Home

I was actually going to write something totally different, about spraining both my ankles on Saturday, but that stupid and slightly embarrassing story can wait.

I have a confession to make: I'm homesick.

No, it doesn't make sense, because I have a home and great husband and great kids, and my in-laws are great, and my friends are great even though I don't have enough of them here...

Here. In Texas. Which really is my home. I've lived here for 14 years, and in the same house for 8 of those years. It should be familiar, comforting, irritating...you know: Home.

And it is. But it isn't.

There's a part of me that still measures the months by the inches of snow outside and then the height of the wheat. I still wait for the Chinook to blow, I still dread the March afternoon sun which seems determined to slice my corneas and burn my retinas.

Today, just for today, I wish I were somewhere, where my parents were bugging the crap out of me IN PERSON; where I could hold the type of conversation with my brother The Boy that stretches throughout a day, or sometimes the whole length of my visit, but only contains a few hundred words; where BeerHound and I can bug the crap out of everyone else with our giggles and the interrupting chicken joke.

The Home I want today is one where a meal takes longer than 15 minutes, where the phone rings a lot, where the music is too loud and there is spontaneous swing dancing. Where "goodbye" takes 45 minutes because no one really wants to say it, so they keep saying other things.

I don't feel like I have that today. But I think I just drew a pretty good blueprint, and stapled it on the wall.