Home sweet home

I must say, being home* is grand. I am reveling in all sorts of pleasures, guilty and otherwise. To be added to my List of Things That I Shall Never Again Take for Granted:
-Half Price Books
-Savers
-MPR, NPR, all incarnations of public radio
-Having access to a car, especially as concerns the transport of heavy objects
-Friends and family within weekend road-tripping distance
-Always enough people around to play board games
-Being there to watch my niece grow up

Ooh, speaking of lists, have I mentioned my List Book? The List Book is a phenomenon that traces its inception to Wartburg College's Grossman Suite 324, when Amy decided that we would all, as a suite bonding event, obtain matching notebooks in which we would complete pages with titles such as "People I have lived with" and "Pets I have had" and "Milestones in my life." We were diligent about the list books for a while--um, okay, we responded to Amy's orders to write new lists--but then fate took its course and the notebook got filed away with other college memorabilia. But somewhere along the line the List Book got unearthed again and took its rightful place in my consciousness. It's become a scrapbook of sorts, and a reminder of who I am and the companions who have traveled with me along my journey (so far). And I like to make lists--it makes me feel like the master of my chaos. Even if my desk is piled high with undending junk mail and paper trail, as long as I am the owner of a functioning list book, no one can fault my organization, right?

Sometimes those lists are just pure shots of joy. The list of people I have lived with: I can hardly believe that I have had the privilege of accompanying so many gifted and amazing people through turbulent relationships, vocational discernment, marriage, divorce, graduate school, home ownership, pregnancy and childbirth and parenthood and myriad other cultural and academic rites of passage. What an honor it's been!

*(My definition of home has now expanded to include: all of those places where a place on the couch or in the spare bed is available to me, all of those places in which I know exactly which radio stations to listen to, all of the places in which my stuff currently resides, as well as those addresses at which I have at some point in my life received mail.)