Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus*

724 days.
It took a little calculating to get this number…. but I have been home for this long, ( home being the town I was born in 13 863 days ago, and spent the bulk of the first 6 400 days in ).

In .04 of the next year I hit another birth day but in half that time I will be remembering the second anniversary of getting on a plane and returning to this place almost 6 740 days after leaving it, I remember thinking “I’ll probably never be back”

I’ve talked about the reasons for coming home, the mixture of regret and happiness, but also I have talked about the changes in the past hundreds of days. I wrote about the anchor here about .5 years ago how I started the process of purchasing a small acreage and home.

Well so much time has passed and the deed passed from their hands to mine. But it still didn’t feel like mine… little things needed to be done I guess, more paperwork needed to be shuffled. Because today I woke up and for the first time it really felt like it was my place. I have an urge to plant a sign “IVAN’S INVISIBLE MULE FARM”… but you know what happens when you plant a sign.. They send out shoots and you can’t move for burma-shave advertisements.

To celebrate I think I will go out and buy a new vehicle, another total first for me. I have my eyes on a small truck, something responsible in the fuel department and useful in the “hauling crap to the dump” department… It will be deficient in the “making girls wet with it’s sexiness” department.. Which is regrettable but then again my home is also deficient in that , and upon further thought , so am I- most of the time. So we all fit well together.

Last month the high school I did not graduate (but should have ) from had its second decade away reunion, it’s the first I attended, and I attended by accident, it happened in one of the banquet rooms in the hotel that houses the bar I bounce in and because it was serving booze there was the required bouncing involved … “ hey man good to see you .. Yeah it’s been a long time.. Listen you’re cut off, have a nice day!” awkward.. But I ghosted it- much in the same way I ghosted school.

Weird thing reunions, the only people who want to go are successful and pretty, or were the popular kids back then… not much changed all in attendance were pretty and drunk… but some were a pleasant surprise. Glad I had reasons to leave frequently. After, a few of those people came to the bar I was working in and I admit to guilty pleasures as I watched them try to navigate the waters I moved so easily through .. They floundered and gripped each other for comfort. It put perspective on the whole thing

My life is pretty good, fairly comfortable and most importantly paid for. I have no complaints .

Right now I am listening to John Carroll (and missing the pitch I spent happy summers on) , the weather is chilled and snow may be in my future.. But I can live with that







*Now is the time to drink, now the time to dance footloose upon the earth