I just finished reading Meghan Daum’s latest book Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House.  It is funny and poignant look at her efforts to find happiness through moving and decorating and renovating.  She moves from New York City, to Nebraska, to LA, back to Nebraska, and back to LA as she searches for a place to call home.  A lot of generation X-ers and others too have moved a lot, both as children and as adults.  I did a quick count of the houses I have lived in from birth onward and have come up with 22, and I am missing a few — even as I write I am still counting upwards.

This kind of rootlessness, restlessness and wanderlust that can be both exhilarating and deepening, as well as debilitating.

Meghan spent her early childhood in Austin (Keep Austin Wierd) and was sad to leave it for the suburban paradise of Ridgewood NJ.  My own wanderings touch upon hers here and there.  I grew up very near Ridgewood in Rockland County, NY — a suburb of New York City that manages to be both gritty and lovely at the same time. We both stopped of for years in New York City and then here I am in Austin.  She’s in LA.

Its a good book.  And she tells us what we all know, but it’s good to hear again:  it’s not about the perfect knob from Anthropologie or the perfect paint color;  home is where the heart is.