I'm in the house where I grew up, staying with my dad. Sleeping in a room in the basement that is so dark I have no sense of time.

It's my yearly pilgrimage to my home town and the city I spent my adult years in before heading to Toronto. I get to see my family and the old friends that I made through my early adulthood.

My hometown has changed so much in many ways and is just the same in many others. One street looks exactly the same and the next is completely foreign. I've seen my oldest friends, the ones I went to high school with, the ones that I still feel connected to. And it's like no time has passed for us, though we've all grown and changed. We are still the goofy, striving, kinda mature, kinda not people who never really fit in. And I miss them. I wish I could be here and be with them again.

I think that's why I don't love traveling all that much. I get attached to people and places and want to stay. The leave takings are hard on me.

And I do not remember the farm boys being this hot!  I swear, everywhere I've been, there have been these strapping, dead sexy men. All married at what, to me, seems like too young an age, but still dead sexy. This morning, my dad is having some landscaping done, and one of the guys is all scruffy haired and dark and his shamrock covered boxers are showing over his shorts and I am driven to impure thoughts.

Not that I'm not usually always driven to impure thoughts, but you know how it is.

I do get strangely emotional here. Part of it is the history I had. The store of experiences from the places long gone, Part of it is the changes in me, the wonder and the horror that has occurred since I left. Part of it is being here without my mum here.

My dad made a comment when he was driving me to meet someone, that mum was the glue that held us all together and now that she's gone, things have changed. Christmases are no longer centred around this house. Maybe we even all act differently. It's hard to say.

But I do have an affection for this place, and it's not just for the strapping farm boys. I feel kind of like no matter where I go, I'm still here, if only in part. Like I exist in many places at once and this is maybe where the anchor is. This is the spot that holds me in this universe, keeps me from drifting away.

Or maybe it's the foundation I'm built on, the bricks and mortar and concrete that forms the walls and floor of my basement. The upper floors get renovated and additions get built, but it's all built on the same thing.

Off to Saskatoon today, on the bus. Haven't ridden the bus in eons, pretty much since I was a kid. Looking forward to being under those big prairie skies again.