Home...

I'm travelling again this week - it has been a while since I've been away from home. So, sitting in my swanky room at the W, I'm thinking of home.

Home for me has never been 4 walls and a roof. I've moved 6 times in the last 10 years...I'm not attached to a structure by any means. So, thinking outside the "box", so to speak, these are the things I think of when I think of home:

Hanging out with my friends. I have been tremendously lucky in friendship. The realtor who sold my parents our house when we moved from NY to SC became my second mom, and her kids are my adopted siblings (and their kids my adopted nieces). The same girlfriends who heard all of my adolescent dramas are still the ones who I run to to share my grown-up dramas (only now, we bring wine...so much better). And my roomate from college and her husband came back here, and live about a mile away (though we only seem to see each other every six months...but we swear that we'll get that down to every 3 months by retirement). Those friendships cover the last 25 years of my life...and I always feel like I'm at home when I'm around any of them.

My morning coffee (I soooo miss my coffee when I'm out of town). I have been a coffee fan since college, but the wife made me love it (and her) a little more when she made my coffee with a little bit of chocolate syrup and cool whip on top. Maybe not great for the waistline, but still the way I drink it every morning, thinking of the the unexpected things that made me fall in love with her.

Finally, the gnome that sits outside our front door. We bought him at the Renaissance Festival when we were first dating. He has sat by the front door in our last three homes, waiting for us to come home. We've always said - "Home is where the gnome is" - and I smile every time I see him: