A week ago Wednesday night, I returned from The Big Trip. (All posted in Blog ‘Time and Place’) It was…a trip…from near-perfect to awesome to troubling to eye-opening (personally and geographically) to psychologically traumatic to warm and fuzzy to tasty and pretty to exhausting. As travel should be.

Many things to write about in each of those categories: near or even entirely perfect—experiencing a country (Rwanda) I love and fear (because of what it says about each and every one of us) through the eyes of my grandchildren; awesome—as safaris to my surprise are and with family and in slightly rough conditions (but not too) especially awesome; and, yeah…well…it is troubling to not be able to quite keep up a physical pace that seems reasonable—is this something more time at the gym could fix?; and then there’s eye-opening—how geographical, social, family dynamics play out in ways you maybe hadn’t quite expected, being in two African countries (Rwanda and Botswana) that are safer, cleaner and apparently better managed than the U.S. or U.K. or many other of us ‘developed’ places; psychologically traumatic—my problem—to be explored more fully elsewhere AND you’ve already seen lots of warm, fuzzy, tasty, pretty in previous blog posts (Time and Place).

So the pattern of my days (and nights) since returning is up at 1:30/2am, pretty alert most of day, falling asleep (literally) at 7pm. Since we were roughly halfway around the world for much of the trip, it could be worse. It is however getting annoying.

Back to the books then. A glass of wine. My first since the Barefoot Gallery & Shop in Colombo. Hmmm…tastes very good. By 5 or 6 I hope to sleep a little more.