True Life: I lived in a commune (well not really but sort of)

Post college was a very interesting time for me.  I was very lost and just kind of wandering around aimlessly trying to find my way.  Since I had decided not to attend seminary the fall after graduation I decided to apply for jobs and save money for a year.  Considering rural Arkansas (where I am from) is NOT the ideal job hunting ground I began applying in Jonesboro.  A town of around 90,000 people there should be numerous job opportunities and something should open up fairly quickly.  Hah. This scenario rarely plays out the way we want it to.  Finally in August I found a job at an OBGYN doctors office as the telephone operator.  With this new found job I obviously needed somewhere to live.  In comes the commune.  My friends Phillip and Lauren, whom I entered college with, had recently gotten married in the spring right after college graduation. They were living in Jonesboro and since we were really close they offered to let me stay with them until I found a place/roommate/something I could afford.  We heaved all of my stuff up the most narrow stairs ever and we joyfully lived the rest of the summer in that tiny 2 bedroom apartment where the heat could suffocate and the mosquito's annihilate.  We began discussing how we hated living in this box and how together and apart we could not afford anything larger or nicer.  Thus the brainchild of forming a "commune" was conceived.  We began searching for affordable houses that would rent to a bunch of recent college graduates that wanted to live together and to find potential roommates.  This search was full of big dreams and shady schemes.  We actually uncovered a Craig's List scam during this process and it was super creepy.  We finally convinced our friends Amanda and Jeff to sign on to this social experiment and after finding a 4 bedroom house that was actually really nice we got all set to move in.  The number 1 perk of living with married people is that they have all of this useful stuff that single peeps just do not own and they got it all free.  Super awesome.  After we move in and claim our perspective rooms the social experiment begins.  Of course we all had our place in the house and had quirks that defined us.  I am the definite night owl.  I could be randomly watching How I Met Your Mother at 2 am even though I had to go to work in the morning.  My clothes were always a mess in my room (which Phillip dubbed "the hurricane") and I cooked a lot of soups.  Lauren always made sure I was awake before leaving for her job.  I have a bad habit of not waking up to my alarm.  She always made yummy things and loved to experiment with baking healthy.  Phillip was never there the first half of our commune  life together.  With school and his jobs there was not a lot of time to be spent anywhere else.  The second half however was full of Chuck, Star Wars, any and every vampire movie, and Underworld...oh yeah I can't forget Fight Club.  Discussing theology, comic books, playing a lot of Sky Rim and Modern Warfare (I am impressed that I slept through all that gunfire). Phillip and Lauren were "the mom and dad" of the house.  Amanda and I were single buddies.  We tried to discover where people our age hung out int this town and still haven't succeeded.  Work stories were the best from her clinic and her ever present dilemma that her scrubs were too short.  Oh yeah and I cannot forget our still ongoing game of dibbs. By the way I still have dibbs on Zachary Levi.  And then there was Jeff. Jeff was literally rarely there.  I absolutely loved to bang on his door just to annoy him and make him pause his video game.  His stories of Hastings and his job there were NEVER dull.  The final member of the house was Phil and Lauren's great dane puppy Daisy.  Daisy was taller than me.  She was/is huge.  She wasso sweet and lovable and yet I saw her shred a $20 bill with her teeth one time.  She was insane.  Since she was bigger than us she liked to bully me and would literally slap me with her paws.  I truly miss that dog. Living in the commune (though a lot of people find it completely strange but I say don't judge till you have been there) was a great experience.  Living with my friends in one of the most transitional years of my life was SO helpful.  We were all finding our way, learning who we were outside of college, truly learning what we wanted to do when we grew up, and truly seeking God's will for our lives.  Those times together in that house will be with me forever.  They were and are my family in addition to my parents and I am thankful for that.