Back from my travels for another few months. Which makes the cats happy. They’re all quite pleased to have me home/be home themselves, in the case of Katala, who spent thirteen of the last sixteen nights at the vet because Little Old Lady Cats need special care that I can’t ask my friends to administer when they catsit. But everybody seems to be doing well, so that’s a load off my mind. I hate having that low grade worry about them under everything I do when I’m gone.

It was a whirlwind couple of weeks, as my laundry pile can attest. I last did laundry the day before I left for Moscow, December 1st. I was gone for five days, was home for four and left again for another five. I got home again around 10:30 Tuesday night, and though I did a load of socks and underwear and another of jeans and more socks while I was at my parents’ house, the laundry pile is big enough right now to swallow a small child. And that’s without the dirty bed linens. I have come to the conclusion that I’ll never get any of it done if I don’t break it down into smaller doses, and so I think that the linens and maybe two other loads will come to the Laundromat with me this afternoon (post hair color) and another set will possibly make it down there on Friday.

The hair color. That’s another thing I get to face today. Before I moved to Chicago, I asked my friends to help me find a good colorist. I got a recommendation (and a discount!) and went in for a color I liked a great deal. The next time, we agreed I’d get some highlights done, since I’m trying to lighten the overall look in order to better camouflage the grey as it comes in. Loved the highlights, too. Didn’t love the thing she did to my bangs.

“But, Sally,” you say, “You don’t have bangs.” Exactly. Only, I sort of do now. And for six weeks, they got in my face because they were too heavy and too long to stay in place, yet too short to stay in a barrette.

At the next appointment, I communicated my displeasure with the bangs. Nicely. I was very polite about it. She pointed out that if I were to give myself a blowout every day, I could make the bangs behave. Look, woman, what part of “I wash my hair and then let it air dry and hardly ever use product or appliances on it and that’s why it’s so healthy” don’t you understand? Anyway, she didn’t do much to the bangs that time. Instead, she dyed my roots, AND ONLY MY ROOTS, the same red they’d been before. Um. Why? Now, I have brassy blonde-ish hair down past my shoulders except where my roots are a glowing red. That would be The Last Straw.

I had actually decided to cancel my appointment and find someone else, and then I remembered what time of year it is and how Very Very Hard it is to schedule an appointment for anything hair-related just before Christmas. So I’ll take the appointment today (my roots are coming in horribly) but instead of scheduling the next one when this one is finished, I’m going to hem and haw about not being completely sure of my schedule over the next month or so and make a graceful exit (possibly without tip, depending on how the color looks this time). Then I’m going to get on the phone and make an appointment with the Aveda salon of my choice for mid-January.

Oh, Aveda, how I’ve missed you. Six years without Aveda in my life. Time to end that unpleasant little streak. I miss the cups of tea and the hand massages and the aromatherapy and the occasional sales pitch for lipstick. I miss that smell that is only Aveda. I can’t believe I didn’t find an Aveda salon as soon as I got to town. But then, I’d been without it for so long–I couldn’t even get the products in Moscow– I’d almost forgotten how fabulous Aveda is.

In other news, Dave gets into town at midnight on Saturday, and will be here for six or seven days before he heads back to Moscow to finish remodeling the bathroom and doing other things we need to do to sell the house. He’s also in a teeny production of Henry V that runs there in January. He’s playing Exeter and Mistress Quickly, which marks the first role that we will both now have on our resumes.

I’m also starting to make some plans for travel again. I’ll be back in Moscow the last week of February for the Jazz Festival. Doing Artist Relations stuff for them again. I’m very excited about it. From there, I’m heading straight to Seattle to work in Artist Relations for the de Miero Jazz Festival in Edmonds the very next week. With some of the same people. (Crew, not artists. It’s an entirely different but also pretty damn awesome proposed bill for de Miero right now. When I have permission to tell you who’s playing, I will.) After that, I’m thinking about spending a day on Vashon Island with a friend before flying back here to dive into the rest of my life. It’s very difficult to find shows I can be in, knowing I’ve got a two week chunk when I won’t be available for rehearsals or performances two months from now.

And that’s that. For now. At some point, interesting things will start happening in my life again, and I’ll happily share those with you here. Oh. I should download and edit the pictures I have of the nephew visit, because there are a couple that are pretty cute. Highlights from that trip include the following exchanges:

• When I arrived, as I was walking through the “Do Not Go Back Once You’ve Passed This Line” airlock at the airport (you know what I mean, that corridor right next to Security, where people arriving go through two sets of doors and there are all of these signs about not turning around once you’re in that space), my mother was holding my wiggly nephew back. As soon as I entered into the main terminal area, she let him go, and this 3+ year-old came racing toward me. Of course I dropped my bags and hoisted him into the air. “I love you, Auntie Sally. I missed you. I missed you, Auntie Sally,” he said over and over as I held him close for a welcoming hug. And here I thought he wouldn’t remember me.

Then we held hands and sang “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf” all the way out to the car.

• At dinner that night, my brother asked Kieran to tell him what Santa Claus says. “Yo, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. Where’s my pants?” my nephew replied. Accused of having coached that response, John answered, “Nope. He picked that up all by himself. It’s from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The first time he said it, we were surprised too. And then we checked the video. It’s in there. Well, Santa says, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ not ‘Yo, ho, ho.’ But he says the rest.”

• Finally, my last interaction with Kieran this trip. My mom was sitting him that day, so he was in the car with us when we went to the airport. “Get ready to say good-bye to Auntie Sally,” urged my mom. “She’s going to the airport so she can go home today.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going home,” I said, all slewed around in my chair so I could talk to the Boy in his car seat.

“You can’t go home, Auntie Sally,” he replied, very concerned.

“I have to. I have to go home.”

His face changed entirely, he became as earnest and sincere as I’ve ever seen him. “I’ll follow you, Auntie Sally,” he assured me. “I’ll follow you.”

And as I got out of the car and leaned in his door to hug him good-bye, he repeated that promise. “I’ll follow you, Auntie Sally. I’ll follow you.”

So I’m looking forward to the arrival of a three year-old hobo on my doorstep any time now.

Tags: absence, blahblahblah, Kieran