One of the things I butt up against every time we move is my own use of defense mechanisms. When I'm facing something challenging and potentially painful, I automatically do what I can to protect myself. Unfortunately, as is often the case, while a defense mechanism may protect me from pain, it also keeps me from experiencing true joy.

Growing up the way my sisters and I did, we learned early on that the only constants in our lives were each other, and we made our sisterhood count.

The second bathroom didn't get cleaned today. All the cleaning supplies are sitting on the sink waiting for me, and there's an empty spot on my To Do list that is just begging for a check mark. This would bother me except I'm too tired to drag myself off the couch and go back upstairs to clean.

That, and I have the hiccups, and hiccups are the worst.

When we enter into seasons of change in our life (whether by choice or by chance), there will be pain--most if it will be worse than bee stings--because it is impossible to go through the between without some form of discomfort.

I'm going to explore my future here as a professional broken record. Bear with me.

I've been raiding our local library, and this week enjoyed Kate DiCamillo's Flora & Ulysses. It was a sweet and quirky book, and it got me thinking more about home…and what home means, especially when we're between places and relationships and jobs.

There are two kinds of people in this world: the kind who leave and the kind who get left.

Sometimes life is just very full. And we need to leave a little space around the edges to breathe.

Every place we go, every season of life that we are in, there are good things and bad. Everyone knows this. And everyone knows that sometimes it's the littlest things that make the biggest difference.

There is an accumulation of tastes and scents that make a home. What those tastes and scents are may not be something that you can necessarily predict or choose.

The family we have now, is not the family we left Oklahoma with. This is the nature of change. To state the obvious: it changes you.

It's been one of those days.

Correction. It is one of those days.

Here's the deal with making friends: you kind of have to get involved in things to meet people (which is, incidentally, necessary in order to make friends).

Our not-so-little yellow house on the hill facing the sea is surrounded by its own ocean of mist right now, and I'm sitting with my boots propped up on the coffee table thinking about nostalgia and white space and moving boxes and trying to decide what of the many things floating around my head I really want to write about tonight.