The problem with the small, dinky, one horse town we live in is that it’s in a truly beautiful area:

I recklessly took this picture as I was driving the kids to their swimming lessons yesterday. These hurried, one handed, trying to drive, iphone shots don’t do it justice, and proper photos like The Husband takes, with his professional camera and lenses and filters galore just make it look fake, like it’s too perfect it simply cannot but be photoshopped (even though it’s not). This place is positively magnificent, mountains and hills all around you, never ending fields, grass swaying gently in the breeze, majestic trees, wildflowers of every hue as far as the eye can see. And in the fall… well, autumn is my favorite season, the yellows and oranges, the pops of blood red… it’s dizzying.

It’s like nature is whispering “stay…” in my ear with the wind. Of course we’re staying a few more years, I mean we haven’t even moved into the new house yet (I bet you’d forgotten all about that!) but ever since I went to Houston in March my heart kind of wants to be stateside.

I went to Houston for a myriad of complicated reasons that aren’t really my story to tell right now, suffice it to say that there were absolutely non-tragic, yet still quite stressful family reasons for my going, and I went pretty much from one day to the next (which in mom speak means I only had a week to organize the care of my children for ten days which is essentially only marginally less complicated than a military operation to invade a moderately sized country from three sides). It was my first time in Houston alone since I went for the Boy’s baby shower six and a half years ago, and then I was pregnant so I couldn’t even drink. It felt exactly like coming home from University all those years. I stepped off the plane, completely free and unencumbered (and relatively well rested), and I partied and relaxed for a week (and dealt with some stuff, but I’ve almost forgotten all that).

My mom would wake me at ten (10!!) with a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the best coffeemaker ever invented (the Keurig), and then I would idle the entire day by, eating, shopping, hanging out with friends, going to fabulous restaurants with my Mom and Brother… I went out drinking – and now I got a major craving for a Shiner and fried pickles – and I could drink all the beer I wanted and I could even finish the night off with a jack and coke because I was responsible for no one but myself for the entire night. It was liberating and so much fun!

And mostly all it did was make me miss home and want to move back to Houston. Although, I know that those ten days were a break, an anomaly, that if I moved there my life would move along with me, and thank god for that. But still, I love Houston, I miss my family, and I miss my friends. So sometimes I fantasize about moving home. I especially fantasize about that when it’s been snowing for what feels like fourth months straight here.

And then you get days like this… gorgeous, sunny, crisp, the hills all rolling, the mountains all peaky with a dusting of snow, and you get that “Sound of Music” induced feeling of singing and prancing on the hills and then you start to feel like eh, you could stay here a while longer…. And that’s the point where I start hyperventilating myself into a panic attack because the verdant hills are actually covered in snow and ice four to five months a year.

So this is where I’m at, confused as ever, foot in one shoe on either side of the pond, and craving fried pickles and an ice cold Shiner.