Alone Again

You know that let-down feeling you get after you return from a too-short vacation? That I-prepared-like-a-crazy-person-and-this-was-it feeling where you're looking around wondering what the hell just happened? Well, that was my feeling yesterday.

For the last 2 weeks, I've been frantically cleaning in order to be sort of ready for my brother's visit last weekend. Most of my activity has been centered around the spare room, since that is also the guest room and I had it so stuffed with stuff that the door would only open partway. But the rest of the house merited attention as well. I unburied my kitchen counters, cleaned the bathrooms, swept the walls, scared all the spiders into inconspicuous corners and tried to convince the cat to not shed for a couple of days.

Friday I left work early to get home and do a final check of the homestead. At 6, I headed to the neighborhood Irish pub to meet friends from work. Scott finally managed to thread his way through Chicago traffic and arrived around 7. We stayed out late, staggered home and fell into bed late Friday.

Saturday, we didn't really show significant signs of life until well after noon. Then we foraged for food, and spent the rest of the day watching movies. We went to the theatre for The Libertine. We tried to rent The Ice Harvest at the not-so-friendly blue and yellow video store and they only had one copy, which was out! WTF?!? They have an entire wall of some movie I've never heard of (Into the Blue, Out of the Blue - something like that) and only one copy of the movie I want. Figures. So we went to a different one. That store had three copies, all checked out. At least the guy there was kind enough to call several other stores and try to find it. So we ended up renting The Man with Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy. And after we finished that, I had a copy of Madagascar that a friend let me borrow. Then off to sleep.

Sunday, my plan was to go to the open house of the hideous mcmansion they planted on the former site of a beautiful garden. It's been on the market since before it was built. Maybe something about being able to hand your neighbor a cup of sugar through your nearly adjoining kitchen windows is a turn-off to the $1 million+ house buyer crowd? At any rate, by the time we got back from lunch, the open house was over and it was time for him to head back toward home. *sob*

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the apartment, amazed at how empty it seemed. *sniffle*