Hometown Lessons

What I learned while visiting my family and friends over the holidays:

1. Frosted flakes and peanut butter toast and cookies and cakes and candy and shrimp cocktail and cheese and cashews and pepperoni and crackers and ham and squash and mashed potatoes and brown-and-serve rolls with butter and rye bread dunked in gobs of dill dip should not all be eaten in exorbitant amounts in the same day.


2. Eating everything in sight will not reduce the awkwardness of certain social situations, the boredom that inevitably overtakes me in that tiny town, the sadness of knowing I'll have to leave again, or the general anxiety that visiting my hometown always evokes.


3. Eating everything in sight will, however, cause serious weight gain and a bloated, disgusting feeling that will make me want to avoid mirrors and pants with buttons of any kind.


4. Eating everything in sight will also cause the busting of seams in two pairs of said pants before the week is out. (Mind you, these were well worn pants, but they busted nonetheless.)


5. Maybe the two months surrounding the holidays was not such a great time to begin the non-diet diet. It seems I really could have used a little calorie counting from October 30th to January 1st.


6. Singing along to the jukebox at a local bar can bring a smile to even the grumpiest faces. (Please note: I was not personally involved in the singing, but it was quite amusing to witness.)


7. Jigsaw puzzles are addicting. You will inevitably lose sleep looking for "just one more piece" before you go home.


8. Hanging out with a girlfriend for an afternoon is pure bliss. (Especially for the girlfriend, who is married and has a child and rarely gets to have adult conversation with anyone outside her family or her workplace.)


9. Having female friends nearby to go to lunch with, watch movies with, talk to face-to-face about everything from the stress of raising children to the best color for our complexions, is something I really miss. Really.


10. I need female companionship just as much as I need time with My Love.


11. Having dinner with a single friend of the male persuasion alone at his home doesn't look as innocent to others as it feels to me (and really is, at least on my end).


12. Telling My Love about said dinner because it seemed so innocent until I described it out loud over the phone, to my boyfriend hundreds of miles away, will make me feel crappy because I would have been SO upset if the tables had been turned.


13. Spending time with my nephew makes me crave motherhood.


14. Spending time with my mom makes me crave my childhood.


15. Spending time with my dad makes me sad because he's so lonely and there's nothing I can do about it.


16. Spending time with my step-sister makes me wish we were closer.


17. The opportunity to spend time with my family, while often stressful, is the most precious gift I was given in 2006.


18. I miss the days when everyone was in the same place and not spread out around the country, celebrating the holidays separately.


19. As much as I want to deny this, there's a very good chance that I will move back home eventually. It turns out you can't run away from something that's imbedded in your DNA. Of course, there's also a very good chance I'll write a best-selling novel, buy a house in the suburbs here, and buy a summer home in my hometown--best of both worlds!


20. Nausea during your drive to work is a pretty good indicator that you should start looking for a new job. (ok, I didn't learn this until today, but it's still a good lesson...)