The Everywhereist

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Sunsets on Hayman island were quite lovely.

I’m mostly speculating here: we missed a large number of them. We were so jet lagged that we were often in our room by dusk, impatiently watching the last bit of light disappear from the sky so we could justifiably crawl into bed.

I don’t know if two childless adults have ever cheered the arrival of 7:30pm as much as we.

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Last week, I had my regular MRI check-up, and once again, by the grace of science and luck and the universe, it looked good. “Unremarkable” is the technical term that radiologists use. It’s one of the few times in your life that hearing that is just … nice.

My brain, pre-surgery. See the little grey nob at the base of the white V-shaped ventricles? That was my tumor.

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So don’t have to get another MRI for a whole year now, but as I stare at those images my the inside of my head, I realize my fascination with the human brain remains. Looking at the cross section of grey matter, at the organ that makes me me, I find myself amazed at how we all function.

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The Old Statehouse; from our last trip to Boston in November.

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Most of you, regardless of whether you live in the states, have probably heard about the bombings that occurred at the Boston Marathon today, which killed three people, and injured more than a hundred others, some of them critically. Those who were there describe a horrific scene of smoke and screaming and severed limbs.

I had been out to lunch – literally – when it happened. I was catching up with a friend. She filled me in on all the happenings in her life and her family, and she let me devote waay too much of our conversation to all sorts of things that were weighing on me. It was a good talk, and a reminder that I need to spend more time with the people I love.

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Some things, particularly those that are sad or difficult or heartbreaking, are best heard when you’re at home.

Rand and I got back into town yesterday afternoon, and felt that peculiar brand of jetlag that so rarely afflicts those who live on the west coast of the U.S.; after nearly two weeks in Australia, our internal clocks were running behind.

After a painfully long flight from Sydney, and another two-hour hop from LAX to home, I had no idea what time it was when we landed. The numbers on the clock were meaningless, bearing no relation to me. I wandered around the house in a daze, exhausted, but too wired to actually nap. For a while, I just curled up on our bed, shivering from jetlag and somewhat delirious, and Rand started piling all manner of blankets and sweatshirts on top of me.

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Rand, sniffing my coat. Though to be fair, it kinda looks like he’s licking it. Which is gross.

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I had hoped that I would be able to get my post about our visit to the townships of Cape Town up before we left for Australia, but that didn’t pan out. I was rushed for time, and found that I just couldn’t give the tour the attention that it deserved. Rather than draft a post that didn’t do the experience justice, I figured I’d wait until I got home.

Also, between researching the history of Apartheid in South Africa, and Wednesday’s post about the epidemic of rape that’s currently plaguing the country, I needed to switch gears. To talk about something lighthearted, if only for a little bit.

So I want to tell you about how I freaked out and was convinced that I sat in pee last week in a Dublin cab.

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Last month, we popped down to Portland for the weekend, with our pal Chrissy in tow. We’d been meaning to head down to PDX together for a while – our friend Skye had moved back out west after living in Baltimore for the last two years. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d all been in the same place at the same time. I think it was a few years ago, at least.

It was a brief but fun trip. We wandered around, without any destinations or plans. I didn’t even bring my camera.

That’s right: I didn’t take a single photo. Not a one. But Chrissy did. She was only armed with her phone, but the results are pretty damn great. She snapped this one of her and Skye, which I adore:

Yes, it was taken on Instagram. Quite, you.

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I have a confession of sorts. It might be that last week, Rand and I zipped back to Europe, and went to Dublin for the second time in six months, and then to London for the umpteenth time since I started this blog.

Sitting in a tapas bar in London, I ruminate on whether or not there is pee on my coat.

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I know some of you are reading that and thinking, “Girl, no. I cannot spend another three weeks reading about the ins and outs of Anglo-Irish conflicts,” and to those dear folks I say, fear not. The thing is, this trip kind of sneaked up on me, and I didn’t really make any plans or do anything while I was there that is worthy of a blog post. I mostly just shopped, and ate sticky toffee pudding, and had more than my fair share of travel freak-outs. Including a particularly teary and noisy one that happened after I sat in what may or may not have been a puddle of urine in a Dublin cab. 

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Warning: before writing this post, I spent waaaaay too long listening to NPR, after which I devoured some poetry, and then chased the whole thing with a few swings of prose. The result is … whatever the heck is going on below. It has nothing to do with travel. Sorry.

Rand and I have a shower in our bedroom.

I mean, in our bedroom. Not in a bathroom in the bedroom. No. It is IN the room. At the end of the bed.

Pictured: the end of our bed, and our shower.

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It’s about as ridiculous as it sounds. In the two years that we’ve lived here, we can’t really make sense of it. The doors are glass, so you have absolutely zero privacy if someone is in the room. When one of us has to wake up early for whatever reason, we’ll shower with the lights off, so that we don’t wake the other person.

Have you ever showered in the dark? It’s really weird, and yet strangely familiar. I’m pretty sure it has to do with some pre-memory of being in the womb.

And then I start to feel guilty for not having called my mother in a while.

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