I'll Be Home For Christmas...

As a college student who has lived away from home now for a consecutive year and a half, coming back home is a very strange thing. This is only my third week being home for the entire year of 2010. It's a bit strange to refer to Lawrenceville as home only in the sense of where I grew up. Provo is now home as in where I live and the place that I mean when I say "home." But you'd think that coming back to the house I grew up in it wouldn't be that weird or different. And it wasn't at first. The first time I came back for Christmas and then coming home to live the summer after my freshman year it wasn't weird at all. It was like I'd never left. But unsurprisingly a year and half will do quite a bit.

I think it's kind of funny though, all the things that I'm now noticing that are strange or different that I never would have even thought about when I lived here.

• It takes the water a very long time to heat up. I guess with one water heater that isn't constantly running it takes longer for the water from the sink to get hot, unlike an apartment complex.
  
• There is no garbage disposal in the sink. Food goes in the trashcan.
• Most of the time there is a specified meal time where everyone sits down at the table and eats the same thing.
  
• Laundry is a weekly occurrence. Or even multiple times a week, as needed.
• My clothes and sheets smell like downy. Wonderful.
  
• I have to share a bathroom with my brother, who lives on a very consistent schedule, unlike me. Or any of my roommates I've ever lived with.
• Any of the food in the kitchen is free game.
• TiVo.
• There's no reason for me to answer the phone or get the mail. (Not that I actually did either of those things when there was a possibility it would be for me.)
• I haven't eaten a single meal out of a box.
• I no longer have my own form of transportation. Permission must be granted for me to drive one of the cars in the garage.
• Money is hardly an object. Well, comparatively. I still didn't get that convertible or motorcycle that I asked for.... But at the grocery store there isn't any hesitation in whether or not there's enough money to spare for that amenity.

Home. As much as I love the break from school and life as an adult, I'm ready to go back to the home where I'm not just a visitor whose room will quickly become the storage room again.