14 Apr 2008.  3:43pm.

Some days I miss home - real home, not Tarragona-home - more than others.

Today is one of those days.

Maybe it's because I don't have anything to occupy my time - I should've bought my return ticket for Sunday night rather than tonight because 1)nothing is open on Mondays, and 2)I'm broke anyway, so I wouldn't have been able to find anything free to do besides exactly what I'm doing - still chilling in the park.

Maybe it's because all this 'alone time' the last few days has made me extra pensive, as solitudinous days seem to have that effect on me.  I don't have an annoyance to channel all my thoughts into trying not to kill.

But perhaps I don't really miss home.  Maybe I just want to relive memories of home.  Because the home I left is not the home I'm going back to in July.

My family will be essentially the same, thank heavens.  They'll be about the only constant.

My workplace will have changed drastically.  My boss is quitting, and I don't really like the person who's replacing her.  Another dear coworker will be gone, redeployed with her Air Force husband to heaven-only-knows-where.  The whole bank is going to have a totally different vibe, and I don't even know if I'll want to work there any more.

Then there are my friends - or what will be a conspicuous lack thereof when I return.  My very best friend Tahnee is getting married next month and moving with her husband to Nebraska.  So I'll probably never even see her again.

The two people who used to be my best friends are getting married to each other two weeks before I come home.  And that hurts.  I was supposed to be his best man and her man of honor, but instead I'm not even invited.  And while they might not be moving away, there is still that impenetrable wall of awkwardness between married and single people.  So I'll probably see them once or twice and the insurmountable weirdness will be the end of that.

I've always been the kind of person with plenty of friendly acquaintances but few real friends.  And, upon arriving home, I'll have Peter (5.000 kilometers away in New Hampshire) and the girls.  I wonder what friend the new me will be?  Will I continue to play my cards close to the chest, with few true friends?  Or will I open up a bit, finally melting some of that coldness that grips me and that keeps people at bay?

And how much of that can be changed, and how much is hard-wired into me?

I miss my dear mother's cooking.