Listening to Ryan's radio show (which I recorded on Thursday night) as I write this entry.

Labor Day weekend... time of the annual rodeo spectacle in my hometown of Dayton. Time of a migration northways to home to see my youngest sister, back from her first two weeks of college at the University of Iowa. Time of much ambivalence and missing of peoples, places, times, things...

Funny, even when I feel like I have been at home long enough, it is still weird/hard to leave. Although I do see my parents fairly often now and I live with my middle sister, it is a different way of "feeling like a family" (whatever that means) when we're at home, in the house and arrangement that I lived in for ten years before I departed for college the first time. I need to work on not holding things up on pedestals in my head and taking them as they truly are, not as I see them or want to see them or whatever. I really really miss our birds, too, so that makes it hard to leave. Ollie is getting up there in years (14 nearly). I dread receiving that call, the one that says that he has died. I always try to make our last moments together when I'm home count, just in case.

A lot of things fit right now, which actually makes me feel a bit off kilter.

Talking to friends on the phone throughout the week helps make everything better and I am so glad that I have talked to those with whom I have. (awkward sentence there...)

Oh, and, Ryan, if you're reading this, the show from last week is a good one, I think. The music is really fitting my mood for this afternoon.