Tap Tap, Is This Thing Still On?

So.

We’re home.

We’ve been home for almost two months, in fact.

And, yet, you’ve heard nary a peep.

I had every intention of writing about our return.  But the truth is, I’ve been having trouble.  And the real truth is, I’ve been having trouble writing about returning home because I’m having trouble with being home.

It’s not the culture shock.  Sure, things are different here.  I had Pad Thai that cost $13.50 – 13 times the cost of the Pad Thai I’d get in Thailand and 13 times the size, too.  I can do laundry anytime I want and my outfit options expanded tenfold, yet I still feel like I have nothing to wear.  I relish drinking water straight from the tap, everyone’s on a cell phone all the time, including me (even if it is an old school relic that takes me ten minutes to write out a text), and I drove for the first time in over a year.  Everything seems really quiet, even though we’re staying in the heart of one of Pittsburgh’s busiest and trendiest neighborhoods.  But, overall, the shock part was tempered by meandering our way home from Asia via New Zealand and Hawaii.

No, what’s weird about being home is how not weird it is to be home.  We slipped back into our home lives as if we never left.  Our cat Fabulous was snuggled back in my lap within hours of our return; we helped my mom with a big move within days; we had eaten at most of our favorite eateries within weeks.  Sure, there was some initial awkwardness: at first, we had to actively remind our brains about which direction to go when driving around, even though we’d driven that route a million times.  Conversations were strange; how do we, and how do they, sum up an entire year at once?  But overall, even though we hadn’t been there for over a year, home is still extremely familiar.  The road had become our normal, but returning home pushed our travels back to the realm of exotic and foreign in one foul swoop.  Using a squat toilet, eating on the street, doing math every time we paid for something, moving on when things got boring – these concepts suddenly became strange again.  Our whole life for the past 13 and a half months didn’t just become a memory, it suddenly seemed like it happened in a dream.  Eating baguettes in Paris, getting lost in the souks in Morocco, watching lions protect their kill in South Africa, praying the splash from the Indian’s boy cannonball didn’t hit us with the Ganges’ holy water, riding on the back of motorcycles through Vietnam – did these things actually happen?

Everybody at home warned us we’d be bored when we got here.  I didn’t believe them; I was so homesick after being gone for so long, I thought for sure the comforts of home would outweigh any boredom.  But after all the reunions, there’s just life at home.  There’s big events to look forward to – concerts, get-togethers, new restaurants – but these things happen once every few weeks.  I’m struggling to hold onto the appreciation of the little, every-day things I constantly marveled over on the road.  It doesn’t help that I have endless hours to fill.  Sean went back to work within weeks of returning home (a new job at a great company – yay), but I’m still looking.  Even though there are openings at multiple law firms for which I would be qualified (and which would replenish our bank account rather nicely), I’m trying to hold out for a different path.  I’m impatient.  I am so ready to go back to work, to do something productive with my mind.  I’ve had some interviews recently, so there’s hope, but in the meantime, I wait.

Sean’s parents very generously offered to put us up when we got home.  We lived with them for two weeks, and while the home-cooked meals and freedom to do laundry was wonderful, we didn’t want to impose on them indefinitely.  So, we’re doing it to our friend instead!  We’re paying him a small amount of rent and he’s putting up with us and our cat for the time being.  We’ve looked at apartment after apartment, and missed out on one due to stiff competition, but rejected the rest for one reason or another.  You’d think our standards would be lowered after the hovels in which we stayed during this past year, but we’re yearning to find a good, clean, bright place to call home.  We’ve even got our eye on an old house in the city with lots of original charm (and corresponding  pain-in-the-ass old house problems) so we’re not ruling out buying something yet.  I’ve realized my two loves – old houses and travel – don’t mesh together very well.  Every time I get smitten with a house, all I have to do is think of all the places I want to go to remind myself to tone it down and not chain myself to an oversized mortgage and endless hours of renovation.

So, that’s what’s been happening during these two months.  I’m in limbo and slightly adrift.  I’m eager for stability, yet I jump at the chance to eat some pho or pad thai.  Nothing compares to being able to talk to and see our friends and family on a regular basis, or being able to snuggle with Fabulous any time I feel like it, yet we went as far as to price flights to Italy to try to fit in one last hurrah before Sean returned to work.  I sat down to write about returning home many times but have been struggling to find the words.  Returning home is complicated.  I am glad to be home, but I’m still working out what this next stage of my life will look like.  After all, if you shake things up as much as we did, it takes a while for the pieces to settle.

Why yes his name is Fabulous, why do you ask?

With all due respect to all of the family and friends who we left behind, and who we will miss tremendously, the hardest part about going on this trip was leaving our cat, Fabulous.  (I can say this, because said family and friends already know I am a crazy cat lady).  Although we originally planned to find him a temporary home before we put any plans in motion, we ended up selling our house unexpectedly.  For a while, it looked like we were going to have to fit Fabulous into our backpacks, because finding a cat lover to  care for him who did not have any other cats proved to be a challenge.  (True to his name, Fabulous insists upon being the only cat, as my brother-in-law could tell you.  Our attempt at adopting a second cat resulted in Vivian living at Gary’s house after Fabulous terrorized and bullied her to no end.  He looks innocent, I know, but he earned the occasional nickname Trouble Cat for a reason).

Luckily, Judy, our friend Tony’s mother, came to the rescue.  She graciously agreed to adopt Fabulous for the year, which we appreciate so much.  We know he is in good hands, but it is still hard to walk away from him as he is a constant part of our lives.  Fabulous is not one of those cats who you never see except for feeding time.  He is somewhat like a dog, greeting us at the door, following us around, and snuggling on the couch.

Sean did send me a link to a blog once where someone took their cat on a round the world  sailboat trip.  I am a crazy cat lady, but not that crazy.