we're a bit close, yes

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Last day of vacation! I must pack tonight and tomorrow afternoon fly back to SoCal, where classes will start on Tuesday. This last stretch of break would have been better without an ugly cold knocking me flat, but at least I was on my own bed once again (laid out on the kitchen floor every night for lack of space in the apartment, the plastic mattress-protecting case betraying itself underneath the sheets every time I moved).

    Here is a short and incomplete list of things I have done with my mother lately, both from our time in Oregon and in Idaho.

•  watched movies (including two Thin Man movies, Lawrence of Arabia, and Tangled) and television shows (Sherlock Holmes starring our beloved Jeremy Brett, BBC Sherlock, Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries: Have His Carcase starring you, and Pride and Prejudice 1995, most of these with my father involved as well)
• had heartfelt Talks while snuggling
• shopped for clothes
• shopped for groceries
• shopped for shoes (because regrettable things have happened to my sneakers at college)
• played Scrabble
• made lovely collages on our new folders for school (while playing Scrabble)
• gone to church (both at our church in Oregon and at the church my parents have liked best in their Idaho town so far, which I was very interested to see, it's nondenominational and not very liturgical at all but is very entertaining and seems to be full of quality folks)
• taken dogs on walks (in Oregon, while Best Friend and family were gone for Christmas weekend and I had the care of my dog which they're fostering and their own dog)
• shopped for more clothes
• baked cookies
• baked more cookies
• looked at silly pictures of Dr Mac on Facebook (well, I made her sit with me)
• talked and talked and talked about everything

    And a short and incomplete list of things I have done independently of my mother:

• read books or parts of books (Persuasion by Jane Austen, and also A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett because I was sick and couldn't handle much)
• hung out with my Auntlet and also, too briefly, Friend Bethany
• slept in forever every day
• drawn nice, ugly pictures with my new highlighters

    And things my mother has done independently of me:

• mended my pants
• ???

    There was also a great deal of going over to my grandmother's place in her old folks' home to eat while it was Christmas and my parents and sister were staying with her and my uncles had come to visit for Christmas. And my parents and I went to see my aunt in the hills and her tween children and her horses and assorted animals. And also went to the beach (Oregon Coast!), where it was gloriously freezing and windy and homey.

    Now back to work until the summer, I suppose.