Home again, home again.

Ohhh, glad to be home. Though for a minute or two with my cat nosing me and purring and trying to wake me up to love her this morning, I was maybe missing the sterile hotel room. But then I remembered the smell – new carpet, new bed, new everything in that room. Off gassing, mmm.

Very uneventful trip back, though I was irritable beyond belief by the time I got home at midnight. No one shushed me at customs.

I actually miss Baltimore. Not that it was fabulous and exciting in the way that say, New York was, but it felt homey. People were nice, they were easy to chat with. I found two very wicked cafés in a short period of time, and there’s more music going through there than I’d ever have time to see.

Taking the train out of Baltimore, I could see the not-so-salubrious parts of the city. Red brick projects, squat houses in rows at right angles to each other, bare dirt in between. Boarded up windows, and kids looking bored.

The murder rate seems pretty high – there’s a section in the alternative weekly called "Murder Ink" that describes the murders that occurred in the past week. Sounds grisly, but I think the point is that the victims get remembered. They were up to 119 for the year. Not the past 12 months. Since January. Fuck me.

Lessons learned from this trip? Don’t take a typewriter traveling. It’s heavy and you won’t use it. Don’t take your knitting. Used mysteries are available in every city, and calm the brain like knitting does. But they're expendable,

I leave you with a few pictures of Baltimore. And one of my typewriter, just because I was chuffed it matched the counter in the Ottawa Airport bathroom.











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