Day 115-117: Lots of Travel Lately

I realized this morning, as I woke up in yet another hotel room, that perhaps the last year ... especially this past summer and now what is becoming fall ... has been full of hotel rooms.

We've grown to fit the routine of packing lightly, throwing our crap all around the hotel, picking up all of our crap at the last minute, stuffing it into the back of our car, and leaving housekeeping a nice tip.

Every weekend, sometimes every week, there is something that calls us out of the city.

It was fun, but now it's becoming a little worrisome, since our home apartment ... our real place where we really live ... is starting to look like a pigsty, and none of my work is getting done.

Seriously, our apartment is currently littered with my Europe backpacks, our wedding suitcases, and whatever the hell we brought home this time from Kansas City. It's starting to look like airport baggage claim's lost and found.

Of course this weekend was not fun, and yes, it was necessary. We were at a funeral. A week after I entered Alex's family, I accompanied him as a full-fledged family member to a funeral. And there is nothing as awful and uncomfortable as being congratulated on your nuptials and asked about your amazing wedding cake while a memorial video plays on in the background. But I'm glad I was able to be there for Alex. I'm very glad we went.

Afterwards, we spent a lot of time with the nieces and nephews, and I started to realize that I've now known Alex's family long enough to see the kids grow to college age, the collegians grow to adults, and the adults grow to super-adults. Alex and I are nearing our thirties, and it comes as a shock that only in about ten years, we'll be the ones arranging the Thanksgivings and the Christmases and the presents for some pack of kids we have yet to eke into existence.

These toddlers rolling around on the ground aren't going to be toddlers for long, are they?

I think the older you get, the more funerals and family get-togethers you have, the more you understand that you are one little paint smudge in a larger Monet painting, and you are a very important paint smudge, but one of many smudges nonetheless.

Those who are born will be those with school pictures that are passed around and oo-ed and ahh-ed over. Those with school pictures will go to college and it will be said of them, "I can't believe they're in college!" Those in college will graduate and find someone, and they'll be those with weddings. Those who are married will perhaps have some children who are of course born and go through the whole cycle, just behind their parents. Parents become grandparents, grandparents become old, and the cycle continues.

And somewhere in all of that, we find time to write our stories.