Hoosiers Ate My Brain

I'm Baaa-aaaaack!

I'm proud to report that Oklahoma is just the same -- hot, dry, dusty, and home. Not much of a wheat crop this year. They've had an awful drought and we grazed ours out earlier in the summer. Spent the rest of the long weekend of working in the yard, hiding from the heat, eating home-cooked Panhandle food, and visiting with family. Even with four flights and 10 hours of driving to get out to the homestead, it's worth it. (Enjoyed the audio version of Anne Garrels' Naked in Baghdad while I was on the road. It's a terrific account of the NPR correspondent's time broadcasting out of Baghdad during the invasion.)

Home is always just that -- settling into a routine that was mine for 18 years and still feels familiar when I slip it back on. For the first few hours I'm back in Oklahoma, I always feel like the city mouse in the country, but then I get home and it all just feels comfortable again. The routine becomes mine again, church on Sundays with lunch out afterwards, cutting fresh flowers to take to the cemetery for "Decoration Day," visiting aunts and uncles who like to keep up.

Yesterday, we went out to the cemetery early to help put flags on veterans' graves and clean and decorate family plots. We puttered in the shed (rehabbing an old 10-speed road bike), ran to Wal-Mart for tire inflater, deferred fixing the broken valve stem, had lunch, took a nap, then pruned hedges, and sat outside with the new barn kittens playing in the back yard.

But, as usual, I come back to my own home with a fresh mind ready to tackle big projects. It feels good to be at my old home, but good to be at my own "new" home, too. Tomorrow, it's back to work -- calls, email, lunch meetings, manuscripts, proposals, deals, contracts, and conference calls. In the meantime, it's late and I'm off to rub antiseptic ointment over all my bug bites, thorn scratches, and splinters from home.

posted by braingirl @ 10:46 PM