Thanks mom

It's been about a week since mom left, for the airport at 4 in the morning. I watched from the window, in my pyjamas, willing the taxi driver to come out of his warm cab to help mom with her suitcase, which he did. She looked very small from 4 floors up, and I missed her already.

The flat's still got a touch of shiny, Jiffy cleaness, despite my recent weekend on nights (i.e. 96 hours without doing the dishes or tidying up). It wasn't until a couple of days after mom left that I noticed that everything (which I had literally spent hours scrubbing before mom arrived) was even shinier and tidier than before. Even the inside of the freezer had been neatly rearranged.

It also emerges that mom used to take me to the library daily before I could even talk. Maybe that's why, as far as I can remember, I could always read.
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Apparently it's that time of year when grey seals come to shore to pup. When mom and youee and ching were here, we went to North Berwick to see if we could spot some. We did, but only by webcam link to the visitor centre, which was a bit rubbish.

On the train back to work after my half-week of leave, I looked up from reading the Metro to see not one, but three grey seals basking, glinting and blubbery in the sun. They had convened on a rocky outcrop not more than 20 or 30 metres from the track. And yesterday, on my way home from a night on the neonatal unit, (and I would've doubted it if this latter had been my only sighting), there they were again, on the same rock, somewhere between Burntisland and Aberdour.