Saffron Robe Unpacking

Moving is so much hard work y'all! Whew.

I am a tired lady. The boxes are taking over my life. I hide in the book I got from the library sometimes, in my phone sometimes, and out in the car on a drive sometimes....because seriously....

Where did all this stuff come from? There is no end to it. I want to cull everything down to four wooden bowls and a saffron robe. We'll share the robe. No need for excess.

These are all my husband's socks....that spot on the right in the drawer is where is socks are meant to go. 

Argh...on the upside, tonight the nine year old made dinner because I was stressed and drowning in boxes in the hallway and his chicken wings and jicama was delicious and hilarious and so helpful. I also managed to make the boys bedroom completely livable today, including a trip to Home Depot for plywood (45 minute wait to get the pieces cut to size! Patience lesson + assertiveness lesson!) I also signed up the older two for piano lessons, scheduled a piano tuner and didn't do any laundry at all. I did however successfully get paint matched for our kitchen cupboards so that I can spot treat as needed in the future and cover the spots where I took the hinges and doors off of one section. (open shelving! Yay!)

See!?! Took the upper doors off! So pretty!

I know that I will manage to spend time with kids in a fun way again soon. I know that I will feel like it is a home again and not a junk heap soon. I know that the chi will return to normal flow soon. I know I will work out in the garden again soon. I know that I will actually walk through the garage again soon. I know that I will someday feel like I can breathe at night and lay down my head with genuine relief soon. Its soooo hard to go to sleep when the house is finally quiet and just "relax" and get some rest when I see every box behind my eyelids! Argh!

In other news, Ru is cooking well and reading well. We have somehow slippingly drifted over into the land of chapter book reading and obsession with returning to the library asap and never getting enough story. So lovely to see it really happen. So much leap of faith breath-holding in parenting and homeschooling. You want to believe that you're kids are of course amazing and brainy and footsy and success material but you also feel so utterly responsible for the whole outcome and all the ingredients and the process and and and..... Its hard to do all you can and let go optimistically. Its so easy for me to trust that "all I can" is a reasonable contribution and that I am not forgetting something or screwing up in some obvious way. I worry about their flaws and weak spots and annoying little ways....although I hope I don't show them too much of that. I do try to make sure that they know I am in their corner always and that they can make it. I'm just their mom and I do worry! These little successes taste like extra rope, a little margin, some safety net of possible "fine-ness" in the ways of the world. Tangibility feels meaty and full of heft.

We had rain this week! I am believing that the drought is going to be over. That this is part of the cycle of nature, just like the wildfires and throw us humans all into panic. I am believing that the hibiscus we planted will live and that the little sprouts that are coming up the front flower bed and something cool and that the 40th year of my husband's life (tomorrow everyone!!!!) will hold wonderful things for him.

I love you babe. I'm going to try sleeping, even though you're snoring.

Equipped For Beekeeping

 It's a great day for a first time beekeeper. The weather was balmy, it smells like spring, yesterday a huge flock of crows swooped into the neighborhood from parts further south and congregated on a big beech tree across the street, noisily recounting their many travel exploits. Spring is on its way and we are ready.

We have a beehive in our house.

  It came to our door in two gigantic cardboard boxes and sat, intimidatingly in the entryway for a while before I had the bravery to open the containers and lift out the glowing wood and deliriously fragrant comb foundation. The whole thing smells like honey...rich, ambrosial, golden honey. I can't wait until it is really full of liquid gold.

 All these mysterious tools and gadgets, glinting, twirling things that are so exciting and require much trying out. Can hardly wait to take my boys down to the buzzing hive and let them see the bees spinning industrious gold while they see what those tools are really about.

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Catching Up...*pant pant*

I bought curtains. Today was the day. We'd been freezing in Vermont all week and I'd been gulping mugs of tea and snapping a lot of pictures of crisp autumnal scenes and suddenly we were home and it was imperative that we have curtains on our windows. I am also itching to get out the flannel sheets, put away the shorts and light a lot of decorative candles.

