Home, and Finding a New Home

As I stepped through the door, the familiar smells greeted me, the smell of home. Though it was nearing two in the morning, my parents had stayed up to welcome us. Even more welcoming was my mother's chili, still warm in a pot on the stove, of which i ate two bowls.

My sister and her husband had picked me up along their way from Chicago. Being the day before Thanksgiving, traffic in the city was entirely crazy, and to travel 56 miles took them three hours.

We stayed up a little longer, watching my parents' extensive cable, chit-chatting about the little things, how work was going, etc... Though i could tell they were walking on egg shells around me, and did so for most of the time I spent at home.

Somehow the watching of a B movie, which typically contains lots of crass humor and many, upon many, nude scenes of ladies, has become a family tradition. Last year at Christmas my father made us watch Duece Bigalow 2, yes, the sequel. This year it happened to be the fine holiday film, Beerfest. Oh the things to be thankful for. Other holiday favorites include, Invasion of the Bee Women, Little Otek, and the entire video tape of my performance in the high school musical Grease, in which i had no leading role whatsoever. I fear what Christmas will bring this year.

Though the family rarely gets together in full for Thanksgiving, we were absent one member of the family, my brother who is currently living in Taiwan, studying Chinese. So we took one of his high school photographs my mother has placed around the house, and created a photo montage of his picture as if the picture were him.

Snap shots of a plate of food set before his picture. His picture in bed with a pantless Spock doll my mother found at a rummage sale. His picture watching TV on the couch. With old, stuffed animals left in our closests from childhood. In the old Chi-Chi's sombrero that one of my siblings recieved at a birthday dinner.

My sister plans to send them to him.

But it was so nice to be home. To take a break from the complications that have arisen. The changes taking place in my life...

...

Part of me greatly wishes to just be done with the next month. If i could sleep through it, and somehow wake up with this all behind me, it would be a great blessing. Or just push the fast forward button. But lately it seems that my life has been in some sort of fast forward already...

I've worked in the same place for four years. Somehow four years have just seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, and i'm left here, with my jaw open, thinking, "wow, where did it all go?"
What have I been doing?

It has kind of scared me.

Not that age really signifies anything. It really is just a number, a way of marking time, a point of reference. And though i'm still on the, uh, good side of 30, it really is moving in fast... i can't help, though, that i should have accomplished something more, should have been working towards some goal in life, beyond the daily contentment i used to have in doing my work, and going home to just live my life.

What more do i want? I'm not so sure anymore. Not sure that i've ever really known my calling in life. I've never really had much ambition. I haven't really had a major goal to acheive, beyond survival.

All of these thoughts...

I just can't seem to figure out what i want to be when i grow up.

Still.

...

There's much more i want to write about, but things are just a little too complicated right now.

Know then, that i am ok. That this last month has probably been the most intense time of my life, (beyond my Chicago year, if one can believe that), and that things are working out for the best.

That is all i can muster about the current situation.