I am currently residing at my parents house in Virginia for three weeks and have survived my first week of Southern living…barely. My mom is currently in the hospital recovering from planned open heart surgery to repair damage (they suspect) that was from an unchecked bought of Rheumatic fever when she was younger. (Yes, let’s just add to the mounting list of things that make me resent my late drug addicted grandmother, and grandfather that abandoned them all when my mom was in grade-school. Really, I’m not bitter….)

Nonetheless, this trip has been made possible by the fact my summer will consist of mostly graphic design work and writing in preparation for the upcoming school year. Work projects that need to be done alone, and God knows, projects that are done better when you don’t have a soundtrack of baroque trumpet music wafting down a hallway in an empty 100 year old building.  Isn’t the Ohio Renaissance Faire hiring?

So, the last time I spent this length of time here was about five years ago when I was considering moving to D.C. before I realized I didn’t want to spend most of my waking hours stuck in my car in traffic. Anyone who does not understand the concept of road rage should just take a little jaunt around the D.C. innerbelt at 5pm on a Wednesday evening. You will be searching for the nearest bridge with scalable walls within 45 minutes.  Needless to say, I was back in Cleveland 4 months after that little experiment.

I decided to embrace this time as a relaxing spa-like experience free from late nights, temptation and unmentionable bad things that are no-doubt hacking away at my life expectancy rate. However, after an emotional day I broke down and bought a 6 pack of beer last night and scoured the freezer case at the Fredericksburg market for pierogies.  (Just in case you are wondering -  no, you cannot find pierogies in Fredericksburg, Virginia, not even the shitty freezer kind.)  I wasn’t really hungry, I just sought some kind of comfort in knowing that the pierogies were there. This is when I realized after years of transient living, Cleveland finally emerged as the true victor in the place that I call home. I may carry a slight vocal lilt of someone living south of the Mason Dixon, but my heart burns like a river for the land of Cleve.