Reentry

When you return home after three months' traveling, it takes:

- No time at all for your best friends to phone, to determine the precise instant when you will arrive at the house.

- Less time than you expected, to remember how to drive, despite having worried about it. A lot. This comes back to you even more quickly than riding a bicycle would.

- Two seconds for your dogs to recognize you.

- Five minutes to notice that the entire yard needs to be weeded and trimmed.

- Two hours to figure out where all the stuff in your suitcases usually goes, and two and a half hours to realize that it doesn't really matter anyway.

- Two days to sort out the junk mail and the bills.

- Three days to deal with the bills, not for the faint of heart.

- Three days to reacquaint yourself with how the TV remote works.

- Three days to notice that there's something wrong with the TV remote, as well as the water heater, the dishwasher, the slider, and a phone.

- Four days to learn which neighbors have died, become critically ill, or put their house on the market since you left.

- Four days to be shocked that you've also managed to forget so many neighbors' names in three months--but not the names of their dogs.

- Four days to realize that your phone's voicemail is full, which is why you aren't getting any messages.

- Another hour to clean out the old messages.

- Four days for your dogs to begin manipulating you again.

- Four days to get around to the weeding and trimming.

- Five days to attend a bingo game at the VFW and announce, "Now I feel retired. Next I'll be watching The Price Is Right."

- Nearly a week to become so bored that you can't wait to begin working on just about anything--such as this blog post.