Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig

Amy's back, though it took a while. Captain Oblivious here knew her flight was going to be late, which worked out fine for me thanks to a big accident on the Van Wyck and a virtual flotilla of cop cars at that Jamaica Medical Center or whatever along the way, but it was only as I unplugged my iPod from the car stereo in the airport parking garage that I caught any news on the radio about the riots, or whatever it is, in Southeast, and now I guess just plain, Asia. It was still early enough in the day that the ripple effect only added an hour or so, but I can't even imagine what it's like now that all those airports have been closed down for this long. In certain areas I can almost comprehend what causes something like this--I mean, they've suffered enough as it is--but man. I know I swore off talking politics, so that's all I'll say: man.

I'm glad Amy made it out to Colorado (and got home under the wire). Her whole family lives out there, except her brother and his family who live even farther away in California. She's got nieces and a nephew and her sister and her parents and, I think most especially, her dogs, including her best friend Bobo, who's long in the tooth though still hale and hearty. What this means is that every time she has to leave them, the process is about as clean and painless as ripping a bandage off a burn victim. I know how much she worries about losing--actually, losing not just Bobo, but how she worries about losing anyone, ever. I don't know, she's far more eloquent about this than I am, and I don't want to speak on her behalf at any rate. She does always have a swell time when she goes out there, and she does always come back with a dozen fun stories and a digital camera full of doggie and baby pictures. But she's sad to have to come back, and I'm sad that she's sad. Not just in the sense that I feel bad for her, either, which is tough to admit, but true. I'm in competition with that emotion for her attention is how it feels sometimes. It also feels like I should be doing a better job showing her just how many aspects of herself should make her happy, which is of course everything. But then I marvel at my contemptible ability to see people I care about as outgrowths of me, rather than as people I care about.

Well. For all my movie watching and Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking and staying up past bedtime and not shaving and such that I did while she was gone, I was awfully lonely (feline companionship excluded), and I am awfully glad that she's lying on the bed asleep right next to me, instead of across the continent.