Ummm....hi

So, what's going on? Just a little too much. There's the new house that needs a bottomless amount of attention. Still unpacking, still finding places for stuff, still fixing things, still needing to buy furniture and rugs and a 3-page list of other items. It seems like every little thing needs to be thought through, just like when one starts a new job and every task that in a year's time will be second nature is for the moment a frustrating process of looking up information, asking for help, sorting through documents, and making mistakes. What do we do about recycling? How do we change the filter on the furnace? Should we keep the mops here, or here, or here? What happens if I push this button on the oven? I know we have lightbulbs somewhere, where are they? How would it look if we moved the phone stand over there? What color rug should we get in here? Just, so many discussions and decisions and things to be "looked into" or "figured out". On top of that, there has been drama at Dave's workplace that's set askew our still-shaky sense of security. And I'm learning that BIG things are sometimes too big for blog topics. But here are some little things I can share!

We set up our first Christmas tree this weekend. And I had a sublime moment on Sunday night as I curled up in our recliner, cozy under a thick green fleece blanket, in full view of the lit tree, drinking a glass of egg nog and reading Nigella Lawson's new Christmas cookbook. Very nice indeed!

Over the weekend I seem to have forgotten ALL my various work and Internet passwords. In fact, I had to reset my password just to post to this blog.

I washed dishes in our dishwasher this weekend! And as a result felt somewhat left out. Cheated. There's something satisfying and zen-peaceful about washing dishes, and I think I'll probably continue washing dishes by hand except when there's quite a lot of them or they're particularly icky.

Shopping the sales of Black Friday was a terrifying experience, and I won't be making that mistake again. Except that I did get a number of things we needed for pretty decent prices. But still. Not again. $10 off a blender just isn't worth it.

I find it odd that I'm not afraid of my basement. It's a scary 116-year old basement, with dangerous and uneven stairs, low ceiling, multiple doors behind which anyone could be waiting to attack, and going down into it feels remarkably like walking into an open grave (seriously...it's exactly grave-shaped), and yet this is the only basement I've ever been in that hasn't made me want to finish my business and hurry upstairs with borderline panic. Curious. I just realized that this weekend when I was humming and puttering around the basement -- at night, no less!

Our house looks awfully cute with a wreath on the door!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and can enjoy pre-Christmas!

Nesting

Things are heating up, as we endeavor to make Thomasina (our new house) a home.

She got a fresh coat of paint, turning her (in just one sunny Saturday) from a frousy, fussy stripe-wearing matron into a witty attention-grabbing sophisticate. Or, at least I like to think so. Judge for yourself:

And now there's also furniture, finally purchased after a full-month of measuring and comparison shopping. The furniture is assembled and fits Thomasina's new look. We seem to be going for a slightly bohemian look but with the organic symmetry of Arts and Crafts style. A place where perhaps Christina Rossetti might have felt at home, except in this case with television and multiple bathrooms.

And now Saturday we usher in the remainder of our dusty and confused belongings. They're not exactly being as thoughtfully packed as I hoped, and are instead being dragged out unprotected by tissue paper or bubble wrap, heaped together in laundry bins and trash bags, a confusion of things we forgot we even owned. The impending move apparently freaked our DVD player so much it simply quit working, choosing death over the chaos of a new home. The TV is threatening to follow suit. However it happens, we're moving as much as we can on Saturday.

It has been nice living with less at the house. There are a few things I'm learning we can do without...quite easily. For instance, since we don't yet have a TV at the new house, we've now gone without it for about 2 weeks. Actually, I do miss that a little. Especially watching movies. But we don't really need it. Same with the Internet and our land-line phone. I only have maybe 1/4 of my clothes and shoes at the house, and turns out that's actually about all I need. It gets boring after a while, but that's it.

On the flip side, we already managed to bring all our books to the house...and while unpacking them yesterday I discovered that Thomasina hasn't really felt like a home until that moment. Could we do without our books? Of course. But what, really, is a home without them? I unpacked those books with a contented sigh, just as I would after a feast of comfort food.

And one of the strangest aspects of all this is the ambiguity with which I've been viewing the home we're leaving. For so long all I could focus on is getting out of that little apartment, away from the rude neigbors, the sound of other peoples' stereos and arguments, the smell of other peoples' dinners, the space that never could contain all we needed and wanted to do with our lives. But now that I'm packing it all up I feel a real sense of loss. I miss always being so close to Dave. In the apartment, physically we could never be further than a room away; now, an entire floor can separate us. I remember not just the bad times we've had while in the apartment, but the many, many good times...reading Rebecca on the couch, glancing out the window while the snow falls quietly over the trees and electrical wires of the alley. How our little space shone at Christmas because our decorations filled it to the brim. They won't make much of a dent at the new house. I even kind of miss the noises and smells and the buzzing of lives going on just outside our walls. I suppose it's because we were caretakers for the building. I knew the place like most tenants wouldn't, and feel a sense of responsibility connected to it. While it was a hard place in which to live, it also served as a cradle for our goals and dreams. I owe it my thanks, and it deserves the dignity of a proper good-bye. After removing the last of our belongings and cleaning it for the last time, I plan to spend a private moment there before turning over the keys. I hope it's refinished and polished to a gleam...and eventually filled with another newlywed couple excited about their future.