Jul052009
Living Out Loud Project: Home
Filed under Living Out Loud by Kim at 11:46 am on Jul 05 2009
I need to thank Genie for helping me with my current blog constipation, because I simply can’t deny her when she posts her Living Out Loud projects. (Well, when the assignment was a video, I could, apparently! Sorry about that. Someday I may get to that.) This month we have the topic of home.
I recently slipped and said to my therapist, describing a recent visit to my parents‘ house, that I “went home”. I thought that was telling; I won’t readily let go of that place as a place to call home. But I think I meant that in a more literary sense, like “homeland”.
The home I live in, sleep in, and spend some waking time in almost 365 days a year, is right here where I’m sitting as I type this. I think it’s taken a while to feel that way. In so many ways I’ve still felt like a kid, just hanging out in another new place I’m not quite entitled to. But this place has a mortgage with my name at the top of the 30 year binding legal document, so after a while, it has begun to feel like home. Apparently I need some objective measure of permanency.
But what makes it feel like home most of all, are the living breathing inhabitants that populate it. This is no new sentiment, to be sure. But for me, up until a few years ago, I think I was always feeling like a floater. So now, when someone asks me where I’m from, I feel like I can answer two places instead of just one. I think the best way to express this is in pictures, so here’s Jack cooking up his signature stir fry last Thursday.
Just in the past week I’ve made him cook my dinner, asked him to help me with my microbiology homework, help me make stupid consumer choices, edit my emails for overeagerness, make sure the pipes weren’t backing up the entire time our laundry was running, and pretty much a thousand other things.
So, as much as we love and are grateful for the excellent edifice that is our house, I think the hominess is generated out of the actual everyday actions and reactions that make up our partnership. I could make a home by myself, to be sure, but in this house, it takes two of us.
Astute readers might wonder what the hell I do to make it a home, but I’ll let that remain a secret, kept by my faithful partner, who I am sure will not tell you the important things I bring to the table because he is shy. (Or because what I bring is a crap-ton of junk and a negative attitude towards housework.)
1 Leesaon 05 Jul 2009 at 2:01 pm
This is a great post. I too have two homes: where I grew up and where ever I am with my husband and pets. I also feel like a floater (we still don’t own, for instance).
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Kim Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I often feel like there are no guarantees in life, despite our mortgage and whatever. I don’t like to take it for granted that we’ll always be here. So the floater thing still seems to hang in the background…
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2 … in a Bottle » Blog Archive » Recap of 6th Living Out Loud project: Going homeon 05 Jul 2009 at 4:19 pm
[…] Living Out Loud Project: Home First, I love the look on Jack’s face in that photo. And I can totally commiserate with the […]
3 Meganon 05 Jul 2009 at 4:50 pm
Coincidentally, my home also has blonde hair and a goatee.
I wrote about where I am from in my entry, but my home is Ben. He and I have been together so long that we carry home between us like a bubble. I can’t sleep at night unless I am at home and all that really means is I can sleep anywhere as long as Ben is with me.
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Kim Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I don’t have the sleeping thing, but the one time Jack left for a week, it was really weird. I mean, the first few days it was like, WHEE I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT WHEN I WANT TO! But that did not last long.
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4 Amberon 05 Jul 2009 at 8:59 pm
HOME IZ WHERE DA HARBLS R!
Seriously though, this post is lovely.
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Kim Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Oh My God, right now our house is ONE GIANT HARBL. I wanted to include kitty pictures in this post too, but I got lazy!
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5 Jenon 06 Jul 2009 at 9:15 am
Aww. That’s awesome.
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