We’re home, and it is good. The dog is attacking my elephantine tourist feet*, the cat is minxing in and out the door. Piles of books to open and QVC packages from my mom (sure hope there’s a seersucker muumuu in there). Evidence abounds that our housesitting friend took heroic measures to improve the domestic surrounds, including the resuscitation of a couple of the more dessicated houseplants. I have kissed the coffeemaker all over.

More to come but our basic itinerary was Bonn & Cologne again (where Mr. Tingle had more business), then a train over to Paris to see Mr. Tingle’s son, who’s been living there with his steady since February: playing guitar, smoking cigarettes, getting to know the best 2-euro wines and growing a mustache. (His various emails on these subjects will be collected in a single volume, to be called Dear Paw: Letters from The Boy in Paris). He and the steady squired us all around town and we had a pretty perfect time.

I want to share more adventures, including the stalking of one Ludwig Glock, antiquarian bookseller in Bonn — but for now a follow-up on the post below about the books to be brought on the trip.

So: I have the books all piled in my carry-on. Our flight out of Asheville is delayed and — due to fallout from that giant nor’easter the other week — we’re told that if we miss our connection to Cologne, the best the airline can do is put us up in the Holiday Inn in Newark for a night, then fly us to Amsterdam the next evening, and then we’d have to find our own way down to Germany. Which would mean that Mr. Tingle would miss a day of meetings and we’d finally get to see Amsterdam but only to find the train station, and also I immediately form a picture of the Holiday Inn in Newark and it is a little sordid & depressing & involves us lying around in our underwear (no luggage) and drinking lukewarm water from the bathroom tap (no money) as we listen to the planes rumble by overhead. But: The clouds clear, the wind gusts abate, we fly out of Asheville a little before the time predicted, we arrive in Newark, there is still time to make our flight to Cologne but only if we run (run!), and so we go flying down the concourse. Except I can’t fly because I am carrying a bag of books that includes the frickin’ first volume of Remembrance of Things Past and it is heavy, that bag holding that book. So heavy that even with the spectre of the Holiday Inn in Newark before me I can only manage a hobbled trot. Mr. Tingle runs, I hobble behind him, and eventually I yell to him, “Go on ahead without me!”, meaning go on ahead and ask them to hold the plane, but which I am told came out tonally as an anguished cry of “Alas, I am carrying the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past and am doomed! SAVE YOURSELF!”

* No kidding. They are huge & so swollen they’re hardly identifiable as feet anymore. More like giant lead plugs.

Confidential to Anne Denoon, author of the excellent Back Flip: I accidentally deleted your comment about The Dud Avocado. If you re-leave it, I promise not to do that again. Stop snickering, Sarvas.