We are home.
There is an indescrible sense of relief when we come home. Even though we had wonderful times, met terrific people, did work that we believed in and, bonus, snuck in a holiday, home is home. Our van was stuffed full of stuff, it’s a rental and it had to be cleaned out for pick up this morning, so Joe had to spend a fairly long time bringing stuff up. I did a few work things on the computer, ordered the pizza, and then shortly after having my half, went to bed. I could hear Joe moving around the apartment, putting things away, making sense out of mess, and to that lovely sound of him puttering away – something he loves to do, I fell asleep.
Unfortunately I never sleep well the night we get home. I woke, as old men do, for a pee somewhere around three and couldn’t go back to sleep. I needed time, of course, to worry about all the things I have to do at work today, things I need sleep for, but, worrying is more productive than sleep, and, whew, it got done. I was up way earlier than I needed to be, because after the worrying was finished, I was wide awake.
This morning I will be going in to my office and I have a few big tasks to finish this morning and then a meeting all afternoon, they’ve been worried about so, that part of the job is done and now it’s just the doing. One thing that popped into my head during all this was that I was back in the land of ‘no surprises.’ I know my office, I know it’s accessible, I know the people there, I know they all have welcoming attitudes. I know my home, I know the adaptations made here, I know it’s accessible. For people with disabilities those kind of ‘no surprises’ days are wonderful.
We did have the issue with getting rooms that weren’t quite accessible on the road, one had the wrong kind of toilet, I spend so much freaking time talking about toilets. I’m guessing there are at least a 1000 people, total strangers, over the last 8 years of disabled travel, that I’ve talked to about pooing. Where I poo, what I need to poo, what I need to get up from pooing, how far I can go down to poo … it’s endless. We only had one of these incidents when the toilet guarenteed wasn’t the toilet given … and then there was more talk about poo and more talk about promises which turned out to be worth poo and people scurrying around looking at rooms for me to poo in. When an entire hotel staff knows about your poo needs, it makes it hard to order breakfast.
But no surprises today.
Not of the accessibility kind.
What ever else, it’s nice to be home. Adaptations and all. It’s nice to be going to work. Adaptations and all.
Thank all of you who made my lectures possible on this trip, all of you who came to hear me … some people even said that I had been on their bucket list, which I thought was wildly cool … and thank all the people who provided me assistance when I needed it. I appreciate you all.
