Under normal circumstances I would agree that the journey taken is better than the destination reached. This, however, I do not believe could be termed a normal set of circumstances. Our flights home: a truly nasty bit of thunderstorm downdraft coupled with delayed flights and sleep deprivation. In my mind, those can't compare to a relatively normal vacation.

Written on Saturday morning in Victoria:

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Me, in shorts, sitting crosslegged in front of a locked hotel lobby in British Columbia. Such is the joy of getting up early to write and then discovering the joys of a) your spouse having the only room key, which you discovered (too late) that you needed to have to get back inside the hotel and b) that your travelling companions are still asleep and have the only key that will unlock the rental car.

More often than not, inferences about my life can be drawn from what I do not write about here on domesticat as well as what I do write about. Since beginning this weblog-turned-journal-turned-something-else-entirely a while back, there have been events in my life that I have not written about here.

Each time, the choice to withhold has been a deliberate one, made after much thought. I've come to grips with the fact that my life is, to some small degree, on display here—but that's for another story, another night. Tonight I'm tipping into the wider half of a bottle of Chardonnay, left unfinished from a night that we had friends over, and trying to dredge up a bit of bravery.

Two generations of my family are best defined by the things they almost never discussed with me. For my grandparents, it was the desperate poverty of the Great Depression, followed by the heartbreak that was World War II. For my father and mother, the event that shaped the years of their early adult lives was the Vietnam War.

I am a member of the first generation of my family who, upon looking back, cannot claim to understand what they went through. My generation has nothing of the kind—and this, as my mother once said quietly to me, is probably the greatest blessing we will never comprehend.When I was ten, I was given a school assignment: to interview an older member of my family to learn what their life was like when they were my age. I picked my maternal grandfather's eldest sister, Belva Davis.

How strange, to actually meet the person that is Jonatha Brooke. How strange, to encounter for the first time a fan's mentality—to realize that the person who is standing in front of you and laughing at a joke is someone who is called by a single name by her friends—and not the full name that's on her albums.

I love that phrase. Always have. I came across it when I was a child—I think it was the first time I learned that a language such as Latin existed, and I became fascinated by it. It has stayed in my mind ever since.

Water is a refuge, and my refuge of choice is a boiling hot shower. Andy and I share opinions in that regard: we both agree that coming out lobster-y is the best way to go.