Oh my goodness, what a week. The universe did everything it could to keep me from returning to my home and ol’ The Modern Gal blog, but the MG prevailed.

You know how I was in Memphis for a work assignment? That was supposed to have lasted until Sunday night, with me making my triumphant return to Knoxville on Monday. I was looking forward to the triumphant return because as much as love Memphis, it was a crazy work weekend and I was ready for a slowdown.

That didn’t happen. I got a call from the bosses on Monday morning telling me to stay put, there had been a change of plans. At first it seemed as if I would just be making a later departure on Monday. But then Monday became Tuesday, which became Wednesday and Thursday. (In the mean time, I got yelled at by a different boss for neglecting my duties in Knoxville. The two cities are a six-hour drive apart. What was I supposed to do?)

I wish I could tell you what I was doing those four days, but I’m not even sure of it myself. I can tell you it was both ridiculous and a ridiculous waste of effort. And it made me crazy because I was mostly cutoff from the world with a lack of computer access. Not to mention being alternately allowed to and prohibited from returning home is enough to do a number on your psyche. And I couldn’t even take advantage of being in the same city as my family and many of my friends, because I was working 12+ hour days every day.

I was finally sprung late Thursday afternoon, which gave me an ETA in Knoxville of about 10 p.m., two hours after a scheduled going-away toast to our dear friend Mickey, who was to be taking off for Wyoming the next day. Still, 10 p.m. would have given me an hour to catch him.

That was, of course, before I got stopped in traffic for about 15 minutes and before I ran into an angry, angry tempest of a storm that slowed my progress to about 30 mph for about 45 minutes. I’m no physicist, but I could do enough math to know that I wasn’t going to make it before 11 p.m.

And in fact, I made it right at 11 p.m. I pulled up to my door only 100 hours after I’d intended to be there. I was ass-tired. My house reeked. My car was full of crap that I didn’t feel like unloading. I had missed the shindig with Mickey and my Wigshop friends.

But the most important thing was, I was home. And never so glad of it.