insights on being "home"

So, I'm living at "home" or "my parent's house" this week. It's wierd to not call it home although I don't really think of it as home in the usual sense now, it's like old home, childhood home, but those sound so wierd and formal. My parents are on vacation so my 13-year-old sister Kayla sort of needs someone to check in on her and make sure she doesn't stay up all night or get scared.

I have observed some amusing things in the last few days.. all random.

1) Light switches - in our back hall there are four light switches that form a square. Although I lived in this house all my life with these particular switches I have never remembered which one is for what - the garage light, the outside house light, the basement light and the hall light. Every time I come in the house and need one of these lights I spend a minute testing them. It's just too much for me. However, when I walk into my old bathroom I instinctly reach for the second switch knowing that it turns on the light. It doesn't even come near my conscious that the first switch is for the fan, my body just knows.

2) My sister is a funny kid. Today I brought home a pizza because she wanted it. But when it was ready she said she wasn't hungry. (She doesn't eat like a normal person to begin with but it was still odd that she hardly ate). Later I was in her room talking to her and realized on her cluttered desk that were not one, not two, not three, but SIX empty bags of cheesy goldfish laying on the desk (these had apparently accumulated for some time). There was also half a box of Lucky Charms, which after chiding her for her freaky eating habits, I took to the kitchen, remarking I was having them for breakfast tomorrow morning. Laughing out loud, she yelled that there were no more marshmallows. Sure enough, she had stripped an entire box of Lucky Charms of it's considerable wealth of colored marshmallows. I almost wanted to save that bag of tan unlucky charms to show her when she was 20. I say this laughing because I know I probably would have eaten like this if the parents had been as lenient with me as they are with Kayla when I was a kid. (Sorry guys, but I think it's true) I tend to either lean toward eating really healthy fresh foods and just craving junk food and garbage.

3) How is it that I grew up always having pets, usually a dog and a cat at all times and rarely ever felt any allergies to them at all, but now I am home for one night and I feel like I am getting sick? It's funny, when I moved out for college and then came back for summers and breaks the animals really bothered me. I would get a cold or just be sneezing a lot for days afterwards. It's funny how the body adjusts to something and then quickly loses its tolerance for it.

Just some mundane thoughts for you all. Have a good day.