Coming home.

You know that old cliche of parents turning their child's room into a gym the second they move out? Well, my parents have apparently decided that when I moved out in May I moved out for good and wasted no time turning my bedroom into a storage locker.

When I came home for a week (cut to two and a half days) at the end of August, I could only open my bedroom door and peer inside at the cornicopia of stuff that was piled floor-to-ceiling in my formerly completely clean room (cleaned in May, at my mother's request, no less.)

Now I am home for the first weekend since then, a visit that my mom assured me would come with a relatively junk free bedroom, I was greeted by a clean bed and a narrow path to it. The piles of boxes and tupperware containers are still immensely high.

Whatever happened to empty nest syndrome? Whatever happened to the loving parents to erect a shrine to their once beloved daughter in hopes that she will return home once? Is this my parents' subtle way of telling me that once I graduate, job or not, I will not be moving back home? Perhaps they're just trying to make my visits home less and less comfortable. (Last time I was here I slept in my sister's room. It wasn't bad though; she's got a really nice TV.)

Maybe this is a sign that I need to make my own home in Toronto more permanent. Maybe now I'll get a cat. I relented before because they scare my mom.

Well you know what scares me, mom? The idea of mammoth crates crushing me while I sleep.

Now, the next order of business: what will I name the cat?