Am still searching out the ingredients for yet another apple cake and plan to try a good hack at that this week sometime. Am also hoping to bring in from the garage a huge area rug that I found on a curb (truly, it was in fabulous shape!) and tuck its cozy self into the library on the third floor. As I type I am remembering just how heavy said rug is and adjusting my mental plan. Maybe A will have to help me. It is a long way up the third floor.

Tonight I roasted a duck for dinner. A lovely, free-range, organic duck that we bought from a farmer in Vermont. I didn't cook it quite long enough. All the same it was good...(I love duck)...and the gravy I made was exceptional. I recommend making a stock from the giblets to add to your gravy.

Ahem. But, yes...now I'm back to the land of mad laundry, manic carpooling and never ending landscape planning.

And I will get those boxes unpacked if it kills me. It might.

And So It Goes...

Today I stopped at a farm stand I drive by all the time, near my new house and bought a braided stem ficus tree for our office, a fig tree (with little baby figs on it!) and two huge lush, potted mums for our front steps. I have a feeling I'll be by the stand again. Its part nursery, part farm stand, part bakery...a lovely little operation run by a chatty little Italian man who tossed Ru and apple from a bushel basket full of them as we hopped back in the car. I do love good finds.

Every week we send a few more empty boxes to the curb and we're getting a lot closer to cleared out although there are still no new rooms without packed goods. I am running out of steam a bit, it has to be admitted. I just want to paint and put up curtains and pick which throw pillow go where. I'm sick of all this putting away. I'm also down to the hard stuff and that doesn't help. Where do the back-up toiletries go? How do I put all my hats in my closet in a reasonable way? What do I with diapers now that the desk we were using for a changing table is living in the playroom/homeschool room? Meh. So many tough questions and no astoundingly simple answers. I have boxes of kitchen goods to sort out, little teeny weeny bottles of sesame seeds and the back-up bowl for my Cuisinart and the tortilla press. Drat it all.

Lots of boxes left....

But look! Floor is appearing!!!

In other news, we have company coming again, my mother-in-law is swinging by for a week to help us with all the settling in. I have never had her come visit alone and have honestly spent precious little time with her in a one-on-one setting. Am curious and trying hard to not be too apprehensive.

I am also charging ahead with the landscaping project although not as quickly as I'd like. I've taken pictures of the property for the designer to mull over and sent copies to her. We've purchased a sprinkler and as I speak it is ensuring that our grass won't just curl up and die and I've also made sun-maps of the property so that we know where to plant the hostas and where to put the peonies. Next targets are sending soil samples to our local extension office for testing and measuring the dimensions of our yard space. *pant pant* I will prevail.

my orange highlighted sun-maps

The boys have a dresser!

The good news is that the boys now have a dresser...one dresser...although I need another one (still looking!), we've had a plumber in and he fixed the master shower so that it no longer leaks through the dining room ceiling, a dishwasher will be installed on Saturday  and through it all I am caught up on laundry too! Having a clothesline obsession will do that for you. Small victories, people, small victories.

Hotter than blazes.....

Whew! It has been hot this week! Holy moley! We are all sweltering in our no a/c house....even though I am sure we would have been hotter at our old house minus that lovely central air. This house is much cooler...I think honestly, even though its in the city it is a cooler spot....less massive parking lot in front of the door and many more trees and big grassy yards which are very relieving. I know that not having a solarium facing our parking lot helps a lot too. That solarium kitchen sure was nice in January but in August....not so much.

Even though its been so hot, it still seems good to get out for a little bit of time every day. Five children, four and under is a lot in one space, however rambly the house. Mommies start to slowly melt down if there is no outdoors time. Today we took a little stroll through the nearby business district (neighborhood exploring!) and found all kinds of good things: Cuban food, Guatemalan food, karate, Chinese take-out, a drugstore, a laundromat or two, convenience stores, and lots of other great little assets.  

