Hanging My Hat

"Somewhere round mile marker 112, Papa started hummin the funk, I gotta jones in my bones before we know, We were singing this melody. Stop the car pulled out the guitar, Halfway to New Orleans." Marc Broussard from "Home"

Being locked in the Asylum for as long as i have, and trust me it's been an eternity, I have found ways to make the most of my surroundings. I've come to think of my nurse as something like family. Granted, it would be an enabler/addict relationship. She supplies the drugs and I need them to remain docile amongst you so-called "normals". Whatever our relationship is, the nurse makes my time in personal hell feel like home. And thinking of this got me intrigued about the idea of what home means to me.

I've traveled around, seen some country, but I always ended my journey where they began. Home. Now you can imagine that as great as SuperMom was at juggling three brats, two jobs, and a social life, we did tend to more about like gypsies in a traveling show. The only home that she has ever owned in the one that we currently live in. So, home was never a particular place, more of a feeling. It was where I felt comfortable as Oprah at a buffet. When my dreams were sweeter than Miley Cyrus on lithium. Where the food always tasted like I'd just smoked a bowl.

When I was in Minnesota it was friends like Jeff, Travis, Angie, and of course Cari that made it feel like home. It was the way they welcomed me into their lives. The opened their blessed Norwegian hearts to me like Brian Wilson opened my ears to music. Like Kevin Smith opened my mind to the snap of dialogue. They were accepting and non-judgmental in a way that only people who spend months covered in Jack Frost's dropping, eating hot dish, could be.

When I went to Michigan, though there was the same amount of crappy weather, it never felt like home. There was nothing in that dirty depressing p[lace that would ever make me want to come back. Sorry Michiganites, or Michigonians, or whatever it is you call yourselves, Detroit ruined the whole state for me. Much the way that the Packers ruined the entire state of Wisconsin. But hey that's only 2 out of 50 states that are on the black list. And of the remaining states that I have not visited only one has the potential to be added, not saying which one.

Even though SuperMom, my sister, and my niece and nephews are here, the Slow still doesn't feel like home. LA does because for the last five years my friends there made it feel like no other place on Earth. It's the first time in my life that family isn't enough to make me feel secure. There's something about home that makes you feel invincible. Think about it. Do you ever feel safer than when you get inside the walls of home? Whether it be the house you live in, your parents, or the state where your friends are.

Will this place ever feel like home? Sure it will. Once I get my friends here, my smoker set up, a round of movie bomb, and a bottle of rum. Until them I guess I'll just click my heels together when I miss everyone back home, worked for Dorothy, and we've had plenty of tornadoes.

What make you feel at home?

Dixie Cup of Love: Darling Niki for the idea.