Bittersweet

Picture from our March photoshoot with Kellie

It's not quite 10:00 and I'm sitting in my living room. My homework is done (for tomorrow, anyway), my apartment is clean, my lunch is made for tomorrow and all I have to do is take a shower before I go to bed. It's pretty serene around here; the neighborhood is quiet and indoors, the dishwasher is humming in the background as my keyboard clicks. Today was long - not bad, just long - and coming home to a house that is just as I left it is nice. As much as I liked having roommates, right now I'm really enjoying not having them. I think it's because so much in my life has changed: new city, new program, new friends, new job, new church; getting used to someone else's idiosyncrasies would be really hard.

But then, at the same time, it can be hard to be here and not at home. I called home tonight and everyone piled on my parents' bed because I was on speaker phone. Jack told me a joke, Tim told me about all his new football gear, and they came in and out as I talked to my parents for a while. My parents' house is definitely more chaotic than my apartment, but it's a good, loving kind. I called my mom's parents tonight too; they really miss me, and I miss them. I can tell, though, because any time I call, they both get on the phone and try to cram as much as they can into a 30 or 40 minute conversation. It's funny how you can take things like that for granted until they mean so much more because you're 4 hours away.

On a different (and less sad) note, Jack's really starting to develop a little-boy sense of humor. The picture above is the one on my laptop and when I first downloaded it, the file was so big that it was really zoomed in. On Jack's nose. Which had boogers in it. So of course I had to tell him that tonight on the phone and he giggled and giggled. I can't wait to see that in person.

Such, though, is the beauty of this technological age. My parents are getting a webcam so that we can Skype and Mom and I were talking about that the other day. Mom told me that in the 50s, when my Grandma and Grandpa moved from California to Chicago, Grandma had to write letters to her family because no one they knew could afford long-distance phone calls. When Grandma's dad died, she got a telegraph. And here I am, just 2 generations later, spending a Saturday morning Skyping with my friend in Italy. Craziness.