Blinds

With the exception of a few years in college that I really don't remember, I have only lived in three different houses in my life. My parents had the same house for my entire childhood. They built it before I was born and sold it just a few years ago for a combination of life in a condo and a motor home. I lived in a small apartment for a few years before going to college, but that was never a house and barely a home. (In college, and note that this is in parenthesis, I lived in seven different places within 5 years.) Out of college, Chick and I had a very nice apartment that was definetly a home but not a house. We bought our first actual house a few years later and left that one for a bigger house a few years after that. Now, I'm sitting in my new, fourth house. But it's still not quite a home.

I live for words and their definitions that are ambiguous. But the difference between 'house' and 'home' don't actually fit into an 'ambiguous' category. A house is a free standing structure that is occupied by one person or family. Whereas a home is any place that a family or person lives. If you think about it, the difference is really rather simplistic. But people would still argue over that difference. Good for them.

All of the houses and homes that I have occupied are wonderful and unique. In some ways I wish my parents would have never sold the house I grew up in. I knew every nook and cranny of the place. But I feel I knew just as much about the fraternity house that I got drunk in more than a few times. The first house Chick and I bought was most wonderful because of the time we were able to spend there with all of our friends. And the house that we are still trying to sell may be the most unique place I will ever live. But for now...

Tommorrow a man will be showing up to put blinds in all of our windows. He may actually be installing shades, but I'm not sure of the difference. Ambiguity reigns. Regardless, when he leaves this house that I am currently writing in, it will become a little bit more of a home. The colors we picked together to put on our windows, along with the furniture that will arrive soon, and the dogs lying at my feet and the new plasma TV on the wall and the baby that will be crying just across the hall from our bedroom - that's what will create our new home.