returning to boulder after a month in berkeley is challenging every summer. i get so immersed in my california life that i’m a bit discombobulated when i get back to colorado. i forget my regular routes to places, i mix people up and can’t remember how i know them and generally feel a bit muddled for a while… a sort of travel dementia. this year was tougher than usual because everything was broken when i left and unfortunately, everything was still broken when i returned. my garage remains bent outward from when i bashed it while backing out the day before my trip. the grass in my backyard is all dried up - i DID call the sprinkler guy before leaving and he just didn’t come. (he showed up yesterday and said that a BEAR had chewed a portion of the piping for my sprinklers. i thought maybe it was actually hank, but then i saw a GIANT poop next to the fence. it looks like paul bunyan squatted down in my lilacs - sometimes there is just too much nature in boulder.) the AC in my house is still spotty, despite the AC man “fixing” it before my departure and to top it off, my car wouldn’t start AGAIN! i realize that these are all minor, fixable problems in the grand scheme of things, but it’s taken me longer than usual to get myself sorted and functioning properly.