a new hope

Today is my first full day as a house occupant. It is, in the truest sense, like a rollercoaster ride, as I alternate between the giddy thrill of autonomy and the sudden nausea of need. No garbage cans, no pots or pans, no internet. Plenty of yarn, though, and lots of stress.

We're still not entirely moved over. For all the heat I get from my parents about not being organized, the real reason we don't have all our stuff is because my dad went home at 2:30 yesterday to watch a baseball game, refusing to pull down all of our vital stuff that's been in the garage for 3 1/2 years. Bitch bitch bitch blah blah blah. In fact, my dad has been at his absolute best this move. Usually I have to put up with hours of anger; this weekend he's surprised me with his self-control. This is a very good thing.

(I surprised myself by feeling sorry for him yesterday when we left. I know that I'll see him every day until the end of June, but there was something about leaving him at the house after my mom had gone on to work and Nic had drifted into Nicland that choked me right up. For all that he gets on my last nerve, these three and a half years have been some of the best of his life. He's always wanted his whole family this close, and for all of Blake's life we lived as if we were back in the village. I'm glad to be out, but there will always be a part of me that craves this kind of closeness, the tumbling over my family at odd hours that kept me crazy but also kept me out of my own misanthropy for long stretches. That, alone, was good for Blake.)

Anydangway, life here continues to peg along. We spent a surprising amount of money at Canadian Tired (so called because how do you feel when you walk out?) that we might keep our towels off the floor, our plates easy to reach, and our kitchen floor clean enough that we would not be compelled to abandon a morsel for lost if it squirted off our fork. Towel racks alone are putting us in the poor house, and WTF is that all about? I'm not even going to discuss the various lifestyle enhancements to be found at Solutions (the organized living superstore), because them lifestyle enhancement doodads don't come cheap.

I should just be happy that we have food to eat: the Boy made a late-night grocery run to get breakfast food, and we were subsisting on what we can eat cold, toast or microwave (see above, re: pots in limbo) right until church. Then my mom's friend Esther came through with the Crock Pot, which I immediately put to use on a chicken stew for supper. (Who says you can't get good chicken for organ meat prices??) Esther cracks me up: she made us a stew as a welcoming present, but the lid got loose in the car and the whole shebang went all over the upholstery. I love her because her first concern was that she wasn't able to give us an empty crock pot…and then the decision was taken out of her hands. Hee.

The Boy's Mom & her husband were over for improvised chicken stew and the 10-cent tour; they left us with bulbs and books and lots of good will. Now I'm off to wash the dishes and drink some more Steamwhistle. Mmm...working man's brew.

Labels: family, house rich

- 0 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 5/20/2007 07:18:00 p.m.