Slightly late, seeing as today marks a week since I arrived home, but I've been sprawling out and decompressing which comes before updating the journal—I'm home again! I got back to the US in the dewey final hours of the 9th and back home around 2AM in all. Slightly late, but I was pretty wired, so I still found time to get a shower and settle down before I ultimately slept not long before the sun came up.
Once again, the batshit weather in the US delayed my arrival. I was supposed to fly back on the 8th, but my flight was rescheduled due to severe storms pounding the East Coast, especially Newark (where I fly in), JFK, and LaGuardia. I was ultimately okay with this, for one thing because it meant one more day in London with Caby, but also because those storms knocked out our power at Somnolescent HQ and I'd have arrived home to a house with no power. Not the kinda thing I want after three months abroad.
I was diverted onto a connecting flight with O'Hare International in Chicago the following day—yes, I literally came home via Chicago. I mentioned it in Somnol, but I think it's interesting how close and painful a listen Summerteeth as an album was for me, yet how little I hear myself in it now. That song's really about being lost, numb to a procession of things that you shouldn't be numb to (murder, police chases, opiates), but cognizant of that fact and trying to start anew, but I'm not lost. I've got a plan now. I seem to have finally bucked the trend of the post-Wales trip depression.
It's not that it's not sticking with me—God, it is. To think that all those places I spent every day in, my girlfriend's house, the streets and shops around it, the park, Cardiff Central, they're all still there though I'm not—that's strange. Swansea, Newport, and London, all the familiar voices on the Underground, Trys, Caby, Tal, their parents, Sherlock and Enola, every last show on iPlayer and every episode on all those DVD boxsets we watched, even though I've had to leave them for now (weirdly, the Home Office doesn't like it when you stay forever), they're still there, after all that time spent living there, and now I'm back here. That's strange.
It's just that there's now that forward momentum towards me getting there permanently, and that Caby and Trys are anywhere from a few months to a year off from visiting themselves, that makes it feel less permanent. I've enrolled in school again (though missed the boat on the first virtual orientation, so I'll have to wait a few weeks for the next one). I had my first regular physical for the first time since high school, and my first eye doctor appointment since then is towards the end of the month. It's the end of this vacation, but it's the start of responsibility, me not just hopping between jobs waiting for the next flyout in perpetuity.
I'm gonna immigrate, and regardless of how far I get, it'll be closer than I am now. It's not the end of the good times, it's just the start of the next era of my life where it's permanent someday.
Back to the flight situation. After a day on Piccadilly Circus spent in Waterstones (the largest bookstore in Europe!) and Fortnum and Mason's (where a few hundred squids is cheap!), I was relieved to wake up not to a flurry of texts about flight delays, but rather one asking me to check in. We made it to Heathrow with good timing, had one last breakfast, said our goodbyes for now, and the flight to Chicago went off without a hitch! Almost. We were late landing at O'Hare, as storms had limited the amount of planes in and out and we hit a small backlog, but after a while of circling, we did land, and I still had a few hours before the one to Newark.
Well, until that one got delayed as well! Turns out the getting back into the country, customs, going back through security (good thing I put my PreCheck on this new reservation absentmindedly!), getting my bag rechecked, that was the easy part! The Newark flight was a fucking crawl every step of the way, from five hours worth of delays to my checked bag ending up at a completely different terminal, necessitating a moony midnight air train and then ten minute walk to Terminal A (as the air train only in theory goes to Terminal A) to retrieve it from the United offices.
Actually, credit where it's due: I am surprised that very little of any of the trouble getting me home these past few weeks has been United's fault. They've been quite nice too, giving me a much larger refund than anticipated for the first canceled flight and upgrading me from Economy to Economy Plus on the connecting flight after the second scheduled one got canceled (yay leg room and seat outlets! I finished most of the trip diary on the flight to Chicago). My checked bag ending up a half hour away was a bit of an irritant, but that's how it happens sometimes. I snagged it with a quick passport check, whatever, it came home with me.
No, it's really just been the crazy weather that's caused so much disruption. Wildfire smoke, crackling storms—I have to wonder if God felt that the plagues were a little overdue and is making up for lost time this summer. It's been so dry in the UK too; those bastards are under siege from wildfires as a result of the total lack of British weather in the UK right now. Absolute clusterfuck. Wild times.
I do miss it, and I do miss everyone, but it's not bumming me out this time. It's all still with me. I'm still buzzing off the travel (which is fun as shit, I do enjoy the hell out of the airports and the trains and seeing new places, and it'll be even more fun when Caby and I can go places together), Caby and I have made plans to call more and do more together (for no reasons whatsoever, Stardew has been on our minds...), same with the Somnolians, and y'know, I've been looking forward to streaming again, I missed that. Savannah just took a nice flight to Europe right as I was coming home, so she's missing these first few Spyro streams, but she'll be back.
There's plans in place to get me over there for good, boys. I'm leaving behind being a lovesick early 20s sad sack being kept company by Superdrag albums when the girl I want can't do that instead, and we're moving into our thirties with a plan, and a canal, or however that goes. The future belongs to whoever grabs it, and that's me.
Welcome back, all of you.
Tagged under: real-life
