disclaimer

I’m tired. Week one of the boss’s vacation is over for me! Only one more to go. German #2 is still out with her hand injury—the pig-hand transplant is still healing. Needless to say, we haven’t been up to snuff.

This is the part where I mention my wonderful family—that mysterious bunch that hasn’t yet appeared here. I’m not really sure why. I was going to write about my visit home—a camping trip, my family reunion, the County Fair, my brother’s visit, and the disaster that was the dinner I tried to prepare. But I came home, and my life started happening again. Then I forgot everything. A psychological defense mechanism? Of course not! Wink!

My visit to Pennsylvania was just that—a visit. It didn’t feel like a homecoming, but certainly not to my family’s discredit. I always feel welcome in their home, but it is their home, not mine. My parents moved into a new house a year after I moved to Massachusetts. I’ve never lived in that house. I’ve never had a room or space that was mine there, so visits are never returns; it’s a new place to me. I have no fond memories of afternoons on that back porch, or evenings spent in that kitchen. I don’t have a favorite seat in the living room, a place to hang my toothbrush in the bathroom, or even a favorite way to sneak out late at night.

I guess that’s the most effective (if not the final) nail in the coffin of my childhood. Although I’ve been living away from my parents for the last seven years, have a real job, and now my own house, I’ve still felt very much like a child at times. Knowing that my parents’ home is not mine has deepened the realization that these new things and experiences are my own, and nobody else’s.

Wow, that was a whole lot of self-disclosure. Now onto the shallow drivel about the rest of the trip.

Because my youngest sister was gone for the first four days of my visit, I reaped the benefit of having a room to sleep in! I always feel funny about displacing Ari, so her absence made my nights a little less uneasy. Also, Ali, my mom and I got to take a short camping trip while heading out to collect Ari from soccer camp. I haven’t gone camping in nearly a year—it’s good to see the sport hasn’t changed much: run around frantically a few hours before departure trying to gather and fit more things than we probably need into the back of the van. It was nice to sleep in a tent again and do some catching up with my mom and sister.

Later in the week was Houtzdale Days. Because my parents are such involved parents, they helped organize and staff the 4-H club’s nacho concession at the festival. That meant three nights of wandering around the tarted-up block and sitting under the green and white canopy, making sure the kids weren’t setting fire to anybody. I got to experience some of the finest culture Houtzdale has to offer, and even get in a few rounds of ‘Spot the Cadaver—Digicam Edition’ with my mom. I seem to have misplaced my winning shots….

I got back from a side trip just in time for a family reunion. Getting to see cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents that I haven’t seen in a long time was really nice. I got to talk about my crazy plans of quitting my job, becoming homeless, and wandering nearly aimlessly around Europe. Everybody is SO excited for me. Of course, there were also all the other second- and twice removed-s that I still have no clue to their identities, so I had to play it cool and talk all like I know the scoop. I did, however, manage to have a few pretty worthwhile conversations about traveling (I need to get to Alaska and Mexico one of these days), and we had a great scavenger hunt. My team, the Lollipop Guild (my grade school cousins have NO IDEA what that is) blew all the other teams out of the water, thank you very much.

And then the County Fair. What can I say about the good old Clearfield County Fair? Well, I guess it’s been going on a long time. For over 30 years, my family had been taking dairy cows to put on display there, and my sibs and I even had the honor of holding the family corner in the barn when my cousins grew out of the tradition. I hadn’t actually been back since we stopped showing there. It was strange to be there as a visitor, and not a grungy farmer counting the hours until I could get home for a shower and some decent sleep. Sadly enormous, smelly, unruly beef steers have overrun the cattle barns which once housed glorious dairy animals. Yuck. Another odd thing about the experience was watching the Fair’s parade from the grandstand. My family had always walked out to some street corner where we were right up against the floats and marchers. In the streets were the prime positions for scavenging the thrown candy and heckling friends and relatives in the marching bands. Hard, metal bleacher seats aren’t much fun—so we had to start up some spontaneous rounds of ‘Spot the Cadaver’ and ‘Guess the Yardage of Tulle’ in the Fair Queen Court’s gowns. Bonus points for cadavers in tulle.

I guess that brings me up to the dinner I tried to cook. I bet nobody believes anymore that I actually do this for a living. Every time I’ve tried to prepare something for my family, it’s flopped. First was the pan of popovers that imploded. Then was the carrot salad that everybody thought came from the sewer (to my credit it was delicious; it just looked funny to everyone else’s untrained eyes). This time, I burned the raspberry Dijon chicken on the impossible-to-control heat of the electric stovetop. And no grocery store in the area carries any grains other than rice. I think I was lucky that I managed to find a box of mixed variety rice in the next town over. So, instead of the quinoa pilaf I planned, it was brown rice that took 45 minutes to cook. But my family loves me and they told me it was delicious anyway.

So, thank you God for a lovely stay, and what was the other I wanted to say? I talked about everyone, so what could it be? Now I remember… God forgive me. [adapted from ‘Christopher Robin is Saying his Prayers by Melanie]