Home is Wherever I'm with You

By Julie Baldwin

It's a funny topic Mary and Joy write about - home. I currently live 13 hours away from home - or is it my home town? Can one have multiple homes? I hope so.

My husband and I have been married for almost 16 months. The first six months, we continued to live apart (except on weekends) while he finished medical school in Louisville and I continued working in Cincinnati. Then, in June, we moved South to New Orleans. We had visitors three months later when our daughter was born, and then two home visits for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then a long drive back South, where we are staying till our move to Pennsylvania in June for residency (for three years!).

Almost 75 percent of Americans move every five years; that's about 40 million Americans per anum. I lived in three houses growing up; I'll have lived in three different places by my second wedding anniversary.

I grew up thinking I'd go to college, maybe work/live in Washington, D.C. for a few years, and then live the remainder of my days in Cincinnati. Now the possibility of never returning to my home town is just as possible as returning. My husband's family is much more transient, so he's far more open to moving where the weather suits him. I'd like to be close to family and friends, at least reasonably. I'll get my way in Pennsylvania.

It's time for me to re-evaluate what "home" means, and how I can best cultivate a lovely one for my husband, our baby daughter, and myself.

The cheapskate-beginner's guide to non-committally dabbling in candle-making

By Mary C. Tillotson

It all started early in the week when my husband kindly asked me to put away some things I'd left strewn around the office.

I looked at my eclectic shoeboxes labeled beads+string and dremel+woodburner and so forth until my eyes fell on a navy blue box -- Florsheim, apparently courtesy of someone else years ago. I'd been too ashamed to label this one: inside were four jars with the last bits of scented candle in the bottom. The two largest jars I'd been lugging around since (*blush*) college, and the medium-sized ones since the year after.

I am a closet packrat, and all I can say in my defense is that when I married my husband, he owned -- meaning, had not thrown away on purpose -- more than one empty soap squirter. I mean the kind you can buy full of liquid soap for 99 cents.

I realize this is not much of a defense. But these candles had lovely scents, and it would be a snap to combine the last bits and make a new (smaller) candle. Plus, those jars with the gasket-lids are just so handy. I mean, you could clean them out and fill them with Christmas candy and give them as gifts!

Feeling competent and confident from something I'd just finished, and embarrassed at the realization that I still hadn't made the candles (or the Christmas candy, for that matter), I announced to my husband that I was hereby going to make candles this weekend, or I was going to throw the jars away.

mmmm...flowers

And scented candles, too, because without fragrance, what's the point of a candle?

The candles were three different types of floral, and I thought they'd blend well, but I would need to add some scented wax to what I already had.

Unfortunately, nobody sells floral fragrances this time of year. (Aside: candles with baked-goods or fruit fragrances generally smell like tween girl body wash; as for the rest of what's on the shelves this month, what does "Tis The Season" or "Distant Cabin" even smell like?)

I also hadn't realized that there are about 18 different kinds of candle wax and 16 different kinds of wicks, or remembered that in the world of crafts, anything can be really really complicated and expensive if you let it.