The Incorrigible Night Owl

I miss California all the time; it’s pretty much a constant. However, I miss it more at certain times than others. After just having returned from a trip out there I’m good for a while. It’s not that I don’t miss it (or wouldn’t go back immediately if given the chance); it’s just I’ve had a taste of it and can get by on that for a while. The further away from my most recent trip I get, the more I start missing it. At around the 3-4 month mark it starts becoming a daily thought, rather than my being able to go for days or a week or more without thinking much about it. Then I get to a point where I start seeing familiar places in California in my head — usually without bidding. I’ll be going about my business and, suddenly, my parents’ living room will pop into my head, or a picture of driving down the highway between Atascadero and Paso Robles (which I do a LOT when I’m out there), or some other location or activity. It has been a little over three months since I was last there and I know I’m reaching that point again because I just had a flash of the inside of Albertson’s (where I do my grocery shopping in Atascadero) and then one of the town’s main street outside of Albertson’s.
The really crummy part is it’s going to be another thee months before we get out there. I fully intended to go for spring break this month but, typically, it’s not going to happen. All I can do is hold out for summer and hope I have enough going on here to keep me semi-distracted until then. I would love it if we could stay even a little longer than we normally do but I have to figure out, number one, how to cut costs so it’s more affordable and, number two, how to do this without driving my dad crazy. There’s always the option of Robert and I taking the kids away for a few days to give my dad a break, but then we run into the problem of incurring more expense that way. Perhaps I can come up with something, though. It would be nice to be there four weeks, with Robert coming out to join us for two weeks right around the middle of the trip. Heck, if he did that we’d actually see him more in those four weeks than we do in any given normal four-week period in Oklahoma. (That’s really sad.)
Until then I’ll be here imagining myself in the place I love.