This is our last week of school. I can't wait for it to be over. No more getting up at 6am to drive to school! No more scrambling for lunch money! No more fighting with kids about homework! Also, I can make them work for me now. It isn't quite the same having teens underfoot. When I had to keep them occupied and entertained it was much more complex.

Considering how easily I slipped into the rhythm of New York, I'm surprised I didn't feel more of a HOME HERE vibe. I know I could be quite happy there (given enough money), though.

I think for me home ends up being wherever my friends are. I moved quite a bit for about 10 years during undergrad and grad school and places always started to feel like home once I got settled in with some friends.

Yes, I'm sure the SFistas are a big reason why I feel at home here in this new city, despite not feeling at home in my own home.

I remember in college, moving to a new dorm room every year, it pretty much felt like "home" once my bed had been set up, that being the central element of the room. These days I think my apartment feels like home once my big red couch and love seat are set up and the TV and laptop are going. :) If I have the internet, TV, and somewhere to sit to watch/read, we're good.

I've lived here my whole life and yet on occasion get "You're not from around here, are you?" I wonder if there's some Baltimore woman with desert as her desktop like I have the sugar factory.

You know, as wonderful as my friends there are, the LA area NEVER felt like home, even after five years and my beloved kitty. Maybe because i never had my own apartment there? It's hard to tell. San Diego always felt foreign also, and i lived there for 4 years. Maybe southern california in general....growing up on the east coast it always seemed so exotic and far away...then i moved there :) Portland felt like home within days, even though i have (so far) very few friends here :( But Richmond, where i was born and raised lived for the vast majority of 21 years has a unique place in my heart, and somewhere in the bottom of my stomach. It doesn't feel like home, but it has a unique place of dread. Some feelings you can never get over, and that is something like "home." Right now, i look forward to going home after work and forcing some corporal cuddling on my two sick kitties.

the LA area NEVER felt like home

I don't think it ever will for me.

Laga, email insent

I hate those falls in which I bring all the crockery down about me. I know that I'm always going to be felled by passing gravity waves, but I prefer those incidents to happen when I'm the only one to say, "That was stupid." I hope the fall was just a fall, Teppy.

Congratulations to Lieutenant Colonel Joe! We moved a lot when I was a kid, and a lot of those places were never home. Places where I feel at home: the Chicago suburb I lived in until I was 10; an assortment of rural midwestern towns; my college campus; the Field Museum in Chicago; London; libraries; and when I'm driving south on I-75 and see the Atlanta skyline.