I'VE always considered myself quite an independent sort of girl - someone who can pretty much look after herself.
I hold down a job, I have a mortgage, I manage to pay the bills on time (well, most of the time). I even lived on my own for almost a year and coped with all those terrifying spider-removal moments that symbolise the move from adolescence to adulthood.
So why is it that this week I found myself calling my sister a "selfish cow" for refusing to make me a Ribena and having a tantrum over what we were watching on the telly?
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Because I'm spending the week in the family home, that's why.
What better way to spend five days holiday you forgot you had than at home with the family?
And so it is that I'm writing this column from my parents' home in North Wales.
But like every time I come home for more than a weekend, it doesn't take long before I slip back into the comfy routine of being a sullen teenager.
For three days I was the prodigal daughter and was indulged with takeaways, treats and magazines. And I was more than happy to reciprocate, doing the washing up, making tea, generally being helpful.
But it's as if sooner or later all this niceness gets just too much like hard work and the old annoyances come back.
I don't know what it is about coming home that does it, but it's almost like our living room is a time machine.
A few days spent in it and the 10 years I've been away from home melt away and all of a sudden I'm behaving like a brat.
The long-buried sister arguments come flooding back.
"You've been in my room while I was out!"
"Is that my new perfume you're wearing?"
"Stop being so SELFISH!"
All of a sudden I'm back to being locked in moody interchanges with my parents: grunting at them when they ask me to turn the telly down, moaning when it's suggested I get out of bed before midday.
It's as though nothing has changed from when I was a teenager.
But it's not only the bad parts of family life you forget when you live away. It's also the good.
My dad's hilarious habit of getting names wrong for a start.
"Do you like my new top?" he asked me. "It's from Mataland."
And last night me and my sister laughed so hard we almost cried when he asked whether we thought someone off the telly "had fish fillets in" her bra (he meant chicken fillets).
I suppose the truth is, this is what family life is all about. It's not about being extra nice to each other all the time. It's about being normal and taking the good with the bad.
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