I’ve been here a few days now and I’ve been having way too much fun. I’ve been meaning to take photos and put together a cohesive story outlining my thoughts about staying at the Actuallys’ but I guess I’ve been too busy to pick up the camera much. I’ll try to do that more in the future.

I did however, take a short photo-walk to the little downtown area during the lovely sunset light the first night I was here. I love it here. I want to move here. I can’t discuss the exact town they are in for privacy purposes but it has just the right amount of rural charm mixed in with urban sophistication that makes me feel like I’m home. I grew up on a dead-end country road with no sidewalks and I think part of me is always trying to recreate that. Someday I’ll find “my home.”

There will always be a part of me that wants to run down the rocky asphalt road in my bare feet in the summer night air and sit on the warm brick steps of the porch of the house I grew up in. I can still see every detail in my mind. The way the crab grass grew over the driveway. The smell of orange blossoms and water being sprayed into the air from a nearby sprinkler. The sound of some crazy mockingbird echoing the way the sprinkler sprayed through it’s ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-tdrtdtdrtdt! cycle from left to right.

Toby talks more and more about us staying put in Southern California. Even though I’ve lived here most of my life, it just doesn’t feel right. Mostly because where I live is not the country. I love the weather where we live. I love the beach. I love it all. But it’s not where I thought I would live for the rest of my life. I thought it was just temporary. I never thought Bug would grow up and go to school here.

Who knows what the future holds. But the more I walk around the Actuallys’ town and the more I fall in love with how close Mexico is (the broken sidewalks, the sound of Mariachi music floating out into the night air, the dry dusty roads, the oleander bushes pushing their buds into the bright blue sky…) the more I think I could make a home here.

Now if I could just talk Toby into it.