...and time goes by, so slowly, and time can do so much.

There's so much to say, I don't know where to start.

It's our anniversary. It's going to be very lackluster, because we just got home from Jersey at around 2:45 this morning, and Matt had to start working (from home, thankfully) at 7. The babycat has been very very lovey this morning. I think she missed us, though I'm surprised that this is her reaction and not ignoring us. What a cat.

So, for those that don't know, the primary purpose of this trip was to get 'my stuff' taken care of. I had probably 8 or 9 tubs worth off stuff, plus a couple other smaller boxes. I managed to consolidate everything into 2 tubs, more or less. (This doesn't really include some of the small figurines, which are in my parents' hands, and the porcelain dolls, which weren't put in a tub, but packed into the back of Matt's trunk. After not seeing much of it in two or more years, it was hard to justify keeping much of it. Even what I kept, some of it was purely so that I could sort it out better here. Sitting in a dank basement isn't always the best method of judgment, I find.

Hands down, the one thing I wanted to make sure got brought home was my trunk of Barbies. I know some people collect Barbies to keep them in pristine condition or whatnot. I played with my Barbies, frequently, for hours on end, for somewhere around 10 years. They were my absolute favorite thing to play with - I'm not sure if anything ever really rivaled the Barbies for my attention. I don't know if you noticed, but in the above "consolidation" list, there is no trunk of Barbies. They did not get brought home. They ... were moldy.

I don't know how to really communicate how crushed I was. If you had to ask me one "thing" to represent my childhood, it would be that trunk of Barbies. I went from planning on bringing them home (and thinking about sitting there with them spread out in my living room and getting to brush their hair and dress them up again) to having to throw them all away. Gone. It's not like I had decided I didn't want them anymore - which makes it worse. It was like a death, of sorts. The death of one of my biggest and fondest memories of my childhood. There are other barbies in the world, sure, but there aren't THOSE barbies, and there will never be again. I locked the trunk, and I kept the key separate. I don't want to think about someone else opening that trunk ever again. It's sort of like ... I locked up my childhood, and it would feel like a violation for someone else to open it up again. I guess this isn't as concise or coherent as it might be - I've only had around 4 hours of sleep.

Other than that...

I've never gone back to a place I moved away from, really. I mean, we went back to NY, but it was different. I barely remember that, and there hasn't been significant change. If I were to go back up there now, and see whatever they've done to my Grandma's house ... *shudder* ... and we never went back to Colorado after we moved. So these places are immortalized in my mind as last I saw them, and to an extent, I think that idolizes them. Even Jersey, time fades what I disliked about it, and left me with pretty good memories of it. But I went back. Things were different. You wouldn't think a year and a half could change that much, but oh, it has. Stretches of land are now engulfed in huge shopping plazas, and malls are being torn up to make way for "vallet parking" (that's such a joke!), even the target I spent hours in has been remodeled beyond my recognition.

It was really overwhelming at times, that things have gone on and changed in my absence, but something unexpected happened - it made it easier. It went on without me, and it's not my home. It was a place I lived, but it's so different from home, that it cannot possibly be.

I said good bye to Max, Maggie and Hannah. I told them how I love them, still think of them, and hope that they will be waiting for me somewhere, and that they are happy. It was really odd talking to a patch of ground, covered in ivy, bearing no resemblance to the three graves I can still see in my mind. They are really hidden from the rest of the world. I wrote their names, along with mine and Mikenna's, inside the wood frame on the basement stairs. It's not so hidden that it'll never be found, but it's not blatantly obvious. I left my mark, and I left a mark for others to recognize that Max, Maggie and Hannah lived there...they never need to know the rest. On an idea from Matt, I scooped up a little bit of the dirt from their graves and put it in a container. If we ever have a house, I can add that dirt to a garden, and always have them with me. It makes me feel better, thinking I didn't entirely leave them alone.

I have a hard time writing about my parents. There are some things that are too intense, too ... private to write about. It's nothing big, but something in writing about them, or my time with them, is strange. It's like it makes my time with them less special if everyone knows about it. I hold my time with my parents very, very close to my heart...it's getting too hard to leave them, not knowing when the next time will be.

We did go to see Iron man though - even my mom went, which she never does. Among all the other movies showing, Ironman STILL sold out while we were in line for tickets, and we had to wait for a slightly later showing. Crazy.