Winter Tales...

It wasn't Santa exclaiming during my Christmas vacation home, it was my dad. Happily yelling out his bald eagle/duck/geese/deer and various critter sightings that came winging, and leaping by the picture windows of the new house. He is now retired and loving the new abode by the river. My parents have done a great job of making the home open and welcoming...being a kid without a hometown does not make me homeless after all. I suppose we live the mantra of "home is where your heart is". Although the walls and roof are new to me, it has the familiar feel of all our houses, and I am excited to know that this one, the best one, will be a permanent fixture in my life. Well, as permanent as my rather nomadic family can be. My parents are already scheduling their first retirement trips. During February no one will be around to look out the windows at the moose in the willows below.

I swung through New York City on my way home and although all I had was a pair of jeans and some tank tops, I had a great time visiting my friend Ali and her boyfriend Ed. I saw all the major sights, a broadway play and was even taken for a ride (both literally and monetarily) by a NYC cabbie. On the way across the nation I had a layover in Seattle where I was amazed to watch airport police wheel by on some sort mechanical chariot. I think I stood there with my mouth open. Apparently they're quite common, and I realized that the rest of the world has been speeding by while I've been shaking sand out of my backpack. Montana did not hold many new surprises. Once you leave the city limits of Missoula, the people start to loose their REI fashionable looks and drift back to the fashion sense I remember from highschool...polarfleece, scrunchies and carharts (sometimes worn all together). It's comforting and brought a smile to my face. One day at the grocery store, all four people ahead of me wrote checks. Imagine that. So apparently not all of the US has left me behind in a technological whirl.

My time in the states is already dwindling away. I left Montana a few days ago to travel over to Portland, and the long flight back to "the rock" is looming. I've loved every moment home (well minus the hours spent getting some cancer cells removed from my forehead). I crammed in a lot of family time, dog time, skiing with friends, reminiscing, and pure, unadulterated, laziness. Heaven. I'll miss all of it...but the blue seas of the south are calling.