09.19.01 - 10:02 p.m.

I miss you. I am aching without you here.

So now I'm home again, or I think it's home, but only for three more days and then more limbo in the Jolly J. My mind is racing with errands to run, phone calls to make and packing to begin tomorrow but I'm too tired and overwhelmed to even think rationally about it all.

I was stopped three times for ID/ticket checks at the airport and both of my bags were searched. For some reason they always pick my bags for the random checks, so I was expecting it, but I didn't think they'd rifle through my dirty undies (panties?) looking for my nail clipper and actually take it away from me. I had just been joking about that at lunch! Not that I care, I needed a new one, but still. Get away from my panties, you!

And while I watched the guy go through my bag, a real military-looking guard who reminded me of the general from Austin Powers ("Get my overnight bag. Oh, and Johnson? Feed my fish? Not too much - I'm off to LONDON, ENGLAND.") first asked me if I was a citizen. Um, yes, do I look foreign? Then he asked me my place of birth and I nearly couldn't remember. I've been in too many cities and thinking too much about the concept of home for that to be an easy question at this point. But, like an idiot, I recovered and blurted out "Johnstown, P-A!", spelling out the P and the A like any good Pennsylvanian. I am a tool.

The next security man to question me didn't even speak English, I think, or any English I could understand. I was pretty sure he asked me for my ID, so I gave him my license and ticket, and then he mumbled something while pointing to my picture. Again, Idiot Casey was like, "Yep, that's me!" with a big dumb smile and he handed the stuff over and I was on my way.

There were 20 people on the flight, tops, and still they forgot to bring me my dinner. Not that I wanted it, I think it was some sort of lasagna that I still can't eat on planes since I threw it up coming back from LA when I was 10, but still. Hi! I'm one of TWO people in my row! But even more creepy than my empty flight was walking down one of those big hallways in O'Hare with the glass block rainbow neon all alone. No one else at 6:30 pm on a Wednesday night. It was in fact a Ghost World and I was its sole inhabitant almost until I reached the doors of the El.

Which was so completely welcoming and I even got one of the little single side seats by the back door and listened to Ben and Live, not wanting to take my chances with the buses so I took the Blue line the whole way down to Clark and Lake and then my wonderful dependable Brown line home again. I walked down Wellington, and it was getting colder and windier again and I thought about all my trips down the street in flip-flops and skirts in the summer, going to and from the newsroom and it's all over and I have to find a new happy routine again.