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Health & Fitness

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Have you ever been homesick?



I have.



When we first moved to the
Cleveland area from the mountains of North Carolina, I was a wreck. I experienced
what can only be described as complete and total culture shock. I wanted to
hear southern drawls. I wanted to see pickup trucks in the Walmart parking lot.
I wanted Bojangle’s chicken and Krispy Kreme donuts. I wanted my house. I
wanted my sunshine. I wanted my friends. I wanted my cousins. I wanted my mama.
I wanted my daddy.

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In short, I was absolutely miserable.



And I probably made everyone who
came near me pretty miserable too.

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Over a couple of hard years,
a ridiculously long house hunt, a new baby, many tears and some serious growing
up, I found out the hard way that life really is what you make it. I found a
quote by Robert Ingersoll that is now framed and on the wall in my kitchen:



“The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.”



Those two little sentences
spoke volumes to me, and I pulled myself together – for my kids’ sakes, for my
husband’s sake and for my own sake.



Now that we’ve moved into a
house that we love, made friends and “put down roots,” things are very
different. I still don’t love all of the snow, but there are lots of things
that I do love. I love the cooler summers, the extended springs and falls, the
great hot-tub weather, the Metroparks, the restaurants, the homeschooling
community, the libraries, the fantastic garage sales, the hospitals, the police
presence, the proximity to Playhouse Square, the zoo, the great museums… the list
goes on and on.

Once I gave it a chance, I found out that our city is truly a
great place to live. It even started to feel like home.



I love bluegrass music. I
love my cowboy hat and my Justin boots and I love red dirt and the rodeo. I
love Cheerwine and livermush and swimming at night and gravel roads and The
Blue Ridge Mountains. But oddly enough, now this southern girl loves East Coast
Custard, picking up Lake Erie beach glass, air shows, PerchFest, clambakes, Boo at the Zoo, Party in
the Park and Captains baseball games.



My kids are bi-lingual: they
can speak "Southern" and "Northern." These days when we go south to
visit, I’m torn between having two homes. When I say “I want to go home,” no
one knows whether I mean my hometown down south or the place I live now in Northeast Ohio.



Sometimes, I don’t even know
myself.  



I guess there’s no place like
home – unless you’re lucky enough to have two of them.






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