Going Home

You'd think I'd have something to say about this Wall Street nonsense, wouldn't you? Well, to be honest, I do. But it has to wait until tomorrow. I'm wrapping up things at the office so I can head down the road to Ohio come Saturday morning.

Ten years ago, I would have gone home two or three times a year, sometimes four. That was when I didn't have a life here. This was back in the days when working in this office was a form of Dante's vision of Office Hell -- if he ever had one. I'd go the whole day avoiding all the little $#!†s with whom I was forced to work, and the mean arrogant son of a b@#$% FOR whom I was forced to work, then go home and have no one to talk to there either. So going to Ohio was like a one-week break from The Twilight Zone. In recent years, however, working here has actually gotten bearable. I also have something here in DC I never thought I'd have, namely a life.

It took me over twenty years for this to feel like home. But it's still not like Ohio. It never will be. I long for the chance to be politically incorrect without having to look over my shoulder. I hope to visit the farm where my Mom was born, and where I spent many a Sunday afternoon, playing with my legion of cousins in the barn and in the fields, waiting to be called for the big picnic dinner in the yard. Even on a Sunday evening, I could see Grandpa or Uncle Bernard coming down the slope from the cow barn with a bucket of fresh milk. The work would never end.

Naturally, I'm hoping to see some old friends. I also wish I could go salsa or swing dancing, but "Sal" can't come this time, and dancing isn't the same. Especially when you're in a strange place and you don't know who to ask. It doesn't help that I haven't been out on the floor in awhile either.

Fortunately, Paul will be with me. It will be the first time in five years he's seen his grandparents. They haven't seen him either. Last time he was almost eighteen. Now he's almost twenty-three. That's like... forever, practically.

We'll keep blogging on the events of the times too. Just from a different vantage point. Stay tuned...

(PHOTOS: Cincinnati skyline by Jayson at pbase.com. Main Street, Milford, Ohio, circa 1965 by Bill Stockland. Used without permission or shame.)
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