They Are Coming

It started ten days ago.  It will continue through April.  Snowbirds have been driving my roads and clogging my restaurants since Thanksgiving, but my friends have only started showing up recently.

Big Cuter's family left early on the morning I took She Who Does Not Make Left Turns to the airport.  I returned to a vacant space - no holiday decorations, no extended family, no friends.  There was an empty space in my heart .... for a split second... until I realized how quiet it was.

Quiet is good.  There were no people requiring tending.  There was no one to amuse.  I could walk naked to the laundry room without the risk of scarring my son for life.  I reveled in it until boredom set in.  I was lonely.  Then, I got sick.  Having no visitors was a good thing.

And now, I'm recovered, and life is resuming.  Added on to my usual routine, friends are coming to town.  Without COVID scaring people (why the calm, I do not know) travel is happening again.

I had lunch with My Purple Friend today.  She moved from Tucson to Minneapolis and now she's back for the winter because it was 13 degrees below zero and that is cold.  

I've invited a single friend to come for a long weekend.  Friends from Lamaze class 40 years ago (40 years????) are returning to their VRBO casita.  I hope The Kibbitzer and The Doula will make a pilgrimage once again this February.  

Dr. K and Not-Kathy are back from Europe.  Fast Eddie and JannyLou want us to visit them in their new digs in Tempe.  Taos Bubbe and I have plans to walk every week; our chats are mini-vacations to the past.  

But the best news of all was delivered late this afternoon.  Mom, your nagging worked.  We're coming to visit for Spring Break.

Cue every positive emotion in the land.  They haven't been here since January, 2020.  The first week of April can't come soon enough.