home again, home again

Well.
We got on a plane last night at 7pm on the west coast and walked in our front door at 9am on the east coast with nary a minute of rest between for the adults. We all promptly fell asleep for four hours, which was good cause my all-nighter days? They are gone. My children are rock stars at airplane (shuttle bus and car) travel. We got compliments from people who had seen us in the airport and then on the plane, and only one person gave us the stink-eye and he may have just been offended by the sunset. Did I mention the four hour nap?

But what this post is really about (cause there will be no pictures) is what we do upon arriving home after time away. I went immediately to my garden to see how everything fared in my absence, and did alot of what I call walk by weeding. A walk by is when you don't really commit to fully weeding the bed, you just grab the tallest stalks and hold on as your forward momentum pulls the weed out for you. This method of weeding annoys the living daylights out of certain people in my household because it also involved random small piles on weeds rotting in various places in the lawn...leaving memorable dead spots after each journey.

Certain other members of my family will grab a broom the minute she enters the house. In the past I have been known to clean everything, kitchen sink and bathrooms included (obviously before children) before going to bed that night. My husband still dreams about those days with fondness. The clean house part, not the before children part, of course.

So I started wondering how we all reclaim our space when we have been gone for some time. There must be the unpackers, who put everything away the minute they walk in the door. I don't know any of those fastidious beings, I have only heard they exist. And the drive by unpackers who probably just take everything out of the suitcase and make tidy piles on the bed and floor, to be dealt with later. (At least clothes don't rot when left in piles) Even worse is the suitcase being lived out of when you've been home for a week. Er, or so I have heard. It all seems to depend on one's constitution. Here I will refrain from an in depth analysis of each personality type based on their unpacking habits and go finish putting the piles of everyone's clothes away before I kill the floor too.

Watering squashes, pulling weeds and sweeping... any others? Immediate clothes washers?


Anyway we are home again. Pictures will follow as soon as I get some weeding and unpacking done.