naked when travelling - basically I'm a hermit crab

Coming home after a two-week absence requires, somehow, that one shrugs oneself back into the house like a favourite garment and wears it for a while before it feels right. It always seems somehow smaller, darker, slightly different to one's mental image for the first few hours, but I think I've almost re-inhabited my shell now. (For some reason re-arranging the 'fridge seems to have done the trick). I am incalculably happy to have back my cats, my own desktop, my kitchen and my bed, in which I passed out for twelve hours last night. My vegetables have not only survived, they've grown, so score one in the Evil Landlord remembering-to-water-them department. (I seem to have an evil phantom ninja slug, though - great holes in the bok choy, and no visible culprit. Damned ninjas).

The last two weeks have been hectic, stressful and emotionally draining, but I've managed to bumble through them on a slightly detached but reasonably even keel, bar a couple of days of gosh-darned glandular resurgance which made me feel somewhat pre-deaded. The actual degree of strain was revealed, however, when I walked into my bedroom yesterday morning to find that Nameless Culprits (from the evidence, jo&stv and the Evil Landlord) had liberally decorated it with welcome-home notices (colourful, with hand-drawn cartoons) and a variety of stress-relieving and occasionally rather lateral gifts, including chocolate, Earl Grey, multivitamins, bubble bath, schlocky literature ("Telepathic Vampires ... from the Future! vs. Accidental Superheroes ... from a College!"), silly DVDs (Moonraker and Step Up, which I think I'll have to watch back-to-back while drunk to achieve the full effect) and packs of microwave popcorn. I'm afraid I sat down on the bed and cried like a baby. In, however, a good way.

Now I have to frantically write up exam questions for my eroticism course, something I couldn't actually do overseas despite the looming deadline because when I was in France I had no time, and when I was in England I only had internet access via mother's computer, which is part of a school system and will not permit you to load any page past the first recurrence of the word "sex". Trying to consult past exam papers and sex-blogs under these conditions is a curiously Zen process which I eventually abandoned in despair. Possibly I should stick to teaching Dickens.

P.S. the trip back did indeed entail a SAA plane with no individual videos. I can now say with perfect truth "The flight was a horror. Rugby movie." (Forever Strong, forever cheesy. And, even worse, Rush Hour 2). I listened to SF podcasts and, in defiance of probability, dozed.