Home For The Holidays

I haven't updated lately, although I meant to write about what a transcendent experience it was to be at the sold-out TCU/Utah game a few weeks ago. I showed up with my signs for College GameDay, ate a giant burger at Dutch's, drank warm beer and then cold beer given to me by the guy who was my editor when I was but a young reporter at the college newspaper and then another cold beer given to me by a former professor. I fought the lines for the bathroom--sometimes I wish I could pee like a guy--and watched TCU kick the shit out of Utah. It was good, and the fans were so noisy and everything was so great I almost wanted to cry.

But anyway, enough waxing poetic there. I've been mostly keeping up with the National Novel Writing Month that is November. I'm about 34,000 words into what needs to be a 50,000-word short novel by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 30. I didn't really start with much of a plot, except I'd have a reporter who gets laid off and gets a job at a horse stable, and I've gotten that far. I don't know what else to really throw in, so I'm making stuff up as I go along, under the careful watch of the wonderful Kate, who's a great coach. Maybe I'll actually do a triathlon some day. She'd be a great coach for that, too.

(Hey, Kate, tonight I'm going to go running for the first time in . . . well, a very, very long time. You should turn your whip that direction, too.)

Thanksgiving is this week, and it's so nuts to think about the holidays with my parents nearby. They're about 50 minutes away, which is just mind-blowing. My parents buy me like a week's worth of barbeque and send me home with leftovers, and this time I'll see them without the vacation days and flights to Reagan.

Winter and the holidays were always my time to be in Virginia, to be riding the Metro around D.C., to be walking around in the cold from museum to museum, iPod on and hands in pockets. I knew when I was at home (I refer to everything as "at home," it feels like; my apartment, my parent's place, Dan's apartment, etc) in July that I'd miss Virginia. I miss the gray skies that hold the possibility of snow. I miss the fat squirrel who lived behind our first house and the fat rabbit that lived behind the second one. I miss driving around to the Bloom grocery store or the Safeway, and I liked the church our family went to there, since there were windows to look out and see the trees through.

Since I was a sophomore in college, holidays always meant Virginia. I spent summer vacation and spring breaks there, too, and I did spend two brief Christmases in Tampa when I was in grad school, but they're pretty firmly linked with Virginia in my mind.

This holiday will be fantastic, no doubt. But at the same time, I won't have the luxury of stepping completely, totally away from my responsibilities as an adult to go home anymore. When I was halfway across the country, there was no chance of an editor calling me to do something or of me worrying about getting something in the mail. My parents are close, now, and their new home is, too. I just won't be able to get away from my home, either.

I love Fort Worth, I sort of think of it as an adopted home, but I am antsy.