There's no place like home

When we were children, my sister and I went on lots of road trips with my parents. We drove all throughout the Great Lakes region, all the way to San Francisco, and to D.C. We also took lots of day trips to the Kansas City area, including many visits to what was then called Royals Stadium. Most of our trips, though, were to our grandparents' house in Iowa.



Whenever we drove across the state line from Kansas into Missouri, my drama queen sister and I (also a bit given to dramatics) would wail and moan and gnash our teeth. My parents would hear hideous cries of pain from the backseat. They never asked what we were carrying on about, because they knew -- we were in misery! (Get it? If you're not a Kansan or a Missourian, you may not understand the unmitigated hatred that exists between our two states. It goes back to the civil war and the time those evil Missouri thugs came to Lawrence and burned our town down, killing most of the men. They'll claim we started it, but we so did not!) And every time we crossed that state line back into our beloved home state, we would let out huge, contented sighs of relief. We had made it. Survived. We'd been saved from the clutches of misery.



Well, that's rather how I feel today. Like I've been stuck in Missouri for 8 years. And today I am finally crossing that state line back into my beloved home state. I can let out that tremendous sigh of relief I've been waiting to exhale. I made it. I'm out of misery.