had an answered prepared and everything.

Rand: Okay, fine, why is it on the floor?

Me: Because potatoes grow in the ground, so, you know, the floor is closer to home.

Rand: That was your prepared answer?

Me: Yeah.

He then asked again why it was saying “yo”, to which I replied, “I don’t know … doesn’t that seem like something a potato would say? You know … ‘Yo … I’m a potato’?”

Right?

He’s currently in Palo Alto (I think. He might be in San Francisco) for the day, and fortunately he’s coming back tonight so I don’t have to try and fall asleep without him. In the meantime, I’m trying to think of something to do before he gets back. I was considering putting thought bubbles on all of our family photos with sayings like, “I LIKE PORK.” and “I will never forgive his affair with CHEWBACCA.” But after the potato incident, that might be too predictable.