"I'm home!" ... --> "I'm here!"

The musty, woodsy scent in the air hasn't changed. Nor has the slight fog of nighttime, glowing faint amber from incandescent streetlights. The supermarket's rebranded, though, and my beloved comic shop, I hear, is no more.

The highschoolers still take the same latenight bus to get home after their night on the town. They look a lot like we did ten years ago, though they seem to try a lot harder to look pretty and mature.

I am about to fall asleep on a couch amidst a jungle of boxes and books. The house is different, but the setting is the same.

The pillow under my head is the same one that my sister and I both adored...the one we learnt how to share and take turns using. It's a good pillow.

I found a paperback copy of A Grief Observed. I must've bought it and brought it back a few years ago, since it has a faint $2.50 penciled in; I probably bought it at the used bookstore near school, back during that first trip there freshman year. My 1939 4th edition of The Grapes of Wrath is still unopened. It remains in the package that Buzz somebody-or-other sent it to me in when I bought it seven years ago. My copy of In Dubious Battle had a silverfish in it.

Some friends are in town. I will probably have a lot to talk with them about, seeing how it's been at least two years and maybe more since I've seen some of them. I wonder how it'll go.

I showed my mom a lot of photos...of engagements shoots that I took for friends, of friends I've spoken about in the past, and of the people who were closest to me. I'm asked every few seconds if I need something, in the loving, pampering way of a parent overjoyed to have her child home.

We fixed the internet connection together. I'll probably be able to fix the printer and webcam later this week.

This is a good place to be for the next few weeks. It's odd that it's no longer "Home".

...but it is "a home".