sunday morning. still in baltimore. i was supposed to go down to monty county this morning for church, but frankly, i'm not feeling well. i think i may be fighting something off. either that, or my body is rebelling against me for the entire month of june and all the stresses that it brought. it's amazing how you can go on in a certain vein for awhile because you simply must, and then as soon as the time period is over, you totally collapse/get sick/whatever. yesterday, i had to drag myself out of bed and it was 11 am!! this is unheard of for me - normally i'm up by 8:00 or 8:30, even after going to bed super late. so then i was up for about 3 hours and had to go to sleep AGAIN. like i said - i must be fighting something off. that is an unprecedented amount of sleeping.....

so i'm supposed to hang out with michael today - something i've been looking forward to all week long. i just sincerely hope that my body gets itself together so that can happen. i would be seriously bummed if i couldn't spend some qt with the man. he is a balm to me....

i'm finding myself getting used to the sounds of the city again. i lie in bed and listen to the sirens, garbage trucks, and people screaming at each other into all hours of the night. it's so settling. during college, i lived across from an emergency room for 2 years and found myself being lulled to sleep by the ambulances that screamed by into the wee hours of the morning. after that whole experience, whenever i would go into the country or someplace quiet, i could not sleep at all. obviously, being in the 'burbs for the last 3 years didn't get the need for noise out of my system (this explains why i have to have a fan on wherever i sleep - partially for air, but mostly for the lack of silence) because the FIRST night i was back in the city, i slept like a baby. who ever thought I'D be glad to be back here? when we left, i spent months announcing how thrilled i was to be free from the annoyance of the city....of the pollution....of never having a place to park (i think this was my one real problem). amazing how having a reserved parking space has made everything just a bit better this time around. the funny thing is that for the first year when we lived in germantown, we never had any parking in our little suburban development. i hated that place. it was the most obnoxious place i've ever lived. thin walls. loud neighbors. cricket infestations. i slept on my couch for 3 months because there was a cricket living inside my wall. i thought i would go mad.

i guess i could sit here and recount all of the reasons that being in the 'burbs was less than ideal, but i won't bore you with all of that. i'll just simply say this: sometimes God has to take you away from a place to make you realize why you need to be back there. charm city does indeed have its charm. the familiar streets. the coffee houses we used to frequent. the memories of seeing God's grace personified in the faces of the people who have nothing but the clothes on their back. the late-night jaunts to denny's for much-needed pancakes. the spontaneous prayer meetings with new-found friends. the place where i first knew what life really was.

did i mention? it's good to be home....