A comfortable sort of find

I'd been checking Craigslist and generally keeping my ear to the ground hoping that I could find a decent piano for sale. Even the used ones at the piano dealer were more than Allen and I could comfortably afford for a few months, and my sister in law had warned me that good pianos are pricy. But Monday night I was poking around craigslist and saw a pretty nice looking piano for sale in a nearby upscale part of town (where all the "old money" lives). Since the price was nearly a third what we could expect to pay elsewhere Allen agreed that we could go look at it Tuesday. Now I haven't touched a piano in probably seven or eight years, but I could tell it was reasonably in tune, the pedals worked, and the key action wasn't too bad. We also talked them down another fifty dollars :) Then we had to figure out how to get it home. Fortunately my sainted brother in law agreed to come help us. The three of us managed to get it loaded into the back of his truck (I still think it would have fit in our car) and safely unloaded at our place. It's now standing in the den against the very wall I had designated for it some months ago with a smattering of old music books scattered around it. I've already been to the music store to pick up a couple books for myself and have started working away at a favorite hymn "For The Beauty Of The Earth." I'd really forgotten how addicting piano is. Every fifth note I'm having to stop and count and figure out where my fingers go, but it's such incredibly satisfactory work. With my camera and my piano and my new sketch book I'm remembering what it's like to be really creative again. It's like opening a box and discovering a favorite old sweater, your good day sweater that meant new books and long hikes and a crisp wind rifling your bangs, that had been laid away one spring long ago and feeling, in retrospect, that somehow each autumn in the intervening years must have been tinged with an unidentified nostalgia. Something hidden that you never knew you were missing and yet suddenly, inexplicably is back, and it's good.

And we're here

Last Sunday Allen and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary and simultaneously moved back into our house (actually we just drove in from our trip to Tennessee - I'd finished the moving in the week before while Allen was out of town). It's so very good to be home. Admittedly home still involves large numbers of boxes and not knowing where my cup measures are, but it's still home. The funny part is that it didn't feel like hope until Allen and I shoved a bookcase in the den nook. I don't even have any books on my bookcase - it just feels better having it there with my papasan chair pulled up beside it ready for my next jaunt through Shakespeare. It's a familiar little corner in what's still a rather unfamiliar home. I think it was in Grace Livingston Hill's Cloudy Jewel where she described the whirlwind process of buying a house and all the furnishings for it and finally settling "to get acquainted with their tables and chairs." That pretty well sums it up. It's odd to look around and realize that at least two thirds of our furniture we didn't own before we bought our house. We've gone from a little two bedroom beige apartment to a five bedroom house full of colors, our single couch has grown to two and a loveseat, and our dining room can sit eight comfortably. It's quite a change.

Speaking of which, I'm eternally grateful for second hard furniture. Fortunately I like fairly simple styles, because we couldn't afford half of this at full retail price. In fact, almost everything we bought was on sale or price matched. Aside from appliances and building materials, our new couches are the only truly new items we bought, and they were a last minute find at a store going out of business that very day. Everything else came from Craigslist, Ebay, and second hand stores. It takes time though. I looked around for maybe five months before we ordered our dining room chandelier. That meant sifting through literally tens of thousands of light fixture on craiglist, ebay, home depot, and etsy in addition to perusing online retailers and various home decor stores like West Elm and Ethan Allen. But when I clicked the "buy it now" button last night I was pretty confident that we were getting a good product at a good price. We saved at least $100 off retail and at least $300 by finding a chandelier we liked better than the pricier Ethan Allen one we'd both liked previously. Not a bad reward when you realize that the difference I saved would have paid for the easy chairs in my den. Even though I have moments where I wish I could just place an order and get it all done, I'm pretty proud at what I've been able to pull together. I don't know that any of my deals have been worth of the bargain hunter's Olympics, but they've been good enough for us.

Although sometimes I wonder why I've moved on to furniture when my kitchen still needs it's final touch up painting. And my dry goods need putting away. Also, where are my measuring cups? And while I ponder these questions a few more pressing ones come to mind - like what native flowering tree am I going to plant beside my front driveway and is it available at my local nursery? Yep, homemaker's ADHD setting in here. Too many projects and not enough time/energy/brain cells to go around. We're working on that too though :) For now we're just glad to be in our own home with our own fridge and our own pantry of spices and our own chairs. And I'm super glad we've got a gas range. It means I get to officially play with fire as part of my housewifely duties. That's awesome!

Antidote

For anyone who might be overly concerned about the post below let me hasten to assure everyone that an evening spent eating grilled cheese sandwiches, drinking limoncello, and watching my favorite Marx brother movie with Allen has restored me to semi-sanity. Apparently laughter is the best medicine.

(Booze doesn't hurt though.)