Where Have We Been?

[Kyle]I know it’s been a while.

We made it to my mother’s house in Arizona as planned after our second departure from Tanzania. We were pretty exhausted from all the flying so once we got there, we pretty much crashed. We spent the rest of the remaining week resting and getting our circadian rhythms in line with Mountain Standard Time. For the first couple of days, I was waking up at 3 a.m. completely slept out. I’d go for a run or a long walk and would be ready for a nap right around sunrise. As time went on, I still kept waking up at three but stayed awake for shorter and shorter periods. Eventually, I didn’t even bother getting out of bed. By the next night, my sleep was finally normalized. Maryanne doesn’t have these problems. She sleeps wherever, whenever.

Once that was done, we got busy doing all of the things on our shore list that have been pent up for so long, most of which was pretty dull administrative stuff that’s just way easier with an address and some space to spread out. We’re still also marvelling at everyday “luxuries” like essentially unlimited electricity and water, just for the asking, in house laundry and stores with everything. I keep habitually wanting to check the ammeter to see how much electricity the TV or the lights are using but, of course, there isn’t one. Mom’s ammeter is the bill at the end of the month, which is too rough for my taste. I like to know my impact at all times.


Family Thanksgiving fun
Once we got settled in, the Thanksgiving holiday was upon us. We had lots of family over, notably my brother, Darren, whose boss rarely seems to ever give him a day off, so the week was occupied with that. My step-sister Heather and her family arrived in time for Thanksgiving day, and helped us eat too much turkey and pie. It was nice to see everybody. Mom topped it off by taking me, Maryanne and Darren to a live dinner theatre performance of A Christmas Carol. We all really had a good time with each other. The play turned out to be a musical. It was not a play with a lot of songs but a full-blown musical with EVERY line sung and big song and dance numbers every five minutes complete with way over the top acting. I chose to enjoy it as I would enjoy a retrospective on really bad monster movies or something. It was so bad, it was kind of fun to watch each other squirm as the stage filled up and we knew another “big number” was imminent.

To be fair, it was a very elaborate production and it was clear the cast and crew had prepared endlessly for it but, like hip hop or country music, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get into the art form of musical theatre.