Leaving Home

We're a week away from getting back on the plane.  How did four months manage to go by so quickly? This is the longest we've been in Berkeley since we started this bi-continental existence and I've gotten lazy.  I've actually got to remind myself how much I'm going to enjoy being back in Paris because I'm sensing that I'm tempted by the default option of just staying here.  I wonder if this means anything in the overall scheme of things. 

As usual before our semi-annual flights in either direction, I start to get a bit antsy, nervous, twitchy.  I start running over lists in my head, lists I rarely actually write down because I forget what's on them by the time I get to a piece of paper or a keyboard.  I tried to limit this before we left Paris in December by actually writing down what I left there so I wouldn't bring back stuff I didn't need.  Good plan, eh?  Where's that list though?

So last night I was up in the middle of the night, listening to the silence, which was far from silent.  The train whistle we don't often notice anymore that drifts up from the tracks along the bay, at least two or three miles away; the wind blowing hard through the trees and the blown-off leaves crackling; the heater starting up as the temperature in the house falls below the lowest point we've set for it; a motorcycle engine revving as it goes up the hill a couple of blocks away; distant sirens distinctively different than the klaxon sound of Parisian sirens. At least the rooster across the canyon was asleep.

Oh, did I forget to tell you about the rooster?  When we got back here in December I noticed a new sound, not at the proverbial crack of dawn thank goodness, but at various times during the day, whenever he felt like it apparently.  This is Berkeley; rules are for others.

One of our neighbors across the canyon probably has fresh eggs every morning.  We've got the crowing.