May 15, 2009

Well, the blog every day thing was good for the week that it lasted. I am stretched to the limit to have anything to blog about. I don't seem able to just pour my heart out like I once did. So, I look at each day, and consider the "highlights" to evaluate their blog-worthiness and think....whatever. I've been posting more frequently in my photoblog. I guess I've felt like, if I can't say it in a picture it's probably not worth saying.

Actually, there have been a few things going on. Most notably, I spent last weekend in Pennsylvania at my neighbor's house. I went to a fantastic solo Hornsby performance with the woman who now owns my house (Hi Kate!) While I was in Allentown, I caught up with a couple of other friends and my old shrink (we can be friends now). Janet and I went out to an Amish farm to buy garden plants...like we did each spring when I was living there. It was an annual sojourn for us. This farm specializes in a wide variety of pepper plants and all kinds of heirloom tomatoes. Aaron wants a tomato garden this year, so I chose a few different types for him. I've been seeing various articles about growing tomatoes upside down from a hanging basket. So I also selected three types of heirloom cherry and grape tomatoes and I'm giving that a try this year. I'd really like to have yummy little tomatoes right outside the back door.

I helped Janet put out the weed cloth in her garden so she could get her plants in the ground. It felt so right to be working along side of her doing something we both have always enjoyed. I was thinking of working in my own garden across the street. It was alway such a big job for one person. I was enjoying working with her so much I couldn't help but think, why didn't we combine our efforts when I was across the street and share the labor and the produce? We both looked out for each other's gardens if one of us traveled over the summer. When I shared the thought with her, we both could only shake our heads at the now lost opportunity.

The entire weekend was sort of like being in a dream...or maybe more like coming out of a dream. Everything was so familiar and most of it was completely natural to me. I was driving the same car on the same roads....everything looks basically the same. But then I'd drive up my street and I couldn't turn left into the driveway and pull into the garage. Instead, I pulled up in front of Janet's house like I needed to make a quick stop before I going home. Then, I never went home.

Everywhere I went, I felt like it was my routine. But I had a nagging little voice in the back of my head saying "don't let yourself believe you're home...you're not."

It might sound like torture, but it's not quite that bad. It is a mixed emotion experience. Some peace and some pain. I did feel more like myself than I ever do in NY. I'm still a fish out of water here.

I returned to NY on Sunday and my family reunited for a mother's day dinner. Arielle had gone to PA with me and Aaron took Joel and Adrienne out to Chicago to see his mom. They had a great time and she really LOVED having them there. This was the second time that he's done this...taken the kids to his mom on mother's day. I'm glad he does, she sees so little of them and it means a lot to her.

Monday, was again like being in a dream...or just waking up from one. I went about my life here and by now it's all fairly familiar, but this time, there was no comfort in that familiarity. I see my old life as if through a mist. I want this to be the dream...and to wake up and be home. But, this is the reality. The dream cannot exist.