Well that's over!

Well one day perhaps I'll be a proper blogger and not go completely underground at every single opportunity, but then again maybe one day I'll have my thyroid in order and won't be moving cross country at Christmas :) We are moved though - if only in the sense of having all our stuff on the same side of the country as ourselves. My mother-in-law's spare bedroom is full to bursting with books, clothes, Christmas presents, and the assembled detritus of two people living in approximately 100 square feet (which is to say that we're trying to not have our things spread out over too much of their house). Speaking of which, we are in the offer/counter-offer process of buying a house. It's a little more of a fixer-upper than we originally planned on buying, but it's also in a great location and offers the chance for us to really design and create a space suitable for having the whole family over and (Lord willing) raise a few kids. Right now I'm knee deep in kitchen design - my pinterest boards are full of back splashes, counter tops, and various design elements. My father-in-law is proving immensely helpful in being able to talk us through parts of this process. As a homebuilder/remodeler he has the expertise (and the contacts) to help us make smart decisions. And that's been a lot of our Christmas right there. We looked at houses, visited family (including a flying trip up to Indiana), went to a wedding, and tried with varying levels of success to keep it all together. In retrospect Allen and I didn't pull together as well as we should have, but then again after 5 years of marriage we're finding our relationship growing out of old patterns set during my pre-counseling days and finding our balance as somewhat more mature and emotionally stable people isn't as easy as you'd think given the above description. And that was Christmas basically - not exactly bad but not really an experience I'd like to repeat. Our second day driving cross country was actually one of the least stressful days of our entire Christmas. Drive, nap, read, listen to Christmas music, repeat. One set task to accomplish and everything needful for said task right in front of you. Not at all like the pandora's grocery list I brought out after we arrived in Birmingham!

bone tired

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm still packing. We leave Santa Clara in about 15 hours.

That is all.



(It's times like these I wish I was about 55 with the experience to be supremely competent and serene. I'd take the darn wrinkles if only I could be asleep right now.)

teddy bears and puppy dogs

I must admit that I have what could actually be an embarrassing number of dolls and stuffed animals. There are my American Girl dolls (Kirsten and another doll that in a fit of misguided mothering I named "Krishta); there's my "no seriously she's old enough to be a legitimate childhood keepsake" Fisher-Price doll, Cindy, who has managed to survive over 26 years of my often enthusiastic affection with only a flat spot on her nose to show her age; in addition, there's Fluffy the stuffed dog, an ancient pound puppy, and a miscellaneous assortment of other stuffed animals both small and large. Mercifully there is no 100+ collection of beanie babies packed in tissue paper. But intrinsic to the act of packing is sorting. Things go in piles, and eventually you have a pile of things that aren't worth moving. The NYC teddy bear Allen bought on a visit and later tossed into my lap after meeting me at school (the meeting where I thought "he's really glad to see - like, really glad to see me. Does this mean he likes me?!?) obviously goes with me. But what about the cute teddy bears I got on some not terribly well remembered camping trip? It was probably in the Smokies, but which trip? What about the stuffed puppy (Magi) that Julie bought me the Christmas we realized that none of us kids had bought presents for the other and, after assembling some loose change, paired up and went roaming through Walmart? So I see Magi and remember all the times us kids banded together to solve some problem regarding presents or chores. Those were good times when we pulled in harness to deal with a home life that could be chaotic and stressful. Now the band is broken though - broken so completely that I occasionally wonder whether it ever existed. Was I a good big sister? For all the hours I read books when they were little, did I charge them in surliness and unconcern later? I don't know. There's no one I can trust who can tell me either. So Magi opens quite a mixed bag of emotions for me. And don't get me started on the funny little half-circle pillow Joey gave me one Christmas. It's made from pink quilted material (left over from a place mat?) that I think he got mom to sew in half. Then he came up to me with a needle and thread and some odd bits of trimming and showed me exactly where to sew to make a mouth and nose and two eyes. It's the funniest thing you ever saw, and he couldn't have been more than 5 I don't think. When I'd finished he took it away and wrapped it up and gave it to me for Christmas. Tell me you can toss something like that no matter how silly it looks! But once again, I don't know Joey any more. He's a stunning looking young man (he and my other brother) with a lovely girlfriend and plans for Navy career. Some things once broken become as if they never were. So there are times when I want to put everything in a pile and just get rid of it and forget the bad memories, and yet I can't. Once upon a time I was Natalie M. - big sister, one of five, firstborn daughter. Now, sometimes it feels like those lines from Jane Austen's Persuasion, "Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted." It does not seem that there will be any friendship without reconciliation, and as that presently seems impossibly remote I will continue to pack and remember and laugh that a 28 year old should have a stuffed bear half her own size. (And this I will unapologetically keep since he reminds me of my old dog who was much the same color and size.)

I'm still here

It seems like all I do is post recipes and book reviews of CTBHHM, but mostly that's because I've been head down in property searches. There are over three thousand listings in our general search area, and no matter how you slice it that means finding and evaluating hundreds of listings. This means keeping up with new listings, pre-sorting listings to consider later, looking over my first cut, and then referring my cut list to Allen so we can evaluate and rank our top choices together. There might be an easier to way to do this, but then again I've never been terribly good at collating this sort of information. It's this kitchen vs that backyard vs this other listing price that would let us rip out the kitchen and put in whatever we want. In other words - it's hard! I thought I was pretty flexible, but I'm finding that as I look through houses I'm finding "want to haves" that I never thought about six months ago. I knew a private backyard was important, but I didn't know that I prefer foyers and entryways to walking straight off the porch into the living room. I don't have to have a formal dining room, but five years of apartment living haven't endeared me to the combination living/dining room. The more we talk about what we want to do with our house we realize that we really want a den/rec area so we can set up a ping pong table and have Allen's family over to play games and eat lots of food. Allen needs an office space. We want room for those hypothetical children. (We're working on making them less hypothetical.) In other words - we kind of want a big ol' house :) I say this as a person who hasn't even filled up her two bedroom apartment (well, I have but not with furniture!).

So yeah, packing and house shopping. That's me. I'll try to post another installment on the book review soon though. I have a feeling that if I don't finish it up before we move that it might not get done.

Going Home

We'll soon be leaving California for our beautiful home state of Alabama. There are already boxes stacking up in the spare bedroom, and I've started bookmarking real estate listings. After living in three different states it's finally time to be home - to settle and plant tomatoes and bake bread in my own kitchen and drink sweet tea with friends from church and watch the fireflies flickering on a muggy evening. I won't have my own Christmas tree this year, but next year I'll buy the biggest tree I can fit in my house and put lights in the trees.

Lord please be willing.

I'm going to plant bulbs outside my windows and watch them come up in the spring. I'm going to have a place to spread out my projects and have six things going at once. We're going to put a pinball machine and a ping pong table in the basement and invite Allen's brothers over. I can't wait. I'm already going over paint colors in my head. I'm trying to prepare myself for a house that isn't perfect. I don't want all the pressure of "falling in love." Really though, I want to walk into a house and see the next ten years staring back at me in the windows. I want a place that says "Sure Yosemite was your refuge in California - this can be your refuge every day." Hard lines asking a house to live up to one of the most amazing national parks in the country, but there it is. I want to sunlight on the floor to be my Merced River and porch to be my Tuolumne Meadows. I bet that's one the real estate agent hasn't heard before!