On the road again, or rather, in the air. Tthis morning I'm moving my body back through time and space to go home. Reentry brings its own difficulties. I'm wondering about my plants (very few since my homecoming from the Trip but they do need watering) and food, a basic problem. After managing to lose four pounds on the Trip, I have gained two pounds over this self-indulgent weekend. How, no, why, do I do that? Let your guard down for a minute and the calories attack. So the remainder of this week I will be vigilant, stringent, abstemious and cranky.

Also busy. That will help. One of the hidden benefits of travel is the removal, even if brief, of pressing problems at home. You can't do anything about them until you return.

I did something for someone yesterday that I have yet to do for myself: I cleaned and tidied a room. My peripatetic, youngest granddaughter returns tomorrow from a year as an au paire in Denmark. To look at her room you wouldn't think she had ever left She has a lot of stuff. I offered to clean and dust and tidy up in preparation for her new onslaught (I have no doubt) of stuff. Wow. She owns more lipsticks than I've ever had. Plus body gel, wash, conditioners, softeners, and yes, cleansers, not to mention shampoos, also big jars of lovely-smelling creams and lotions that prevent wrinkling (at age 23). I found pretty glass jars filled with bobby pins or Q-tips, but none with pens and pencils and letter openers (the usual contents of my spare mugs). I love paper so I covet her unused note books and fancy sticky notes and desk-size portfolios and scratch pads. They are what made me realize that I, too, have amassed too much, only in my case it's anything to do with paper. I collect paper, both blank and filled with my own thoughts, notes, noodges and reminders. I, too, am a packrat. Aren't we all? We just accumulate different things.

Oh, and the books! Sometimes I wonder who buys the books that I don't buy, on subjects that I don't want to pursue. I begin to understand. I found titles and authors I never heard of in my granddaughter's bookshelves, though not as many as the capsuled colours I have never thought of putting on my lips. I did see some copies of books by authors whose names I recognize and whom I like too, but not many. Emily is 60 years younger than I am, not only of a different generation but a different mind-set and a different country, literally.

Well, I learn something every day, and it keeps me humble.

Very humble.

And be it ever so, I'm going home.

No place like it, withered plants and all.

I'm back from the lake.

I'd forgotten how lovely lakes are. Such a pleasure to gaze at the water, trees and sky. A different experience than gazing at the ocean, waves and sky. Whatever, it's all time-consuming, I'm happy to say. And harrowing, too. It makes you think too much and that's hard work and can be quite frightening.

We drove back last evening, back to my daughter's home in Quincy (Massachusetts), and I woke early this morning wondering what on earth I'm doing here. Not here, but here, on this earth. Travel in any form, however modest, does that to one - to me, anyway. You move your body through time and space, as I've said before, and then you wonder where you are. You carry the cocoon with you, of course, the transparent bubble that you live inside and look out of - if you're lucky. Too many people have their bubble pierced or shattered. I'm one of the lucky ones: my bubble is intact, maybe a few dents or cracks, like the wounds on a windshield, but I can still breathe and see. It's the change of scene that I'm looking at that becomes so mind-boggling. As I drove last night, a docile passenger with a beloved chauffeur, I looked at the highway and trees and the roadside signs, bridges, rivers, church steeples, on and on to the city entrances and exits and the signs and commercial come-ons, and I thought of all the places I have so recently seen on my "trip of a lifetime" and of all the people I buzzed over and past - no - passed. Passed over.

It's scary.

I have to think some more.