This weekend was your first visit home, unsteady steps behind a walker equipped with tennis balls getting you from your beloved Passat, to the front porch, to the foyer whose flooring we never much cared for but never replaced.

The cats smelled your shoes and found them fascinating; we learned quickly that Tenzing had no fear of the walker, and Edmund who can't remember where his tail is half the time remembered that some number of months ago, you gave good scritchies.

Over years of texting and communicating through IM, you develop linguistic conventions that communicate emotion even through the impersonal medium of text. For me, an ever-present one has been the ellipsis; it denotes a moment without words. Often it's slackjawed astonishment. Sometimes it's laughter.

Yesterday it was tears.

A short, sweet note: I owe both Brian and Crystal massive hugs of thanks. Both of them came to stay with me this weekend, and they asked what I needed. I hated admitting it, but what I needed was help housecleaning. Not just superficial tidying, but a really deep and thorough cleaning -- the kind of cleaning that helps set your house to rights.

Spring cleaning. Well, winter cleaning. I couldn't hold until spring, not with the house in the state it was and Jeff still hospitalized.

I have held off writing for nearly 11 weeks. In that time, I didn't write at first because I was afraid you would never be able to read my words. Later, I was afraid of what would happen to me if I started to speak; I feared that if I opened my mouth at all, I would start screaming and just not know how to stop. How would that help anyone?

Finally.

I spent a good chunk of the Super Bowl continuing repair work on the 1880s scrap quilt, Oregon Trail. It's been a bit disheartening at times; I keep reminding myself that everything I fix means this will be a better and stronger quilt when it is finally finished, but I've reached that psychological point where I'm ready to just be done with mending the damned thing already, and getting the reward of moving on to quilting it.