I'm going home!

I booked my flights today for a visit home in early May. I will get to go to my brother's college graduation and see my dad's side of the family at the graduation party in western Pennsylvania. Then I'll be home in Columbia and Baltimore for a few days. I'm hoping to take my beautiful pink track bike so I can ride through the city with the wind in my hair (under my pink helmet, of course). I can't wait to see my parents, my cats, my brother, my friends, my family, and my first true love...Baltimore City.

I'm so excited to be going home, but I'm also kind of sad. While I've been gone, things have been changing. I know that several downtown buildings have been completed since I've been in California, so the city will look and feel different. My parents and brother are getting older. The trees in their neighborhood are growing (we moved into the first completed house on our street in June, 1991; the trees were almost nonexistent at that time).

Their cats are getting older too (they were adopted from the local animal shelter as kittens when I was a kid; one when I was 11 and one when I was 16). After I left home, their one cat, Belle, started having medical "issues." First she developed a tumor in the tip of her tail. She had to have it amputated twice. First they cut off all but two inches of it, but she chewed on the stump (yummy). Then they cut it all off and gave her a nice E-collar. Later, she got an infection between the two layers of skin in her ear. It puffed up and flopped down and now it doesn't stand up anymore. She looks like some kind of war victim, when she's actually lived a charmed indoor life since she was tiny.

ANYway...I'm so excited to go home, but nervous to see and quickly adjust to all the changes. I am not good at accepting change, and I get really nostalgic and emotional about "how things were." I think I'll be OK and that the trip will be great overall, but I have a feeling that it'll leave me wanting to stay home in Baltimore.