It was also Nib's first time ever in a stroller. He liked it quite well and promptly slept through pretty much the whole walk, snuggled down in a corner. Cute man.

Also of note: Last night he slept through the whole night. He's three months old! I can't believe it. I'm not saying this is any kind of pattern, I'm just saying its amazing....that's all.

We're getting to the end of the cousin visit. Tomorrow they pack their rental car and head off for parts further south to say goodbye to the other side of their family before they head home to Germany to get ready for their Daddy's return from Iraq. We're so honored to have had them visit, we've all been having so much fun together and we've been having a blast the last day or two recounting all the lovely ways our kids have influenced each other....from eating more fresh produce to learning how to teach your baby doll to walk, there's been fabulous give and take on both ends.

Girl cousins are the best. How else is a fellow to learn about these sorts of things?

I also had to share this shot of our tiniest cousin, hugging Nib. She can't keep her mitts off him, hugs and kisses and pats on the cheek without end...I have taken to hiding him on top of the dining room table or back in the mudroom sometimes so he can get a little breathing time from all the love. Its hilarious how "motherly" she is to him, rocking him in his bouncer and kissing him when he's crying and putting his pacifier in....nevermind that she just learned to walk and is only 11 months old herself, he is clearly a baby and needs lots of mothering.

I also blasted through another last legion of boxes (not that I'm done yet....far from it) and I finally have another room completely clear of packing materials. Am starting to get the mad, mad decorating itch so, it will feel really great to finally get through all this putting away business and start slapping paint on the walls and adding the right hardware, rugs and paintings. Am just so dying to get into that part!

Here's a couple more little shots of the house. I need to take some with no macro lens. Sorry for the lack of pulled back, "big picture" style shots. I will try to get some of those with my other camera. This first shot is looking into the kitchen from the dining room. You can see one of the two kitchen windows, one of our fabulous radiators and the creamy tile floor in the room.

Here's the uncovered dining room floor, another little peek at that beautiful wood that was hidden by hideous carpet. You can also see how I need to add wood trim on the bottom of the wall to come down and cover the big crack between the wall and the floor. A little moulding should do the job, all I have to do is pick just the right stuff, in just the right size and paint and trim it to fit. Heh. Am slightly nervous but trying to not let on.

Here's a closer shot of one of the dining room radiators. Lovely old things. I can't wait to glossy paint them all again. They're so elegant looking.

And here's a couple of (urgh) close-up shots in the room I finished today which will be our homeschool room/playroom. It has all the toys, most of the kid books, and a little desk with a beautiful old Underwood, found at Goodwill typewriter on a desk for typing experimentation and letter learning as well as mechanical observation. Ru was thrilled and said something like "Oh wow, Mommy!" when he walked into the room for the first time.

The girls were most taken with the storybook corner and all the cozy cushions to snuggle in with books. Pretty lovely to see how enchanted the kids were with the space. I can't wait for paint and curtains and the like!!! Have big cool dreams for this space.

Back in the Saddle

I am very full of heart tonight. How could I not be? Really, sitting here in the cricketing evening (yes there are crickets in our part of the small city we've moved to) listening to the wind in the maples behind our house I feel so many shades of "good" that its preposterous to be trying to enumerate really. The keyboard is just as springy as I remember, the lovely, zippy Internet so full of inspiration, friends and brilliance and the house, this lovely, dreamy house...every inch my hopes come to life. Its true that there's no bathroom on the whole first floor, and yes there's some amazing acoustic tile and faux wood paneling and heaven knows the master bedroom entry floor could hardly be creakier....but I do love it. There are wood floors, there's a fireplace, windows everywhere you turn, a clotheline pulley, an old apple tree, some glass door knobs, radiators, and all kinds of fabulous little bits that I'm still discovering.

Can you believe this cool window crank on my kitchen sink window?

And check out this cool old clock they left....am swoony over it.

