Today, Saturday, I stayed home doing chores while listening to my ipod, which is loaded with a pretty eclectic selection of music.  While I was folding clothes, a song came on, don’t remember the name, and I danced my butt off for a while to it.  Cynthia, my girlfriend, says that I do chores while dancing, this is true, and the reason why I am usually sweaty is due to my dancing and not the chore at hand.  Anyway, for some unknown reason, I started to think about my childhood in Ecuador with my aunts and cousins and I remembered going to the beach in the afternoons, coming back full of sand around my legs, and the smell of the sea on my skin, but above all, I remembered being very happy.  I miss my aunts dearly.  One of them, my aunt Maria, passed away in 2007 and even now while writing this I feel like crying.  My other aunt, mi mami Elvirita, she raised me that is why I call her mom, lives in Ecuador and usually comes back to the US once a year to visit family.  Now that I am an adult, all the memories I have of them I keep them close to my heart.  Ok, I miss my family, what can I say?

Then, I took a look at what I have now: my girlfriend and our dog, Alex.  They make me happy and they make me laugh sometimes so hard that my stomach hurts and I have tears running down my cheeks from pure delight.  My home as a child, and what made up my home, was in Ecuador, but that was so long ago.  Now, my home is here in the US and to be quite honest, I can’t complain.  Life is really good to me.  I’ll always treasure my memories from when I lived with my aunts, and now I am making new memories.  Dogs are supposed to live in the moment, and I do try my best to do the same, but sometimes I can’t help it and I remember things, but for the most part my memories bring me a lot of joy.