December

As soon as the break commenced, I found myself haunting the places that I had so often dwelled in my youth. We wound our way up the snow-covered roads to Red Rocks, where we trudged through darkness and snow to reach the silent amphitheater. The seats were smooth with white covering, no one had yet touched them, run over them or kicked footprints through them. We saw a buck, as big as a female moose, prodding his mate up the snowy hills. We saw two more deer by the side of the road, as we went up, and then two more in a field as we went down.
The city itself was another task to conquer. We drove through the old streets, finding houses that we liked or Christmas lights. We drove through Burger King, the usual run, only to find that the food was as delicious as ever.
I saw Emma, the yellow lab I've come to love so much. She wagged her tail at me, her fat little body shaking with excitement.
We went back to the airport, and I found myself crying for the loss of those moments and the memories that I carry with me still of our time together.
The flight home was miserable, as most of those early morning flights are. I slept, Mike's big hood covering my eyes. When I woke, we were circling Joliet, circling, circling until Midway could get a runway open for us in the snow.
I landed and Hunter came with my beloved Simon to pick me up. I let him drive back, content to sit and watch him. I hadn't realized how much I missed him. "I wasn't going to tell you this," he said, "but I missed you." He held my hand the whole way home and I was happy.
Emily and I ran errands last night. I loved returning to our little house. She had auditions for plays coming up, and so Hunter came to see me. We watched a movie, tired of it, and then turned on Monday Night Football to see the end of it. We curled up, watched some "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and I fell asleep, exhausted from the early day.
I'm sick now. The first cold of the season had to strike me during the last week of school, of course. I had managed to maintain my health until now, when all of a sudden I have been struck down. My nose is running, my lungs are coughing, I'm sneezing, hot, cold, miserable.
Ah, but such is life. And everything is going to be alright.
Except for Logic, but we'll deal with that another day.