Feels Like Home

I spent the whole day at home today, in my pajamas, and I'm not even sick. Try that on for size. I read once that, "home is the place they have to take you back, when you have nowhere else to go." Right now, home is the place where (generally) I go to shower and collapse for a few hours before the next flurry of activity. My particular home is small and messy, and when I'm not in it for long periods of time, I tend to not notice just how messy it really is. I prefer to blame the cats partying while I'm out than to think I'm just careless when I'm tired.

When I first married and moved to Houston, "home" was still back East. Home was still my parents' home. Home growing up was often wherever I was at the time - because we never stayed there for very long. Home base was Washington DC, because my family inevitably moved back to that area, like homing pigeons coming back to roost, before venturing out again. Home might have been a house, an apartment, a hotel room, or a townhouse. Within our dwelling, home was my bedroom - no matter where it was at the time. Home was where I kept my stuff. Home base was the old brown, oversized couch covered in plushy velour. Home smelled like my mom's burned cooking and my dad's Aquavelva.

Going home to visit after I moved out of my parents' house had mixed feelings. Nostalgic senses enjoyed that the same smells were there, the same throw pillows on the couch, the same figurines on the shelves. But the same tension and fighting were there at home, so it felt good to return to my new home and my new life, just the same.

Home now is the house where we live, but it's also wherever my children might be. Just as always, home is rooted to my family. I started to say it wouldn't matter if we lived in a cardboard box, but I'm not quite that altruistic. It would matter. But, yeah, it doesn't matter where we call home so much, as that home is when we are together. Home is supposed to equal safe, comfortable, warm.

So, what is home now? I've spent the whole day here, doing nothing but small chores and enjoying not getting in my car. So, home:

• Home is where I can go barefoot all the time
• Home is where I can sing outloud and not worry what anyone thinks (oh, Katie comments, but I don't pay attention to her)
• Home is where I can drop polite at the door and generally say exactly what I'm thinking
• Home is where I can wear the ratty old nightgown that feels so nice
• Home is where I can take long baths
• Home is where I keep my kitties
• Home is where I can lie in bed and do absolutely nothing for a while
• Home is where I can rollerblade in the driveway
• Home is where my family can roll around in the grass
• Home is where I can shriek like a girl when a Texas size roach gets inside
• Home is where I can have my hissy fits
• Home is where I can cry
• Home is where my children still hug me without checking to see who might be looking
• Home is where we still read outloud and snuggle after dinner
• Home is where I can play my harp and no one pays any attention
• Home is where I can leave my stuff in a heap and know it'll be there in the morning, without recriminations
• Home is where I can cuss while I'm cleaning the bathroom
• Home is where I can cuss pretty much any time I feel like it
• Home is where I can drink a second glass of wine and not worry about who is driving home
  
• Home is where I feel a sense of pride when I DO have the bathroom clean and neat
• Home is where I can ignore the phone, my e-mail, and any knocks at the door
• Home is better than Calgon. Better than any vacation. Home is better than chocolate.
  

The Best Medicine

So, tonight I got downright stupid with laughter, for no apparent reason. I mean, there was a reason, but it was just a dumb joke...it involved smurfs, a misunderstanding...and it resulted in my having an attack of laughter that scared my oldest daughter. The hysterical kind of laughter you can't stop - maniacal, hysterical, holding your stomach because it hurts, tears streaming down your face and snot coming out of your nose kind of laughter. Katie didn't understand what was so funny. Neither did I, really. What made me laugh to start, doesn't really matter. I must have needed that, and with every whooping breath, I just started all over again, completely helpless to spasms of mirth. For a while I started to wonder if you could be humored to death. But then, it ended, as suddenly as it had started, leaving my daughter more bewildered than before it had begun.

Afterward, I was breathless and dizzy, and feeling better than I have in days. It's been a long couple of weeks around here. I've been sick and I've been stressed. What started as a small but irritating cold evolved into an annoying and lingering case of bronchitis. I've coughed at work, I've coughed at home, I have coughed in my sleep - until I have broken blood vessels in my face, my ribs hurt, and I have thrown up from coughing. It has, in the words of my daughter, sucked. There is never a good time to get sick, but I really couldn't afford it right now. Information for summer brochures is due and I need to get proof reading. Employees at work are sick, and I am needed to cover for them. I was strong armed into being a Girl Scout cookie mom, and I was needed to taxi cookies around town. No time to sit around and cough....and not much time to feel sorry for myself.

So, I've just sort of plowed on this week, trying to ignore the coughing and getting grumpier and grumpier because I wasn't sleeping at night. After a few nights of next to no sleep, I become less pleasant. My kids will attest to this. My coworkers will quietly second the motion, though perhaps not to my face. Case in point - I went ballistic yesterday because someone forgot to clean up after themselves. It wasn't the end of the world, and it only took me five minutes to correct, but it followed a scare involving someone else's child, and was the straw that broke my camel's back....and I took it out on hapless dishes and, well, maybe a loaf of french bread that got in my way might have accidentally been bludgeoned twenty or thirty times, with a pitcher that had been left out....it's all a blur, and I'm sticking to that story.

When I got home last night, I realized that we were out of diet coke...anyone who knows me knows this is not good, anyone who knows me and saw the place where I was last night knows that this was an omen of ugly to come....I went back out to the store to buy caffeine magic in a bottle, and picked up something for the kids to eat, because I was NOT cooking at that point....and I sat in the parking lot and cried - really bawled - for absolutely no good reason. And it didn't help at all....didn't make me feel any better.

I worked all day today with a stiff neck and a small grey cloud hanging over my head, for no one reason. Katie was studying for a science test last night and wrangled me into quizzing her...so I had the terms point-source and non-point-source pollution buzzing around in my brain. It was a non-point source pollution kind of day - no one clear cause, they just all got together and wrecked my day and soured my attitude.

It was with that same attitude, I climbed into my car and headed home...still not in a good mood, but at least with caffeine to hand, should I require it.

So, when I started my crazy lady laughter tonight, I'm sure Katie really did think that I was losing it for good this time. It probably looked even nuttier than it seemed from my point of view, and yet I felt better, and I felt relaxed, when the laughter had finally died off. I will never be able to understand all the mysteries of how our human brains work, or how God might have designed us to work in these strange ways, but I fully believe this was my own body saving me from a massive stress break. I was at a point earlier today, for no one single reason, that I couldn't have coped with even one more thing. My whole body was wound as tight as a human being can get. Who would have thought - laughter, xanax for the terminally type-A. A whole lot cheaper than a massage and a lot easier to come by than pharmaceuticals. No prescription required. My body, and maybe some higher power, knew what I needed better than I did.

They say that laughter is the best medicine. OK. Lesson learned - lighten up. See, every day I get a little bit less dumb....I figure I've got a lot of life left before me, as these lessons don't come easy to the hard headed.

For those who are feeling a little stressed themselves, give me a call, I'll tell you the joke about the smurf.