Home is Where the Heart and My Beer Is

He's sitting on the couch and I am on the chair. We just had dinner. Macaroni and cheese. He is watching Modern Marvels on the History Channel, one of the few on that station that I don't really care about. It's about oil and stuff. Anytime they mention a city from my home state, I cry out "Texas!" and he is well trained to respond "Hook em!"

He took the day off because we went to a potluck dinner last night at an apartment that didn't have A/C. White wine and XTREME heat do not a happy Swede make. What did make a happy Swede was the fact that England tied Sweden in the World Cup, making it the 38th year in a row that England, notably a strong team, has failed to beat Sweden. A tie is not a win. No doubt my father is growling at the TV somewhere. He had even called to make sure I had not betrayed my Motherland and root for Sweden in the World Cup. Ah, Europeans and their football. I enjoy the occasional sporting event, and certainly whooped and hollered during the UT Championship, but I certainly don't understand the level of obsession that leads to riots and such over it. In the end, I fully realize that I don't actually play any of these sports, nor am I actually on the teams, and therefore do not feel they are my possesion--"WE won today." Well, shit. I didn't win anything. I sat on my lazy ass and drank a beer. I like to keep that in perspective when viewing such events. Though I will enjoy it as much as the next person.

It's a quiet and lovely domesticity. I feel at ease with him in my home, our home, and in about five minutes I'm going to stop writing here and curl up with him on the couch. We're already in our pjs and it's not yet 8 and I couldn't be more pleased about that. Something about this love has quieted, albeit slightly, the frenetic nature of my mind. I think it's why I'm not writing as much these days. It's not that I don't think about things a lot or feel compelled to write, but I don't have the driving desperation and hopeless drama that normally fuels my entries here. When we go to bed at the end of the day, and I'm wrapped around him in our ferret-like nature, for the first time in as long as I can remember, some part of my soul feels quiet and calm. The level of warmth that surrounds it is my comfort blanket all through the day and I know that this is what they were talking about when people wrote all those prettier things about love that I could never attempt to match. It's the missing puzzle piece to our lives. Certainly the missing one to mine. And it has settled in nicely, and the picture is complete.

It feels a lot like home. It took two years and a lot of heartache here, but I have managed to find really amazing friends, a stable job, fun and engaging activities, and someone to share my heart with. I've managed to build a life here. A real one, seperate and joined to the life I had before. I used to miss that old life so much because I felt so lost at first, I had not found my footing, I slipped in my own standards of the person I want to be.

Now I've found it. I'm found.