A Road Less Travelled

I’m home! Hooray for me! It has been quite a hassle getting from here to there lately. You all heard about the adventures in getting there so when I say that coming back was just about as interesting I’m sure you will understand. I eventually had to take a bus from Chicago and then I walked home from the Bradley student center. It was just a couple of blocks, but it happened to be 7:30 at night. Seth had driven down to pick me up, but I wasn’t carrying a cell phone so he couldn’t tell me and the Lansberrys were borrowing our van so he wasn’t even driving a car I would have recognized. Apparently there was a thirty second period of time when he couldn’t see the door of the bus and it was in those thirty seconds that I chose to make my escape. He even described me to the bus driver who said that no one by that description was riding on his bus. It was an interesting ten minutes there for both of us.

So now I’m home and excited to pieces about it. Re-entry had been a little trying due to having to go pick up my luggage the day after I got here and because I got very used to my sister’s quiet house. Justice is teething which seems to require lots of shrieking and Kitty is just being her normal yappy self. Yesterday was a grumpy day, but then the Lansberrys came over for dinner and brought the sunshine with them.

It is strange to realize that I was only gone for two weeks because things change very rapidly when I leave. I remember coming back the last time I went to Erie for over a week and Crystal was wearing make-up and clothing she actually liked. But that’s a story for another time. The big change this trip is that Seth and Crystal have decided to make some rather drastic changes to our diet. Translated this means that we are going to be eating more, how shall I say it?, freaky odd, whole foods. Crystal also found a good source for farm fresh eggs and a legal source for farm fresh milk. To get the fresh milk, however, we have to bring our own containers. So where does one find six or seven one-gallon glass jars? That’s right, folks, in the pickle aisle. Yesterday Crystal bought seven gallons of pickles. Seven gallons. Of pickles. Luckily, they are kosher dills so they will probably be consumed at a disturbing rate. We served them after dinner as a sort of dessert and between our two families we ate an entire gallon. There are only six more to go. Today I had the fun job of repackaging six gallons of pickles so that we could run the jars through the dishwasher. I’m glad we have a sanitize feature on our dishwasher. Images of pickle flavored milk keep running through my head. Yuck.

This visit to Erie was very nice because I was glad to be there while I was there and I was glad to be going home when I was. And now I am home and very glad to be here.