You're always 17 in your hometown

I should update that I moved. Back home. Oh yeah. It's exciting. My honey and I lived in the DC area for about 4 years. I was in grad school for 2 of those years. Good times. Anyway, DC was great in a lot of ways, and terrible in others. We liked being right there in the middle of politics and democrazy (not a typo), but then again we were there for 9/11, the anthrax stuff, and the sniper. We both had great jobs, but we never had time to make friends, or meet with any friends for that matter, had we had them, since driving anywhere took forfuckingever and we lived outside the city. So, our growing dissatisfaction with the rat race coincided with some family necessity, and we made the (rather abrupt) decision to move home. It's been surprisingly nice. At first, I was way less enthused about it than L. He's a good ole southern boy at heart and couldn't wait to get back to family and green pastures and forests (where he could hunt poor, defenseless creatures) and space to roam and the beach and a slower pace. I was both fearful of and excited about the prospect of being back where everybody knows my name. (Well, not everybody. I was never that popular, but still.) It's quite a different type of life to go from being completely anonymous and never seeing anyone you know to running into past friends-with-benefits in the supermarket. I'm back to having to "put on my face" whenever I go out, which is probably a good thing. No one should be subjected to schlubs out doing errands. Especially when they look like this. And here I am, working for The Man (and by The Man I mean a special-interest group that caters to conservative types with big money and big SUVs). My dad is super pleased about that. He hopes I'll be converted. Not bloodly likely. The job situation is less than ideal but better than nothing. Sadly, this capital city is not a hotbed for publishing. But we're home, and we're happy, and we're gonna make it work. Or we'll move.