First day home after ten days in Seattle. I have both back doors wide open and from where I’m sitting, I can see two dogs lying in the sun. Oops, one noticed me, and decided to wander my way. Small break for dog petting…

It is good, good, good to be home. I need to unpack, I need to vacuum, I need to do laundry and I need to go grocery shopping, but for the moment, all I want to do is enjoy the humidity and the sounds of the outside world. 67% humidity and 78 degrees (or 26 Celsius), so it feels positively tropical.

Seattle is a dark city in the winter. I never thought much about latitude & longitude, but Florida is far enough south that the days are reasonably long even in the darkest part of the year. Seattle got dark before 5PM and stayed dark after 7AM. But the darkness made the holiday lights around Ballard sparkle all the brighter: they were so much prettier and more festive than the same lights here.

As most vacations are wont to be, it was both good and bad. The good I’d like to remember: waking up with Pam and Samara and Charlie for half an hour of giggling before getting out of bed; making books and stories with Samara and Jill; decorating the Christmas tree and discovering that some of the ornaments were made by preschooler R; listening to R and P watch The Walking Dead; going thrift store shopping with R; fun with cooking and grocery shopping, including the days spent cooking Thanksgiving dinner; talking to strangers in airports. The bad I’m just going to forget.

I’ve finished the first round of edits on A Gift of Time. Today’s goal: to tackle Chapter 10. Or, alternatively, to call it a recovery day, do some useful house stuff, and spend a lot of time snuggling with my dogs. It’s almost 11 and I could already really use a nap.