There were many things that I intended to write about on here, and I don't want to write about all of them because it would take all afternoon, so I'm going to just mix and match and give you anecdotes as takes my fancy.

( Cut for rambling )

Here I am, home again.
Things are different.

The bus stop half a block from my dad's house is no longer a bus stop. I discovered this Wednesday afternoon while trying to get back to mom's house. It's not that I mind the extra half-block walk to get to the bus stop a block from my dad's house. But it was cold, and I had to wait for the next bus because the first bus passed me because the stop I was standing at is no longer a stop. Also, if I forget the next time I get off the bus, I will have to walk two blocks back to my dad's house. I am also wondering what this means about the bus stops in general. The fact that I only had to wait about ten minutes for the second bus suggests that they haven't changed the schedule any, but are there other stops that aren't stops any more? If so, how do I know? The schedules they hand out only list the major stops. There's a SEPTA website.
It isn't helpful. I have learned that the 23 is an "owl" route, meaning that it operates 24 hours a day, which I didn't know and may be useful someday (if they don't change it between now and then, which they might), but nothing about eliminating stops. I'll admit that having two stops within half a block of each other is ridiculous, but I would like people to at least tell me if other stops have been eliminated. The one on the other side of the street probably isn't there, but that's okay because it's too hard to cross the street there and I usually go up to the library anyway.

I saw that mom had moved the furniture when I was home for Thanksgiving, but this is the first time I'm having to live with it like this. I think that I like it better, but it's very difficult to tell.
Mom also opened up the space under the stairs for storage, but that's okay because she's been talking about it for a long time, and I helped discuss the plans for it. I think that I will suggest that she put a coatrack on the back wall. I have missed having somewhere to put coats ever since she converted the closet into a first-floor bathroom. The basement stairs just aren't big enough to also be a coat closet.

I think that my brother now sits at my place at the table. I can't be sure, because mom has been known to put people's napkins and glasses in the wrong place before, so maybe she's just discombobulated by having to put three places when she's been doing just one or two for so long, but I think my brother is confused about seating arrangements as well. Now that I think about it, I remember that he's complained about his seat before, because the "heat" vent blows cool air at him, so they probably did switch things. I'm going to keep sitting in my spot, though.

I went to my highschool's winter concert yesterday, and the jazz band did not play either "Summertime" or "Take the A-Train." Oh, the shock! That's a good change, though. Both songs are very nice, but one can get sick of them. I wasn't here for the Thanksgiving concert, so maybe they played them both then. Either way, I think I can survive not hearing them.
Viola wasn't there, and I missed making cynical comments to her in the bits between the songs. The elderly lady next to me was also entertaining, but didn't really cut it for me.

Mrs. B. has moved out. I knew this was coming; Dee has been telling me parts of the saga, including the story behind her Get Out of Hell card. Still, it's one thing to hear bits of it over the phone and be treated to a excellent story over tea, and quite another to walk by the house and see men filling a truck with the last of her stuff. I hope that a family with children moves in; it would be a good house for children.

School was the same - but I felt different. On the outside looking in. Not quite a stranger, but no longer belonging there. As if I'd grown out of it. Invisible. Not when I stopped by Browsers and saw all the juniors - seniors, now - and talked to my teachers, but when I walked up the sidewalk and along the hallways. The eyes of people I knew slid over me without recognition. I don't know if they didn't see me because they didn't expect to see me, or if the fact that seeing me was strange did not register with them, but it felt like invisibility. I wasn't very close to most of my class, but I didn't realize how used to them I had gotten after four years of being together. And they weren't there. There we other people in the halls, and freshmen I did not recognize. I felt like a ghost, as if I no longer existed because my class did not.

Things are also the same.
Everything at school looked the same - down to the portraits of former heads of school, and the masking tape on the floor of the front hall marking footprints under the mistletoe. Browsers smelled the same, and there were crossword puzzles on the table. The middleschoolers looked the same, as did all of my (former) teachers.

Dave called for mom this evening (she was out). That was slightly better than usual, because there was an obvious topic of conversation (me being back from college). It's amazing the way such a sociable man can be so completely at-a-loss over the telephone. He has a talent for making a 30 second call take hours. Also, I managed to get "It's Miriam" in soon enough in the conversation to avoid the really awkward situation where he thinks I'm mom and starts talking to her - to me. I think that none of the long silences lasted any more than 5 seconds, but it was still a fairly typical phone conversation between Dave and I.



I've been having strange dreams lately. I don't remember what I dreamed last night, but the night before Tonje and I were standing on the corner of Carpenter and Germantown Avenue, where the community garden is. I looked across the street, and Mel and some other Smithies were sitting at the cafe tables in front of Grobens. Never mind that Grobens sells fish and that there are no cafe tables. I waved, but they did not see me. Now that I think about it, I realize that the corner looked the way it did before they tore down the grey wall and the billboards and put up the gastronomy office. I can't say that I miss the billboards and their beer ads, but the little garden beneath it was nice, and I don't see how gastro-whatevers do anything for the neighborhood. But all that wasn't in the dream - it was just us standing there, and the people at the cafe tables. I feel that there were lots of dreams like that, a whole sequence of people and places, but I can no longer remember them. It didn't seem odd that a whole bunch of Smithies just showed up in Philadelphia. I think that my subconscious is trying to reconcile the fact that none of my new friends are here, and that I won't see them for nearly a month - more than that for some.