Home

This letter (late though it may be) comes at a rather opportune time as I have just moved from one home to another, did the same almost two months ago, and intend on doing it again in the fall. Home is a tricky word; it means a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people. To some, it is the place they sleep most nights, to others it is the place they grew up, to still others it is places where their loved ones reside. To me it is all of the above.

My first home held that honour until I was 5. It was a little rancher that I shared with my parents, brother, a dog named Coco, a cat named Rocky and various daycare kids. Although I don't have many memories from those ages (I blame and incident from when I was two were I fell down a set of wooden stairs at a place my parents were thinking of buying as a summer home in Dad's hometown in the Kootneys), the two that stand out, perhaps not because they are actual memories but because I've heard them talked about a number of times, are being placed by my brother on our dogs back for a quick jaunt around the backyard, and being bundled up in a blanket in my mothers arms on the front step in an effort to quell a raging fever. I cannot, however, for the life of me remember what that house looked like on the inside.

My second home, where my parents still live and which I therefore still consider one of my homes, lies just around the corner from the first one. In fact, although we did use a moving van for many of our items, there were a few that we just paraded down the road. This house was a step up both in yard size and height. My brother and I were both increasingly grateful for the second floor as we grew older and wanted some place to get away from the daycare children who invaded our home on weekdays. This home has the most memories attached to it as I lived there until I was 19, and when I go back to visit (which is relatively often as it is only about 45 min away from where I currently live) it often feels as though I never left, until I go up to my room and none of my stuff is there.

My next home was the first time I had really had to pack up and move all my stuff, and therefore the first time I realized how much crap I possessed (a problem which has only been exacerbated by working at a thrift store).  I had taken a year off of schooling to work and make some money and try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life (still a work in progress), and one day I went in to a coffee shop where a friend worked. She asked me what my plans were for the next fall and I said something vague about maybe going to college for something or something and she suggested that I apply to Camosun College and move down to Victoria with her and her boyfriend; having nothing better planned, or anything planned really, I said sure, why not. Eventually the plan morphed into the three of us and another friend, Erin, finding a place together, but then the couple decided that they wanted to have a place of their own so Erin and I started looking for a two bedroom. We were extremely lucky in that we ended up getting the first, and only place that we inquired about. The feature of this place that probably anyone who visited us there remembers, are the stairs of doom. When our landlady's mother converted the house into an up/down duplex in the 70's  she got the stairs that led to the upper floor door from a boat wrecking yard. They are boat stairs. They steps are relatively short, with slightly longer than normal vertical space in between them, and there were a lot of them. It was really surprising that none of the mildly inebriated people going up and down those stairs ever fell and broke something. That was my home for just over one and a half years.

My next home was sort of an intrim home, but also one that I always sort of feel is home, as it is where my maternal grandparents live. Erin had decided to move to Calgary at the beginning of April, but wanted to move back to her parents' during March in order to save up a bit of money. I had a friend who had been trying to convince me to move in with her during the summer while her roommate went back to her parent's place, but that wasn't available until the end of exams, so I had to find some place to live for two months. My family has always been quite close; my mother's parents, siblings, and their families have lived within 45 min of us my whole life so we get together often for our mandatory bi-monthly Sunday family dinners at Granny and Grampa's as well as attendance at the kids' (my brother, my cousins, and myself) various games, performances, etc. My grandparents are also extremely sweet and kind people who when I broached the subject of possibly living in their spare room for a couple months said I'd be more than welcome. I had already stayed there a few times house sitting and the like, so it didn't feel like a new home, I was simply there far more often than I had been previously.

The newest home is not even 24 hours into being so and therefore I don't feel there is much to say about it besides how stoked I am that my new roomie is my roomie.

Alright, now for my wrap-up activities.

In the world of webcomics I read, H is for Happle Tea, a webcomic created by Scott Maynard. It is a comic "about mythology and other things" and new comics are always accompanied by an interesting blog post, usually explaining the myth that he has adapted for the lulz, or simply expanded on slightly because it is always hilarious.

As a special treat for the extreme lateness of this letter, you get two songs.

The first, along with covering a song that I rather like, this is one of the cutest things I have ever seen, and never fails to make me smile.

 The second is an awesome song, with a friggin amazing music video (which I enjoy all the more due to one of my favorite people from my favorite movie)

H is also partially for Holy Crap I'm Behind, but to those that know me this shouldn't be too unusual or unexpected. I shall try to get through all of the remaining letters before May shows up and ruins the party (replacing it with an absurd amount of birthday parties) but we'll see how that goes as I have 19 letters and 6 days.