Well okay then…

So here we are.

I have to admit that it’s a little surreal. The last time I wrote in this diary I was pregnant with my younger daughter. She’s three, almost three and a half now. The last entry of any real substance we hadn’t even left Colorado for Washington yet and now we’ve been out of the Pacific Northwest for four months after almost 4 years there.

Where do you even begin to “go back?” Do you make a new start? Or try to just pick up where you left off?

Funnily enough, that’s sort of what moving back to the east coast from Washington has felt like. We always wanted to come back, to be closer to family for holidays, especially while the girls are little. Traveling no longer requires long-term parking and complicated pet-sitting arrangements, followed by several hours in a cramped metal tube hoping no one in my immediate vicinity gets air sick, to include myself. But now that we’re here, I can’t get comfortable. I don’t love our apartment as it is and I hate that we have no real yard. The dog is getting fat because even when I can take her for a walk, I still have a 3-year-old in tow who can’t go as fast as the dog needs to. There is one small dog park in the whole city and the ones in neighboring towns are only for residents. Guess they don’t want their precious fur babies mixing with the urban riff-raff. It’s familiar and it’s what we wanted, but it’s weird and I feel out of place.

Maybe the sense of “homecoming” will be a better experience here. I hope so, because I need a safe place to go back to.

~Liz