Another Labor Day gone. Tomorrow John and I are flying back west on a 6:30 a.m. JetBlue flight. Sigh. I’m exhausted and disappointed. I began the journey with high hopes of visiting my long lost friends. I was going to catch up with my FMF peeps, some college buddies, some CDM folk. I apologize, because that just didn’t happen. John and I spent most of our four days in a car, shuttling from DC to Frederick to Rockville to DC to Rockville to Frederick to Potomac to… you get the point. I know, we really need to allot more days next time. I guess this visit was particularly busy, because well, we’d been overseas the last two and a half years, so there was a good bit of catching up to do with family. My in-laws insist they’d forgotten what I look like…
John says we’ll return again for Christmas (yikes); hopefully he’ll use vacation days then, and we’ll actually get to see people. In the meantime, if anyone’s traveling to the Bay area, please give us a holler.
Generally, the family time on this trip went ok. Pretty much the usual, except that my parents surprisingly refrained from pressing my hot buttons. My father says he doesn’t care anymore about my barren womb outlook; guess the Johnny situation isn’t making any progress.
Our food safari went well– Chicken Out pot pie, steamed Maryland blue crabs, Ledo’s pizza. I also ate some incredible peaches from my parents’ tree. They say the tree bore 2000 peaches this year. I thought they were exaggerating, but apparently a ton of neighbors and friends got their share (and they kept coming back for more). Amazing, considering the tree was totally organic, i.e. neglected. Wouldn’t it be cool if my parents set up a roadside fruit stand??
John and I made some headway cleaning out our junk in storage. Gave away another nine boxes worth of crap. In my unpacking/repacking, I came across a book the ladies at work gave my mom years ago: American Slang. It’s just what I need. Btw, did you know that “scumbag” actually means condom? Interesting tidbit. After thumbing through the book, John finally acknowledged that my immigrant parents are a contributing factor to my cultural illiteracy… Jesus, you have no idea how long John’s denied my claim. Anyway, I think I’ll be mostly up to speed after I complete that book. And then a bit of MTV should round out the rest of my education.