Five Things I Miss from Home

One of my sisters suggested I do some kind of a Top Ten List for year end.  Things that Surprised Me, Mistakes I Made, etc.  But I couldn’t thing of ten items in any one category.  Instead, I can think of a few items in several categories, so, for the first week of January, I thought I’d do a series of Top Five Lists, the first being things I miss from home. (Obviously, topping this list is family & friends – I miss you all very much. But let’s not get soppy here.)

I miss:

1. Certain foods (some examples):
   • Ginger Ale is the only soft drink I like.  Here it’s hard to find (ginger beer is not the same), and only comes in large bottles. And while I do like it, I don’t drink a lot each day.  So about half the bottle goes flat which feels wasteful, so I rarely buy it.
   • Rice Vinegar.  I cook a lot with rice vinegar.  They have it here, but it is in tiny bottles and costs almost twice what it does at home.
   • Miss Vickie’s Spicy Dill Pickle Chips. ‘Nuff said.
2. Snow.  By February, I am usually pretty fed up with snow shovelling.  But other than that (and the dangers of ice lurking under the snow when we’re walking), I love the way snow looks, sounds, smells.  Here, we can expect two or three dustings of snow over the winter, and it is not likely to stick for more than a couple of days. In fact, I can tell I am going to miss having four seasons (there are three here: cold & rainy, cool & rainy, cool & pleasant).
3. My shower.  I can’t believe I’m saying that, as my shower at home is not very big, and for someone my height the showerhead is not the most convenient. But I do miss the water pressure, a lot.  (And having a bathroom that opens directly into my bedroom, not into the hall by the kitchen.)
4. My garden.  At this time of year, my thoughts usually turn to planning the spring gardening: I dig out my garden books, I start researching online, I visit Terra Nursery (mostly just for the splashes of colour & the smell of soil).  Here I keep looking out the window and thinking certain plants would look good in certain places in the yard.  Then I think, “What are you doing? You are here for only two years (or maybe only one if owners decide to sell); you are not putting in a vegetable plot.  Or annual beds.”
5. My neighbourhood. This is a very nice neighbourhood, with families, dog owners, a couple of schools, and so on.  There’s lots of foot traffic along the street. But my house is designed such that the bedrooms are facing the road, and the living room faces the back garden.  Don’t get me wrong – I see why the original owners did this.  The kitchen & the living room both have huge picture windows from which I can see the hills behind town, a few farm fields, sometimes sheep, and often the most spectacular weather displays (like today’s horizontal rain); as well as flock upon flock of birds (I am learning a lot of new types of birds).  But I miss sitting in my front window and seeing people go by, kids playing in the street, dog walkers stopping to wave at Scout and me.

Edit: I just thought of a sixth one: Appliances. I just went through to the kitchen and realised I miss: my induction stove, my roomy fridge (but not the freezer – I like this style better), my quiet washing machine & dryer (this washing machine would wake the dead), my Kitchen Aid food processor, my Le Creuset pots, my Kobenstyle pot, and my dishwasher that actually fits the dishes (the dinner plates in Scotland are bigger than the bottom rack of the dishwasher – granted, I am basing that on a sample-size of two (my uncle’s and here), so that may not be the norm).