Home

I only have one laundry day left sometime next week, and I will be leaving this new home I have found in approximately two weeks and three days. Wow. I have learned a lot this summer, and since it is starting to come to a close, I decided that my last posts would be about some of what I learned. One of the things I learned is about homes. They have little to do with location and a lot to do with the people around me and the relationships I have with them. Even on week long trips I have seen familiar groups take on different dynamics, and I have met new people. I still miss some of these places, but if I went back alone, the only things I would be able to find are good memories. When I was going off to college my dad once told me, "Now you've made a bunch of good memories from high school, but maybe it's time to move on and make good memories in a new place."

It will be almost as hard to leave this place as it was to come. However, everyone here who will make it hard to leave will be leaving as well, leaving the place itself full of memories of the past but not much for the future. It will be time to rediscover the homes I left behind with a fresh perspective. My other option I guess is to find a new home, but after a visit from some friends and my family within the past two weeks, I am looking forward to the former. A familiar and comfortable home is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can easily trap me in a place where I am afraid to change and leave good things behind. However, without change, I slowly become unable to enjoy these good things because of the way I take them for granted.
I have always been and probably always will be afraid of change; however, after the few examples in my life of its importance, this fear is becoming more and more irrational. I am excited to return home because I think that I will have a new appreciation for all the things that I took for granted before. I might have a separate post about that, but we'll see.

I've thought about getting a tattoo for each home that I have known, like Something Corporate sings about in "I Woke Up in a Car", but I couldn't think of cool enough symbols or where to put them anyway. Oh well.

Birthday Party

Yesterday we celebrated two of my friends' birthdays that are coming up this next week. We went to a pizza place named after some guy, who I assume did something important to have a pizza place named after him. Perhaps he was a famous chef. Although I'll admit I've never heard of anyone with the last name "Cheese" before, I have to have respect for the guy and whatever feat he undoubtedly accomplished. After eating my pizza while being serenaded by several spazmatic robot animals, I put several moles in thier place, won several high-speed street races, rolled multiple balls over a ramp into numbered holes, and saved the world from zombie cowboys and cursed mummies. A good time was had by all.

Rain, Rain...

I had heard that it rained a little here every afternoon, but I had my doubts because it hardly rained at all during the entire month of June.  Well, now it's July, and it rained everyday last week. It rained all day on Saturday and Sunday.  I guess it's good because we really needed the rain out here, but it didn't make delivering roll-away beds much more fun.  On Saturday we had just delivered our twentieth roll-away or so, and we were muddy, soaking wet, and tired.  The guy we delivered it to could clearly see this, and he thought it funny to say, "Stay dry out there!"  So I punched him in the face.

That last sentence was entirely untrue.  Also, it wasn't all that bad splashing around in puddles and getting paid for it, but I would have rather been watching the rain from a porch somewhere.  Anyway, happy 7-11 day!  You should all go enjoy a slushie.

Book Report

I have a new favorite book. It's called Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller. A couple weeks ago I was feeling homesick whenever I got tired, and I was trying to decide which of my books to read by flipping through some of the introductions. Here's what I found in this particular book: "I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way....Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons." Since then I have relinquished most of my homesickness for reasons that I think are independent of the book, but it still made for an excellent read. It tells the story of two friends on a road trip with no real plan, and it is laid out in well-written, attention-grabbing, thought-provoking, hilarious fashion. The author describes his own realizations along the way about life and God that really resonated with me. I highly recommend it.

In other news, I performed my first clean up of a dead mouse today after a bitter defeat in two-out-of-three, shoot-after-three rock-paper-scissors. Please, everyone, a moment of silence.