I wish I was like you, easily amused

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone. You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

-Garden State

I’ve talked and felt this idea before, but it never really hit me full force until this Thanksgiving. I slept in the basement the entire weekend. This isn’t out of the ordinary when I sleep in my parent’s house. I usually pass out in front of the TV. But, this time I didn’t have the option of sleeping in my bedroom. We had family staying at our house and they stayed in my room. Funny thing is, we have a guest room with two beds in it. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy going home. I almost always do. But it really isn’t home anymore. D.C. is home now.

Moving along, Thanksgiving was a good time as always. The Turducken was fantastic. I suggest your family try one out next year. And of course, everyone who has graduated high school from Churchill, Wootton, Whitman and B-CC over the last 10 years was out in Bethesda on Wednesday night. It’s a little nauseating to have to wait in line at a bar in Bethesda at 10pm. But you do it because you want to see people you haven’t seen in a year and make banal smalltalk with them. Hey, it’s Thanksgiving, you’re happy to see everyone.

Saturday I got suckered into raking the yard with the rest of my family. I guess I shouldn’t say suckered, because it’s probably the most fun I’ve had doing anything in a while. My sister can’t pack the leaves down into a bag to save space for the life of her. My brother had a complete career progression as a leaf raker. He started out as an illegal Mexican, then a union leaf raker, to management and finally retirement. He kept clamoring about getting his union required break. Two problems (1) you have to work 4 hours before you get a union sanctioned break and (2) in order to be a union, you need more than one member. I’m sure you all don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about or why it’s funny.  But I suppose this is what happens when family gets together.  I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, to end this completely disjointed post, all I have to say is leafblowers suck. It takes longer using that thing than actually raking the leaves. Now that’s a little ass backwards, don’t you think?