A nun from next door (there are nuns next door!) stopped by to beam at the children and greet us energetically and made sure that we knew were were welcome to come over anytime. The neighbor lent us forks for our first meal at the house, we've had three plates of welcoming cookies and two deliveries of homegrown tomatoes and something like 10-12 visits with people from the surrounding houses, all grinning away and telling us to knock on their doors if we needed anything. The garbage men have been past and taken away the first load of packing paper and boxes, we've found the flour and the canned peaches and our collection of silverware although admittedly we have no silverware tray at the moment. I have cooked real food for three days running now and we're starting to think about finding some of the laundry baskets and hoping one of the dressers I keep trolling Craigslist for will materialize so we can start putting clean clothes away again and stop living out of our suitcases.

This is just about how great life is at the moment.

It is a bit absurdly chaotic still but, really...every time another neighbor rings our doorbell or we're pulling our hair out over all the boxes and we go outdoors and watch the kids tumbling around in the grass of our very own, generous lawn....I feel painfully, stunningly lucky. I can't believe this is me! I feel like I'm living in a movie script or like I've wandered into an episode from Mr. Rogers. How in the world does this sort of thing really happen to people, least of all me! I feel a little dizzy from the fabulousness.

The Big Rock in our backyard. (with a load of cousins on it)

There are so many thousands of little delicious bits about our new house to share with you all that I am sure the introduction will stretch out for some time but, tonight I especially want to share with you the lovely wood floors we uncovered when we took off the amazingly nasty blue carpet that was EVERYWHERE in many of the rooms.

The men who ripped it out for me said that that guessed it was at least 30 years old. My shots somehow look a lot more rosy than it really did.

 There were dark grey trails where the main traffic patterns had been. It was positively delirious to see the beautiful wood emerge from under all of that and watch as it became more and more alive as it was swept and then washed.

I knew it was going to be stunning.

Our tree hydrangea....so pretty!

The basement door.

Of course the rooms are mostly a jumble of boxes and assorted homeless items with the occasional bushy haired child thrown wildly in for good measure but, eventually here I will be able to do a more personal introduction to the particular spaces we're living in these days. I am already dreaming of paint!

Moving Guilt

Well, I've decided to absolve myself of the guilt I have over hiring movers to pack and move us. And get rid of the ridiculous notion that I'll pack as much as I can myself before they arrive. Hah. We're having company right beforehand, we are helping our church with Vacation Bible School and then there's the part about how I have three children and I would be doing all the packing solo. Right.

So, I have now decided that my attention will go to purging and organizing our goods before the men with rolls of packing tape pull up instead. I did a good bit today, there's a whole new box of things all ready for Goodwill and I started putting like items together to facilitate logical packing. (all the towels in the house upstairs in the bathroom, all the coats in the coat closet, all the shoes in bedrooms etc.) I realize there's a lot more to do there but, I'm trying to even let myself off the hook there and believe that what matters will get done and we'll survive if ridiculous things get packed in absurd order and we arrive at our new house all topsy turvy.

Does anyone else get all thigh-deep in false guilt all the time? I wonder if its a feature of my personality or just a very innate human tendency that has beating myself over the head with a board like those silly monks from Monty Python. Anyone else? Dude, that is so me.



I think about this whenever I find myself all torn to bits over some ridiculous something and then I look in the mirror, see my tear-stained face, realize its three a.m. and think, "What am I doing? This is totally silly, I shouldn't feel bad about this, it doesn't matter at all!"

Well, sort of...maybe its not quite that dramatic but, I do have the self-confrontation moments when suddenly it is all very clear and also very silly and I resolve to get off the bandwagon. And then...there I am again. The only answer I have found is to let it go when I see that I'm absurdly over-activating my conscience. Let's spend a little time on the things that we really are doing that are wrong. Heaven knows there are enough of them without carrying around a few extra bricks because I use the wrong detergent, don't know my times tables by heart, talked to my sister on the phone for over and hour the other day or hid in the kitchen to eat some candy etc. etc. Why am I so compelled???

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Time to let go.