….back to reality. yes the soundtrack for todays post is bought to you by soul II soul. that song has been on high rotation inside my crazy upside down head for 48 hours now, which is how long i’ve been ‘home’ for. of course, the ride home didnt go entirely smoothly. i got to JFK after yet another cross town taxi ride from hell with the requisite 3 hours before flight time to spare. on the board, i noticed a ‘now at 950′ notice next to Qantas Flight 108 but i thought, no that cant be right, because SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD US. right? right. but no, no one told us. i had great pleasure showing the qantas guy at the counter my email in which there was NOTHING from qantas informing us of the more than 3 hour delay. apparently we should have been texted or emailed, but we werent, and so i sat at JFK until 11pm. they gave us a $30 dinner voucher, and i did find JFK’s pop up crafting corner
but let me just say that again: i waited at JFK for SEVEN hours with no official communication from qantas. ditto at LAX when we finally got there, with a whole lot of staff standing around while a plane full of angry people watched the clock click over to 3am. no explanation, no apology. 
anyway, it was fine really, we were 3 hours late into sydney, and thankfully people here could follow the progress of the flight on an app. just no one on the actual plane knew anything. i was very grateful, if somewhat delirious, to be met at the airport by trent and tracey, and after some discussion about directions (somewhow im meant to know how to get around sydney after 20 hours in the air and 3 weeks in a foreign country) we managed to get to double roasters for coffee.
oh my god the coffee. so so good. i had two. plus eggs and bacon on toast. and missfee saw me tweet the cup and knew where i was and came and joined us! so so great to see her, to be among friendly faces that helped me stay awake when i all wanted to do was collapse in a heap. eventually, i was home, and it was good to see my lovely little house again, 
i forgot how much i love this space and was reminded as i walked around from room to room opening windows, checking out the garden, thinking about the amazing difference this view is from the place i had just left. its hard to believe that two such distinctly different places, two such distinctly different ways of living, can exist on the same planet.
i dumped the contents of my bags all over the spare bed (i was only 3kg over and they let me go through no extra charge, so i should stop whinging right?) 
and put some washing on, and had a very very long hot shower/bath and then slept from 9pm till about 5am. that was a bit earlier than i would have liked, but it was still a good sleep. thankfully, monday was a public holiday so i could just take it easy and unpack slowly and put more washing on, have some tea and toast 
and another long hot bath. then i sorted through my knitting, sewing in the ends on the arm warmers i finished while i was travelling 
and digging up patterns for hats to match 
and thinking about patterns for the red anzula cloud from Purl
and the madtosh pashmina from knitty city (its either this shawl, a clapotis, or a honey cowl, still cant decide)
then i ventured forth to the supermarket, which was spectacularly traumatic. trent rang and asked if i wanted the dogs and that just made me cry and i stood there shaking my hands not knowing what i wanted, where i was, what i was so upset about. i decided the dogs were probably a good idea, so i went and got them, and there were lots of cuddles 
and scritches,
and possum slept curled up real close to me last night and it was lovely.
then today, reality really struck and i had to get up and get dressed and actually go to work. it was horrible at first, i was completely overwhelmed by the amount of mail in my inbox, even though i’d tried to keep on top of it while i was away. it took me three hours just to get everything answered or ignored or deleted or filed away. thankfully, there is plenty of good coffee on campus
and i didnt need to cross the brooklyn bridge to get it. although i would gladly have been crossing the brooklyn bridge, if you know what i mean. then my head of school popped in, and we talked about arrangements for moving me to a new office, but it will take a few days to get organised, so i at least bought my important stuff downstairs from the faculty office
and wrote a To Do List, and then HR rang and said my new contract was ready to pick up, so i walked across campus to pick it up.
half way across i stopped for a minute and stood with my face up in the sun. its 25C here today, a normal early autumn day but even so it was warm, and i am back in a tshirt. i watched all the ducks cross my path, and thought how entirely different this campus is to any of the ones i visited in america 
how beautiful it is, in its own way. and then on the way home, i decided to just stop at the beach and remind myself how much else there is to love about living here 
because i feel like i need a reminder. it is pretty amazing to have this at the end of your street, really.
when i came home, i sat outside with the dogs for a while, watching them play, getting smothered in kisses and it was lovely. 
and then i came inside and made a bolognese sauce, the same one i always make and it was all very normal
but even so, everything feels different somehow. i think about what lyn said in a blog comment the other day, about finding ways to hang on to my travel memories, and i am walking around the house putting rothko postcards on every spare spot, im wearing my tiffany bracelets and looking at them all the time, im wearing my new shoes, i put the UPenn key ring they gave me on my car keys. my first work task is to write a full report about all the work things that happened, and i will do that tomorrow while its still fresh. i can feel how quickly i will slide back into the rhythm of things here, yet it feels slightly surreal, and temporary. a means to an end. i have made up my mind that i want to go back to UPenn and work there for some chunks of time, they have fellowships they are encouraging me to apply for, but there is much work to do before i can make that happen. there is a sense of urgency about that work now, this is my chance to really take my life in a whole new direction and im not going to let it slide. so today i signed my new contract
its only 9 months (welcome to academia, the land of short term contracts). but its full time academic and i am no longer divided across three different jobs. i have until about September or October when they will advertise the position as a continuing appointment, and i will need to be ready to apply for it. so i have to make these next few months really count.
im not scared of that. im ready to do whatever it takes to end up where i want, and im not going to let anything get in my way, especially not myself.
k xx
