Traveling Princess

So I’m home. For now.

I have to say, I’m a bit loath to leave again.

Not that I don’t like traveling — I do! — and not that I don’t like meeting people — I have made some of the best friends EVER this year on all my various jaunts. I’m about to head back to NYC, and then to Nora Roberts’ Girls’ Night Out in Boonsboro, and then to FaerieCon in Hunt Valley MD, and I’m sure I’ll come back with even more friends and funnier stories to tell.

But I’m not going to lie: I miss my home. And so much more than just my bed and my pillow.

Authors lead this Clark Kent/Superman existence where half their life is spent behind a computer and half is on the road performing and Being Fabulous. I love both of these things. But the more publicity I inevitably do, the fewer and farther between those days behind the computer come. I can’t keep waiting for that solid week to work on my revision, because it will never get here.

There are also other little things I miss that I wouldn’t normally consider. Like:

Toilet Paper. Most hotels and convention centers use seriously cheap toilet paper. Generally, I don’t mind. But after I’ve wiped the royal bum with sandpaper for a month solid, traveling does start to lose a bit of the magic.

Fresh Air. Conventions are rarely held outside, and you only get a balcony in your hotel room these days if you’re very, very lucky. There was a screen on the window in our room in New Hampshire for MISTI-Con, and thankfully Zoraida didn’t mind that I left it open most of the time we were there. The reason I gushed so much about the backyard on the hotel in Missouri was because the door was left open most of the time I was in my room. If there’s been a locking screen door, I probably would have slept with that open as well (though Mom says otherwise).

Fresh Produce. There are only so many chicken Ceaser salads a person can eat on the road. What’s typically on restaurant menus are hamburgers, iceburg lettuce, and sweet potato fries…if you’re lucky. Where I would normally eat half an order of pad thai and save the rest for later, in the cases where I don’t have refrigeration, I have to be okay with sacrificing half my meal to the refuse bin…or eating as much of it as I can because I know I won’t get the calories later. In the meantime, I need to remember to stay vigilant with vitamins and hydration…it’s a rough road. I eat a lot of protein bars. I think of them like food cubes on sci fi shows.

I am an Author of the Future.

Then I get to go home for a few days and I dream of home cooked meals…or even salads full of everything I keep in my pantry that typical restaurants don’t. But I can’t go shopping…there’s little sense in buying three days worth of produce so I can try and eat it all in 72 hours. But maybe I do it anyway. I risk the wilting spinach and the onion growing on top of my refrigerator just to have one meal that isn’t mass produced by a restaurant. Though it’s better if I make something I can freeze…otherwise, it’ll just be going to waste the minute I leave again.

Flowers? Plants?  I don’t buy them, as sorely as I’m tempted, because I won’t be around to see them bloom and if I don’t water them I’ll have a sad company greet me at home. I’ve started to invest in non-dairy creamer because milk products in our refrigerator tend to go bad at what seems like an alarming rate.

It’s not…I’m just never home.

I was hoping to go to England this December to celebrate the wedding of a very good friend…but since the sale of the TN house fell through, those plans have been scrapped. I realize now that I have absolutely nothing on my calendar for December.

And you know what? I’m totally okay with that.

In fact, I think when we get home from Newport News after Thanksgiving, I’m going to buy myself some flowers. And some asparagus. And a vat of spinach leaves big enough to swim in.  I’m going to hide from the world and work in peace…and I’m not going to dare the world to stop me because she will.

Peace, writing, and home.

*sigh*

I can’t wait.