Same but different

I've been naughty, not posting anything for a while. In my defense I've been busy unpacking my life and finding myself again at home. Isn't it funny how when you leave a place for long enough, even your home, it somehow becomes less comfortable? Somehow, even having come home regularly over the past few years, I still find this place less familiar, less known, less mine. Everything is lived in in a different way to what it was when I was here. The glasses are somewhere new, the lounges are different, I even find myself fumbling for the light switch in the dark - I never had that problem when I used to live here. Everything's so similar yet completely unfamiliar.
While I've been learning my surroundings again I've noticed they've been learning me as well. If I glance at my father while I'm crocheting, I find him gazing back with a slightly bemused grin and a quip about my granny ways. My mother wanders from room to room while I cook dinner, desperately trying to figure out what to do now she's got an hour free each night. Even my poor old dog seems somewhat shaken by my return, desperate for attention every second. I think maybe she's getting as much as she can now in case I desert her again.
As we all start to piece together an existance around each other again, the household seems to slowly be gaining some belonging again. My new room (once my brother's because the eldest gets the biggest one) is starting to exist as a 'mine' rather than a 'his', I can reach for a glass without having to search the whole kitchen, and I'm starting to sleep through the local dog-howl chorus at 3am. But even with all this there's something telling me I'll always be missing that familiarity I had when I was here before, you can never really go back can you? I guess that's good though, it stops me from getting too comfortable. Although I think the matress I'm sleeping on might just be doing that.
Tomorrow's goals: update blog, finish unpacking, put my bed together, find somewhere to dump the 30 year-old (yes really) mattress I'm currently sleeping on.