You guys headed home?

Alright. First the food round up, then on to the main event. This past week, Eric took me on a lovely little getaway. We spent a day in San Luis Obispo and then another day at a resort on Pismo beach. It was sooo nice to get out of town for a little bit. A major upside to coastal hippie towns--they're packed with little cafes with oodles of vegan options. Woot woot for sort-of hippieness. Eric was a champ and took me to a vegan restaurant for dinner one night. I had never been to one before, so I was so excited to get to simply order straight off a menu and to not have to fake dairy allergies ;) During the trip I had some scrumptious balsamic veggies, a veggie burger so delicious it was gone in 3 minutes and a bagel sandwich dubbed "The Elvis" (I resisted all 'Thank you very much' jokes while ordering. It was difficult). I did indulge in one "we're on vacation!" treat--a plate full of butternut squash ravioli smothered in...parmesan cream sage sauce. I decided for that dinner I could just pick whatever I wanted since it had been a while, but meat still didn't sound good. CHEESE, however--helloooooo old friend :) I'm pretty sure those noodles made me a better person. Ship those things to the middle East and I'm sure peace would spontaneously happen. For the road, I packed a cooler filled with pesto veggie pasta, mangos, granola, and strawberries....and Fritos. Sue me, it's vacation. Anyways, point is, eating during the drive was easy.

So now that you've heard everything I've had to eat in the last week, let me tell you what I was actually motivated to write about today. Throughout the trip, people kept making reference to home to us. "Where's home?", "You guys headed home?", stuff like that. The funny thing was, we didn't know how to answer. We'd just sort of look at each other and think for a minute before Eric would slowly answer.."Well, we live in Bakersfield right now." It's a funny thing, the difference between where you live and home. We've lived here for 4 times as long as we previously lived in Arizona, and still Arizona still feels 4 times more like home. Maybe it's because it's the first home we had together. Maybe it's because it somehow just fit me like a favorite pair of old comfy shoes. Maybe we've romanticized it. Who knows? I sure don't. Maybe I never will. All I know is that right now, we're just not sure where to call home.
We've painted the walls, put up pictures, bought new furniture, rearranged said furniture and even held a small, but still cramped party here. We've been through some great times and some awful times here. We're so much closer to friends and family and we get to be around more to see our favorite munchkins. That's been wonderful. The town isn't bad. For whatever reason, it still doesn't fit. It's not the worst cast scenario, it's not nightmare-ish, it's just not home. There's no "old shoe" feeling here. It's more like a brand new pair of heels--you know they're nice, you know they look good, but they're still uncomfortable and all you can think about is getting out of them the first chance you get.
 Maybe the next place we move to will be an old shoe (I am exhausting that metaphor today). Everyone always says home is where you're with each other and to an extent that's true. We've been "home" for each other for a long time. But a space to match would be nice too.