(Headline picture above was taken by Kathryn on the roof of our friends’ home in Malta. The fireworks deployed for their St. Caterina festival were truly amazing.)

Since returning to the Left Coast sleep has been problematic. On previous international trips in which time zone lag becomes noticeable, I was employed and was forced to make the adjustment by any means available  – drugs, lying in bed resting even if I couldn’t sleep, etc. I had to get up and go to work so I pushed through the adjustment as quickly as possible. Also, I was younger.

Not so this time. Left unchecked, it turns out that mixing rather ingrained insomnia with a nine hour time difference leads to some weird sleep patterns. I’m embracing my sleeplessness rather than fighting it. I’m getting 2-3 hours of good sleep at a time, several times in a 24 hour day. Everything I read says that’s not good, but it actually feels pretty good. We’ll see how long it takes to get back to a more aggregated sleep pattern this time.

Another joy of travel is the inevitable science projects you find in the fridge upon return. We did a pretty good job clearing food out before we left, but some vegetables were left in the veggie compartment and they were…unpleasant. So we took the opportunity to further clear the fridge and clean the inside.

Finally, we live in a rural area and there’s a constant infiltration of mice into the house. We keep up with them pretty well when here full time, but a week away and inevitably a mouse finds its way in and runs rampant in a closet or cabinet. With a three week absence we had one or more mice get into the pantry, something we hadn’t seen before. So we ended up clearing the entire pantry, throwing out massive amounts of dry goods in paper packaging, and cleaning the shelves with disinfectants. This led to a trip to buy new plastic containers for everything other than canned goods. We’re almost finished with that project, though still waiting to catch the culprits in newly-set traps before we place everything back in cabinets. (Pro trip for next trip: add this to the pre-trip checklist. Set traps proactively in likely spots.)

All this being said, we’re really happy to be home. The fact that north county San Diego weather has taken a turn for the cooler is a big plus – we’re loving the cool nights after the cooker temps in Sicily and Malta. Let’s hope that weather pattern continues right into our true Fall season, starting late October.