Home

Tonight, Sue* invited us to attend a performance of the Young Americans which was pretty awesome, except they sang "Home" by Michael Buble and I just about started bawling my damn eyes out.

It's been over a month now in California. I've been to a lot of places -- L.A., Anaheim, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Irvine, Laguna Beach, a few others -- yet nothing feels right.

When I moved from Michigan to Chicago, I never looked back. Even though those first few weeks were so different, so radically new, I never stopped to wonder if I belonged there. Chicago always felt right in a way that Michigan, and now Orange County/L.A. just don't. Will I ever feel like I belong here? Or will I just keep living here, Will and I trying to follow our dreams despite feeling like foreigners?

On days like this, I wonder if the Swedish Chef struggled so much when he came to London**to perform in the Muppet Show. Maybe he wasn't a chef in Sweden, he was stuck in some dead-end job as a house painter, every day dipping his brush into paint and imagining the day when he'd be sweating in the kitchen surrounded by donuts. But maybe when he moved, excited to finally be a famous cook, the obstacles he faced wore him down. Maybe he got lost around London, met some mean people, or got torn apart by food critics in his local newspaper. Maybe he thought about going back to Sweden (not to be a house painter again of course, but he would find something else, surely!) where the streets were familiar, he knew the lingo, where, when people asked him how he liked it, he wouldn't hesitate and say, "I'm adjusting..."

But the Chef wouldn't be who he is today (a hero!) without his trials and tribulations. Despite how hard it was, he never stopped being who he was and what his dreams were. And you know what, he probably always held a piece of Sweden in his heart for the tough times. So, that's what I'll do too. :)

*Sue is my boss's mother who is letting us stay in her spare bedroom for two weeks while we find a place to live. Note from 10.1.09 - this seems like a charitable act, but she charges us $500 for two weeks and expects us to participate in religious ritualism while we're here. It makes me very uncomfortable.

**Fun Fact: The Muppet Show was filmed in London.