Living in a pole barn

I have these strong moments where I realize, or remember, that I can't go home. I realized this, really really realized it when I was home for Christmas this year. My grandfather, who lives with my parents, went off about gay marriage and how it's wrong according to the Bible, and how we need to do everything the Bible says (he ignores the tassels on coats law and loves shrimp, by the way), and "those people are corrupting the sanctity of marriage." He's 85. I'm told I have to love him even if his beliefs are different from mine, especially because he's old and Catholic, but that doesn't mean I should live with him.

Despite all this my parents still want me to come home. For real come home. Find a teaching job in my small home town, come home. I love my parents, even like them, a lot. I call home every day. But I can't live there, and I have trouble admitting that to them as well. My parents have resorted to bribing, however, and I'm not sure how to deal with that.

My younger sister lives in one of the barns on our property. She's not a cow; they turned the barn into an apartment. We have 5 acres, and on that 5 acres we have 2 barns, a garage, a car port, a farm house that is now a photography studio, and a prefab home. Oh, and an outhouse. It's a bit of a commune, in a good way. Back before I realized living at home was the worst idea ever, my parents talked about putting a pole barn out back and sectioning off a corner of it for an apartment for me. yay. Excuse the lowercase y; I lack the excitement and energy needed to hold down the shift key. I told my parents that I'd never forgive myself if they put in an apartment and then I got a job somewhere else, so they shouldn't do it. My dad said something about understanding.

Yesterday I made my daily call home and told my dad that another possible job fell through because the job no longer existed. A theatre company I really love and have connections with got smart and eliminated their tour manager position by making one of the touring actors also act as the manager. My dad was appropriately sympathetic. And then I said, "Dad, it's so warm today, it's making me homesick." My hometown is approximately 30 minutes from a beach and boardwalk, the first beach and boardwalk of many. So when it gets strangely warm in January and February, I'm usually in my car on my way to the boardwalk. All day yesterday I could smell the salt air, itching to see the ocean. My dad jumped on this like a piranha. "Well, you know, you could move home in May, get a teaching job to pay the bills, work on finding a good theatre job for the future while you pay off your student loans, and then that way you can go to the beach whenever you want!" I muttered something negative about living in a pole barn, and he said "hey, that apartment would be better than what your sister's got!"

I have got to find a good job.