all dressed up and nowhere to go

I'm not exactly dressed up, per se, but I am still dressed and it's 1:43am and I can't sleep.

This is never a good thing.

Usually when I can't sleep, my thoughts turn to all things in the Vergangenheit - the past. Tonight it's the same - all the things I should have done or would have done had I not made x choice. Sometimes it's what would have happened had I not left England. Sometimes it's what would have happened had I not left Louisiana.

What would have happened had I not left Louisiana?

I came across an LSMSA alum's blog and one of the entries was
"That school ruined my relationship with my daughter"

Can't tell you how many times I've heard that in my head before. Leaving home is interesting - we talked about that in literature the other day. I feel as if I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to make a home outside of my parents' house and in doing so, I am essentially homeless. My parents now live in a swanky suburb (if those two can coexist) with their off-white kid-free household and they own a Dachsund. It's not the old house, the house I grew up in, with the pretty white colums and the fireplace in front of which many embarassing photos were made, usually involving big hair, and the back yard with the swing and the little patch of concrete with frog prints in it, and the hedges that never grew together in one spot because my friends and I walked through them every day to each other's houses. My mom is getting her CPA soon and I think my dad will retire, at which point they will leave house-not-home number 2 and probably move to Seattle. And then my dad will have tons of fodder for making fun of granola-eating liberals and their touchy-feely birkenstock-like ways. The brother will go to college somewhere, remain cooler than all of us, and he will probably stay in Louisiana for the rest of his life. He's a homebody like that.

What would have happened had I not left Louisiana. Probably would have gone to LSU, learned to speak Spanish instead of French, moved in with Casey, double majored in music and literature, gone to Spain for a semester, finished up at LSU and become a nail stylist.
Okay, not entirely plausible, but these are the things that run through my head late at night. How many Robert Frost moments does one have - what if I hadn't taken the road less traveled and had stayed close to home with my mother and my family and people who have the same accent that I do?

Going to try to sleep. Can't get Goethe out of my head.

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! dahin
Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.