You don’t know them, you might never meet them, but, well, you do know them.

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Actually, I know you from somewhere.

I might be biased, scratch that, I am biased. I’m in the middle of a home exchange. In fact, I’m so in the middle that I’m at their / our outdoor patio table working the corn on the cob on the bar-b-que and trying to get one of my boys to make guacamole (mostly so I can have some), I’ve had a glass of wine (or two),  and I feel like I belong here. I feel like it’s mine. Isn’t that funny? We’ve been here two days and it feels like two months, maybe even two years. Maybe it’s like dog years, it’s whatever it is times seven. Maybe those are home exchange years. The time / space continuum is altered and your life along with it.

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Do you ever have it where you love a thing and you do more of the thing and it makes you love it even more? Your passion for it becomes even deeper, your rationale is more justified, and you just know you’re right. In fact, you’re so right that you wonder what’s wrong with the rest of the country, the world, the population at large.

But then you think, “Wait a minute, maybe it’s a secret. Maybe it’s something so special that it hasn’t been discovered yet. Maybe we’re pioneers, maybe we should keep our mouths shut and enjoy it before the masses flow in and ruin it all.”

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We’re living other people’s lives. It’s not just their house, not just the four walls and a roof. Their spirits float around like the ghosts at the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. We’re touching their lives and they’re touching ours. We have some sort of connection, whether you want it or not. If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t be here, you’d be at the Marriott and I can pretty much guarantee you that the concierge, as much as he cares about the enjoyment factor of your evening, is not metaphysically connected to you.

There are things in the house that makes me feel like I know these people, maybe I’ve known them for a long time. In an oddly-not-so-strange way, we’ve known each other for years. I know, dear hotel dweller, this is hard to fathom. I have now only a few handfuls of home exchange under my belt, but I’m a hearty follower, maybe even a young leader. I’m getting ahead of myself. This mostly came about from the Mickey Mouse mugs in a row above the sink. I thought about them for some time (dear hotel inmate, this sort of time happens on home exchange) and I wondered how buying five Disney mugs would come about. I’m still not sure. But we still have another night. Maybe it will come to me. Something will.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]