Viable Paradise is over! Saturday morning I was torn between never wanting to leave the sunny Martha's Vineyard and desperately wanting to be home right now. I don't know why, since another week of not sleeping and not eating would hardly have been good for me. But the feeling of community was just so intense.

I got on the much-smaller-than-a-bus plane to Boston, managed to connect to my crit buddy O.O., an ex VP-er. He and his wife gave me a great New England lunch and showed me around the old heart of Boston. It was good to see something of the US besides Las Vegas (Writercon 2005) and Martha's Vineyard, both of whom are said  to be not so much representative of the rest....

Then back to Logan Airport and my flight. I'm too tall for airplane seats. How do guys cope? I actually  managed to sleep a couple of hours on the plane and then it was early morning in Amsterdam. My twin girls ran up to me and hugged me, and then I shed some silly tears of relief and tiredness on my husband's shoulders. A bit of me that has been on full attention mode all week, especially during the travel moments, could finally relax.

I ate a second breakfast, went to sleep in my own perfect bed, watched some downloads, never feeling all there yet. My husband cooked dinner for me, and that woke me up. And I ate a full plate at dinner for the first time in a week. Probably lost a pound or two. My body never really switched over to American time and it just refused to acknowledge that eating at two o' clock at night was possible or desirable.

So now I have slept 10 consecutive hours and I'm feeling much more me. I'll go into work for a few hours that afternoon – only the appointments that I can do by being me. The others I will call off. Too much effort for today.

And then there's a ton of reading I have to do for my other course. And all the rewriting and sending out of short stories Uncle Jim ordered me to do. Looking forward to that part....