oh there's no place like home for the holidays

My incredible bosses (I can't believe the people I work for now -- it gets better and better every week) let me go home quite early, so here I am in Erie, typing while my dad naps on the couch and Mom is at work.

Tired as I am of being the single daughter who, at this stage in the game, cannot transition from four-year-old to real adult by means of having some sort of significant male other, it's good to be home. Our enormous gray cat, Alex (a/k/a Greubie) is as moody and delightful and catlike as ever...and, although he sees me extremely infrequently, he was ecstatic to greet me when I came home last night. He's getting old (no! no! he stopped aging at four!) but is still himself.

And I can never stop loving how I get my parents' old queen-size bed, which they put into my room once they upgraded their own. So coming home is like going to the Ritz. I get to take a break from my own ancient narrow mattress (which is, however, the perfect size for a me and a small furry Simon) and lounge around in luxury. And I find myself joyfully taking up the entire middle of the bed.

The tree is up, the traditional decorations are glowing, the usual Christmas music is playing in the background, the cats are curled up sleeping in Dad's LaZBoy, and I'm waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Just another "break" when Sarah returns to the homestead.

Plus I got to listen to Sufjan the entire trip home yesterday...I had purchased his Seven Swans album for a Christmas present for Leigh Ann, but she bought it for herself a couple weeks ago, so I popped it in yesterday. Really nervously, actually, that kind of nervous excited anticipation you get when you're about to perform a song you know really well, or when you're going to see an old friend you haven't seen in years. Because I know that when I listen to something new and Sufjan, it's going to destroy me (in the best way possible), and I always wonder which song is going to do it, and how. Seven Swans is inspired by Christian church music, so a lot of it is purely acoustic, and purely dedicated to Jesus, and purely beautiful. I spent a lot of the drive tipping my head just right so the tears would run out the corners of my eyes without obstructing my vision.

It's so amazing to feel alive with God again. Like other things still matter -- matter more, in fact -- but nothing matters as much as that aliveness, that awareness, that communion, that closeness. And it's always right THERE.

Hallelu Yah.