A few weeks ago, a storm blew through the North Shore—the kind of storm that makes you feel unsafe to be driving, because of all the hundred-year-old trees that have started falling into the road. Our house lost power, as it is wont to do whenever the wind starts whipping. As the sun inched westward, its internal temperature climbed inevitably toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a child of divorce, I will say that this was pretty much the first time that I was thankful to have two houses (although the double Christmas thing hadn’t been too awful). My father had recently moved to a new city; since his electricity remained uncompromised and the renters hadn’t quite taken over yet, we decided to move in temporarily. It was Ted and Koko and I, an air mattress, and my laptop paired with one perfect DVD—Ever After, obviously. Also, a bottle of bourbon. We camped out in the living room, right by the only window air conditioning unit that was left.

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I haven’t seen Failure to Launch, but I’m going to hazard a guess about how the film portrays Matthew McConaughey, whose character is thirtysomething and still living with his parents. He’s probably unambitious, career-wise and otherwise. He’s probably not interested in carrying on a long-term relationship, or taking care of anything that requires caretaking. He probably plays a lot of video games—am I on the right track?

The fact is, there’s a lot of cultural baggage that comes with moving back in with your parents. (That movie I was just talking about? Look at its title: failure is the first word. Failure!) So when I moved back in with my mom two months ago—and brought Ted with me!—I was trying to resist ascribing the adjective to our own situation. We’ve successfully held full-time jobs and become financially independent, but we still needed a temporary safety net after moving cross-country. So I stepped back through the doors of my old house, and tried not to wince while doing it.

But you know what? Even though I can’t wait till we get our own place in the city, it’s been really nice here. And I’m not ashamed to admit that.

My mom buys fresh flowers every week to brighten up our white kitchen table. She has coached both Ted and myself through job-search woes and general transition-related malaise, and celebrated my job-search victory as if it were her own. She has oh-so-graciously let Koko into her home, despite a lifelong fear of cats. When she sensed that I couldn’t afford to celebrate Ted’s birthday during my spell of unemployment, she treated us to a day out in the city so we could feast on iconic Chicago foods: Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, Polish sausages, slices of fruit pie from Hoosier Mama, and pierogi and cabbage soup in the Ukranian Village. At home, she makes a roast chicken every week for all of us to feast on. And she tells everyone she knows how excited she is that we’re here.

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A few weeks ago, I flew home for a fleeting 28 hours. It was all I could spare without using a vacation day, and believe me when I say: it was not enough Chicago.

No, it wasn’t enough Chicago at all. But it was just enough time to make me remember why I missed the place.

28 hours was enough time to make a post-flight stopover in Park Ridge for diner grub at the Pickwick Restaurant. It was enough time to hug Lily and Archie, who I’d picked out as kittens so many years ago. It was enough time to traipse through Chicago’s neighborhoods with my dad, and enough time to visualize myself living in the Wicker Park apartment building surrounded by wildflowers. I had enough time to harass my little brother as we tooled around in the car together, and enough time to vent to my mother about life as an adult. 28 hours was enough to allow me one peaceful visit to the lakefront and bask in the almost Caribbean blue of the water. And it was enough time to sit on the porch under an eerie, post-storm sky, eating Paul Prudhomme’s grilled chicken and drinking in my last few hours there.

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Ask a little less of yourself. When was the last time someone said that to you? Because I have the sneaking suspicion that the minute I learned how to crawl, society started wagering about when I’d get on my feet and walk already. Whenever I accomplished something big, it was celebrated sincerely, and then assumed I’d wake up the next morning to try for something bigger. And so on and so forth, until I’d adopted the treadmill as my own, as an intrinsic thing I couldn’t shake, that would periodically drive me nuts and require Jersey Shore marathons and copious amounts of brownies to face the next expectation I thought I had to live up to.

Whew. Is it just me? I certainly hope so. I hope somebody told you, preferably early on, that there’s another way. That you’d be okay if you stopped to enjoy the scenic overlook for awhile before driving single-mindedly on to the next landmark. That it’s normal to tread water every once in awhile, saving your strength for the next push forward. It’s been a realization I’ve come to naturally with age—that is, with experience and perspective. Still, I hope your parents, teachers and mentors gave you a knowing pat on the head whenever you got that crazed look in your eyes and said “Shhh. Just relax.”

After a tiring few weeks, that little voice in my head started telling me the exact same thing. So last weekend, I made no plans. I soaked in a tub full of lavender Epsom salts and finally read the last chapter of that book I’d been working on. I watched entirely too much True Blood—plus a particularly bad Lifetime movie about a haunted sorority—and didn’t even let myself feel like a waste of space. I went on a bike ride at sunset just to feel the wind whooshing in my ears, then let the mosquitoes chase me back home. I even managed to clean my apartment, but only because it felt like active meditation, especially with something on the record player and the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap hanging in the air.

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I’ve become very familiar with the round-trip flight from Washington to Chicago. I can tell you how to get to the Reagan National, Dulles, or BWI airports using public transportation, and once there, I barely have to look at the overhead signs to steer myself toward the correct ticket counter. The flight itself? Similarly predictable, with the patchwork of dull green and brown cropland stretching out flatly as far as the eye can see. On such a trip, getting a window seat isn’t the trophy it used to be, back when I was a wide-eyed kid.

But this weekend, I was reminded that not all airplane rides are simply ways to get from Point A to Point B. Soon after my connection flight left Milwaukee, the pilot began to narrate our journey excitedly: “Folks, off to your right is Denver, and we’re nearing Aspen and Telluride! You’ll see the land get hillier as we head into the Rocky Mountains.” Sure enough, the peaks soon appeared in stark relief, snowcapped and majestic. “There’s Monument Valley,” he narrated. “And we’re coming up on the Grand Canyon—you’ll see the Colorado River’s pretty muddy this time of year.” He couldn’t even help himself from pointing out Las Vegas as we pulled closer to southern California.

As a pilot, I’m sure he’d passed over the same scenery too many times to count. But since a cross-country flight is such an unsubtle reminder of America’s varied beauty, I can’t imagine these views would ever get old, either.

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Since Valentine’s Day is traditionally a recognition of romantic love, many people rightfully have strong feelings about the day, based on whether they’re single or coupled. But I enjoy thinking back to my elementary school days, when the holiday recognized platonic affection too. Surely you remember buying little valentines for everyone in your class, and receiving about twenty-five others in return? I do. Back then, Valentine’s Day was a pure, sweet, childlike celebration of love — and it needn’t have to change as you grow older. This year, even as I celebrated with my boyfriend, I made sure to recognize all the other kinds of love present in my life.

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Visiting animal shelters can be dangerous.

I’m not measuring danger in accidental flea infestations or bitten fingers, since in my experience, the critters at my local shelters have always been clean, laid-back, and polite. No, I’m talking about the danger of falling in love there — the kind of love that leaves you imagining your new friend curled up on the sunny bed in your apartment, or sprawling warmly on your lap during a lazy Sunday of reading.

It’s happened to me before, when as an eleven-year-old I refused to leave one without the scrawny calico kitten mewing plaintively in my arms. So when my boyfriend suggested last weekend that we go to a nearby shelter “just to look,” I knew what I was getting myself into.

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