This post was supposed to be about how weird it is to come home for the first time after you’ve moved clear across the country.

I was going to start with my various anxieties around all the awkward things that were sure to happen:

• I’d have to sleep on the trundle bed in my sister’s room and we’d fight about when to turn the reading light out and who’s the louder sleeper

• Relatives at the Thanksgiving Day table would make like working in L.A. is akin to life on a Russian space station – “what do you all eat there?” and “how are you finding breathing the air?” and “are people willing to make friends or is it really just every man for himself?”

• Life would have gone on among the family and friends I left so that every piece of gossip was about new people with new problems that I didn’t know how to properly judge.

• I’d be absolutely, totally, and completely freezing the entire time and then complain about it like some jerk who moved to L.A. two plus months ago and forgets what winter was like for the 26 plus years she lived on the East coast.

In fact – part of the reason it took me so long to make this move West is because of this very scenario – the first homecoming. Yes, the moving 3,000 miles away to a place with actors and cars was terrifying, but it was as much the idea of change and distance and discomfort coming back to my place of total comfort that scared me out of taking the plunge.

There is nothing as jarring as feeling like a stranger in the place you once felt most safe/calm/happy/known – that moment of realizing, “this isn’t where I go anymore.”

It was that same sentiment that had me so nervous to make the first visit back to my Alma mater after graduation – the feeling that this place did not freeze in time like I’d hoped and, instead, only got better after I left. That sense of looking around and thinking – I’m never going to fit back in and, more devastatingly, this place wouldn’t welcome me if I tried.

It’s like that scene in Fiddler on the Roof where defiant daughter number two (the one Blossom would play in the re-make) leaves the village and you think Tevia is going to say something like, “Blossom, you always have a home here” but instead he says something like, “TRADITION!!!” then turns his back while it cuts to a really intense musical interlude – the kind that says both yes, that’s really it and also, but keep watching because it just gets crazier.

Both of my parents could sing you every line of that movie, but that’s not how my exodus from the home played out. In defense of…Seidle was it?…I talk to them three to fives times a week, Skype with them once every other, and write this blog about every detail of my life experience, keeping them (and all the relatives at the Thanksgiving table) pretty up to speed.

• It isn’t really that cold in New Jersey right now, but when I felt a chill I put on a jacket and scarf like I did every other time I was cold every year for the 26 previous.

• Dani was kind of excited to play sleepover in her room, and turns out both of us are really quiet sleepers. She was kind of freaked out that I sleep in a sort of blanket cocoon all the way under the covers, but she got over it.

• People asked me sensible questions about life in L.A., and I responded with sensible answers. It was the first time I’d had to talk about the experience in quite so much detail so, like any time you’re forced to talk about your life, I learned as much about it as they did.

• All the gossip was about the same ten to twelve people it’s always been about, so I just threw the judgment track on autopilot and kept up just fine.

• Yes, my mom was sure to reference any and all individuals (known or read about) who have had any ounce of success in the New York entertainment industry since I left (see, so-and-so is making it just fine in New York); and my sisters still at home worked in digs about my waltzing in on Thanksgiving morning to open the wine and enjoy their hard work; and it was a little weird to think that this is how my holidays will be for the foreseeable future…

But it wasn’t at all unlike coming back from my first semester at college. I was excited to talk about my new life, and people were excited to hear about my new life, and it all felt like one of those indie films where the black sheep of the family comes home from some extended European “vacation” except I didn’t get anything pierced, no one in my family has a drinking problem, and the soundtrack to our Thanksgiving is less angsty rock and more James Taylor and friends.

In fact, nothing about my move so far would make a very good movie. I think there was a time when I would have thought that was a bad thing – not enough drama! not enough crazy! not enough anxiety!!

Luckily that time has passed and with it any thought that this place will ever feel like anything but home.