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47 weeks left
5 pounds lost (over last two weeks, including illness)
12 pounds total
40 pounds left
16(ish) months until the wedding

I am a traveler. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. For someone whose job is not actually travel related, I’m on the road a ridiculous amount of time. (Anecdotal fact: Last year, I was on the road exactly as many days as I was in my house. That’s right. 182 traveling and 183 home. So, not exactly…but close.) Now yes. Some is job related for sure. I’m doing conferences and giving papers, and sitting through workshops (wishing I was absolutely anywhere else on the entire planet while simultaneously proving on the corner of a Powerpoint handout that *clearly* I have missed my calling as a Cubist artist.) But I am also happy to say that more than half of my travel is merely due to the fact that I have amazing and glorious friends who mostly live inside of 3 hours from me. And they have lovely lives that I crash into every once in a while. And they have amazing children that I can be the “Cool Auntie” to (favorite.job.ever).

Oh, and have I mentioned that J and I are involved in a long distance relationship? (Really? Not sure I hammered that into the brain a hundred or so times. Let me be clear, there is *exactly* 5 hours and 25 minutes between the two of us. Except for now. When there is 7000 miles. I digress.) So yeah. I travel. A lot. (Confession: I actually have a suitcase half-packed all the time with my travel set of toiletries, sewing kit, travel blow dryer, all of it. So if I need to be out the door in 20 minutes or less, half my packing is done already. Yup. True story.)

This weekend J and I were both traveling, though clearly on very different levels. I sit on an Alumni Board of Directors for a education institution for whom I had a long standing working career.

J got sent “out there” somewhere to do some repairs on “some things” and get “some training.” (Clearly, my catered affairs in business suits at the Center Pres’s house equates to his work….very similar to J’s “work in the field”, obviously.)*

*Point of reference. I hate when people over use the quotation marks. Mostly because In my head, I can picture them making the air quotes, which is completely annoying and 70% of the time used incorrectly. However, I use them above because this is how J talks to me. I have no idea where he is…what he’s doing. He’s just “out there working in the field doing the thing.” Direct quote. Correct usage. No air quotes. I’m done.

For me, traveling to this Institution for Board meetings is like coming home. We’re kind of a big family. There are more hugs than handshakes. There are more late nights around a fire telling stories of yore (“back when I was here…”) with a glass of wine-in-hand than there are suits and reports and Robert’s Rules moments. The shared experience is what makes it home. Sharing a love of a place we all happily refer to as such. And this time was no different. (I hugged; I drank wine; I told stories of my glory days. Done, done annnnnnnnd done.)

It got me thinking though about the word home, and what that means. How can this place…a place of work where I come to do serious business, so readily and easily take the “home” slot? The place was of course, of huge, life-altering significance to us all, and clearly we share that passion and find it important enough to fly back biannually to the capital city of the honorable state of Nowhere to prove it. But those experiences were *a lot* of years ago for most of us. The trip is costly. It’s tiresome. It’s crazy busy. Why do we do it? I suspected it had something to do with the fact that we do all refer to it in some language as our home.

So of course, I had to look it up, this word “home.” Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a sucker for language and etymology and so of course I looked up the word in the dictionary. (Yes. The dictionary. The real one. The big book propping open the door to your laundry room. Pull it out and give it a read sometime. It’s riveting.) The good ol’ dictionary tells me that the word stems from the Old English for “village” and that other iterations of the same root at work in other languages have it coming to mean something that falls into the “domicile-family-inhabit” spectrum of words.

I like thinking about the word as having all those multiple meanings, because I think that’s most often how we (A-murh-i-kins) tend to use it. A domicile. A place to inhabit. A place of family. A place of safety. In a game of tag, or hide and seek, or fill-in-the-blank-child’s-game, we come to learn that being on Home Base means that nothing can touch you. You are unshakable. You can’t lose.

I feel that way when I return for Board meetings. Invincible. Strong. Safe. Unshakeable. And surrounded by family. This is why that place is home to me, and why I (and many of my colleagues, I would wager to bet) come back. To feel safe again.

Reflecting on J being “out there doing the things with the project with some people” suddenly made me wish he was home. And yes, of course clearly I’m always wishing he was *here* home (HOME-home that is). But right now, I just wish he was at his home post. Home base is where no one can touch you. You’re safe. (it’s right there in the rules of the game.) And there are people around him there that are comfortable. Friendly. Take care of one another. Just like the family living in a home should.

I long for that for J. ( I have officially decided that I don’t much care for it when he travels.) For me, I feel like I merely left one home (my domicile) and journeyed to another home (my extended family). Safe. Secure. Supported. J, I fear, isn’t in the same boat right now.(Of course, maybe he is. Maybe his "travel" is a 5 mile drive. I will never know.)

We missed each other’s phone call yesterday. This is disappointing. I got a text later in the afternoon. All it said was this: “I suspect you’re still traveling. Please be safe. Let me know when you’re home. I love you.”

Back at ya, J.