It’s been almost exactly 2 months since we returned to Denver, with about 2 weeks spent on the east coast during that time.
It felt a bit odd, although familiar at the same time, to move out of our comfortable bedroom at Tom and Susan’s nice house in Boulder, where we had stayed during this period, cooking lots, sharing many meals and bottles of wine and very much enjoying the company. We emptied all the drawers and shelves, packed our belongings in bags and cases and left a clean room. The gypsies were packing their bike wagons and heading out! Some of the stuff we left at our house for our return in May, and the rest came with us. I also got time with my sister Jenny and her son Daniel and wife Tori and various dogs.
We worked like dogs on the pond and garden while we were there, and saw as many people as we could. We bagged 25 bags of leaves that we collected in our front and back gardens. We also fielded a lot of life’s curve balls that seemed to come out of nowhere while we were there, including the fact that our last night was spent at Children’s Hospital in Denver, accompanying our friend Sarah whose 14-day old baby contracted RSV and was turning purple. Scary stuff, but mother and baby are in good care and doing well. A record number of people are catching flu and RSV now, at least in the US.
After a short night, we got ourselves together and got our bags packed and re-packed and Jay took us to the airport bus and we were off. Good news: the guy at the British Airways counter was nice and tagged our bags to London instead of forcing us to go Vienna. Bad news…he mistakenly tagged one bag to go to Vienna, and so we spent a few hours in LHR retrieving that bag. Faster and easier (and cheaper) than flying to Vienna and back. Everyone was nice at British Airways, and the flight was smooth.
We wore masks on our voyage which also feels both odd and familiar. When will we all be past this Covid issue and all the long trail of other communicable diseases?
Getting our last bag, we took the train into London and walked a few short blocks to our apartment in the Kensington area.
A trendy cool neighborhood, and my first trip is to get some milk for tea and some honey and lemon for Chris’ throat. Chris is asleep on top of the bed when I get back, which is the right thing to do. I put a down quilt over her. It’s been a long day and a long week.
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