I’m sorry, it’s been a hellacious week.
Week and a half. Whatever.
Catching up on the work that’s accumulated during my absence has been the hardest part. My co-workers picked up slack where they could, but that didn’t stop a pile-up of rush-hour proportions in my voicemail and email inboxes. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t take vacations at all–and apparently, I’m not alone.
And then there’s been some other stuff keeping me busy. Getting serious about rehearsals for the play we’re producing. Finishing a handful of cleaning and straightening and construction projects around the house. Trying to spend quality time with the hounds. (As I’m typing this, Tania has brought over her favorite chew toy–a filthy, nasty piece of rope–and is practically yelping for me to throw it across the room, but of course, if I do that, I’ll be committing myself to an hour-long game of fetch, and I haven’t even had half a cup of coffee yet.)
I’ve also been busy re-adjusting to New Orleans. That’s been a challenge, with every pile of garbage, every unmowed lawn, every un-gutted house evoking gnawing comparisons to the hyper-clean, hyper-cute, hyper-efficient San Francisco. If I’d vacationed someplace like New York or Los Angeles or, I dunno, Montreal–someplace with visible imperfections–it would’ve been easier to come home to a city that’s imperfect in the best of times, and now is most definitely not the best of times. There’s been progress since I’ve gotten back, and some good bits of news, and one of my best friends has moved home, and the weather’s been surprisingly pleasant, and signs indicate that the city is finding its rhythm again, but it’s still required a bit of adjustment being here, even after only a week and a half away.
The hardest part, oddly enough, has been returning to a house without Jonno. For the first several weeks he was gone, it was great–I had space and time to do stuff I’ve been needing to do, and I’m sure he felt the same. But then, after seeing him for a few days…well, you’ve heard the songs and the poems and the “absence makes the heart” blah blah blah. And even though we thrive on having spaces in our togetherness, even though that’s the strength of our relationship, I miss him as much now as I did all those years ago, before we became “Jonno and Richard,” when he was still living 1312.5 miles away in New York, when I couldn’t sleep without hearing his voice on the phone telling me goodnight, when I couldn’t have imagined that nearly ten years later, we’d still be together. The longing is surprising and disorienting and wonderful all at once. I’ll be glad when he comes home.
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