The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

I finally found my camera cords (in the toaster! Logically!), so I will do a full house update soon, but thought these two pictures give a good perspective on how far we’ve come. It’s frustrating to know that we still have so far to go sometimes, but then I look back I realize that Tom has worked miracles in this house, on a very small budget, doing the majority of the work with his own hands, while working a high stress 50 hour a week job, and taking care of his pathetically pregnant wife.

His birthday is in a few weeks – maybe I’ll give him his first day off in a year.

Joyful thing #1, our family portrait scribbled on the edge of an electricity bill.

Joyful thing #2, a functional (though not yet inspirational) sewing/knitting/making a mess area.

Joyful thing #3 – That Alice runs around singing all day long. (“Oh Suzannah” is first, then “If you’re happy and you know it, clap clap” and then she tells you what she wants to name the baby.)

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Joyful thing #4 – That this belly just keeps growing. 29 weeks, and I’ve only fallen over from being front heavy 29367236 times.

We’ve been in the little house less than a week, and there are still many, many things in boxes, but this is already home.* This is the house where, on our second date, Tom introduced me as his girlfriend. This is where I cooked him dinner for the first time (a disaster, since I was a vegetarian and very out of practice in cooking steak). This is the house where I spent so much time that my best friend thought I had moved out without telling her. This is the house where we found out I was pregnant with Ella, and where we went through the misery of thinking we had lost her. This is where we took out loans to ‘clean up’ the house, in hopes of making it less of a bachelor pad (it didn’t work). This is where I finally felt like I had a home, after 21 years of being a gypsy. We brought Ella home here, she learned to walk here. This is where Tom proposed.

I think if we were not moving here, leaving the big house would have been harder. Ella turned one (two, three, and four) there. Again, we painted and tried to make the house our own. We got married, graduated, and traveled while living there. I had such a badass craft room.We spent a lot of summer nights in the back yard, and I was completely spoiled by the hot tub. We’ve made wonderful friends, and Tom finally found a job worth keeping. We found out we were expecting Alice, and Polliwog there, and my sweet Alice was born in the living room. For all the big house’s faults, it is where we spent three of the best years of my life (and it is also the longest I have ever lived anywhere), and I can’t help but miss it a bit. I wonder how long it will be before I stop driving by it, thinking “My daughter was born there”?

*In case you are just tuning in at this point, Tom lived in the Little House for 10 years before I showed up, but after Ella was born, we decided we needed more space and bought the Big House. It turns out that the Big House was a Big Pain in the Butt, so we have taken the money from selling the big house and are renovating the little house so that it is not only larger, but also less scummy (it’s been a bachelor pad for 15 years – we may have been better off just burning the place down and starting over).

It’s been a great week for baby boys around here! Malachi William was born this morning, and Courtney is such a rockstar that she couldn’t even wait for the midwife to get there. Welcome Malachi, you are so blessed to be born into your little family.

But, now that both Courtney and Chelsea have had their boys, Polliwog and I are up next. T-minus 8 weeks until I am clear for homebirth (though knowing my girls, we likely have a few more weeks to prepare).  We officially moved to the little house this weekend, so at least I can start preparing my nest. Updates tomorrow, or as soon as I can find my camera cord. In the mean time, go over and check out all the chubby baby goodness.

It seems like just the other day I was welcoming Pan into the world, and now he is a big brother. Welcome Quinn, we are so, so glad you have come.

Today was going to be the first official moving day… and then Tom got called into work. At 5am. Which woke up everyone in the house (most notably the baby, who can not breath air yet, but can protest fairly effectively when she is woken up by loud noises). Hopefully Tom will be home by noon, but in the mean time, I am stealing adopting this little ritual of gratitude from Reese Dixon (which she was inspired to begin after reading A Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg). Each week of 2010, I want to shout from the rooftops “Thank you!” for some small pleasure that I would otherwise overlook or forget. I have a habit of using my paper journal as a kind of gratitude journal, writing down things that made me smile throughout the day, but for some reason bringing that ritual here feels smug, almost like bragging. I am inclined to use this space as a venting place, and keep my joy quiet and hidden, but that is a character flaw that I’m afraid makes me a bit of a Debbie Downer. (Waaa waaaaaa)

And since we are at the end of the second week of 2010, today we are playing catch-up.

#1

Reading at our make-shift counter at the little house, while Tom tiles the bathroom and the girls play hide-and-go-seek in empty rooms. I took this picture on a whim, but realized when it uploaded that it captures most of the important aspects of who I am today. Baby belly, book, coffee, toys, phone, journal, wedding ring, pretty pen. What else could you possibly need to know about me?

#2

I regularly find Ella curled up on the couch, reading or drawing. When she caught me taking this picture, she went into a 10 minute explination of the story she was writing about a dragon who had accidentally scared a princess and was banished to live alone in a cave. Since the cave was ugly and dark, he decided to paint it, but the only person who had blue paint was the princess. She hadn’t worked out how to finish the story, but dismissed all of my ideas. I’m beginning to think that my Creative Writing degree doesn’t hold much water with the preschool set.

I’ve been avoiding posting, since all I can think about is the fact that we are still not moved, and really, who wants to hear me complain about that more? Not me, and not Tom, and I’m guessing not you.

So, since I can not spend my time nesting over there, I have been virtually nesting. I recently walked into a friend’s new house and thought “Oh yes, this is their home”, because in every corner there was a thoughtfully chosen item which reflected who they are. I can’t say the same for our house, and it’s part of the reason I’m antsy to move. When we leave this house, we are leaving behind the rooms (and rooms) of very generously handed-down furniture that Tom’s parents have given us over the years, and condensing down what we own, keeping only what we actually like (imagine that). I’ve ranted plenty about how having 3000 sq ft to fill sent me into hoarding mode, but it’s never clearer than when you consider how much unnecessary and unused furniture we own. His parents are taking some of it back (for their lake house) and we are selling other pieces (yay craigslist) and unlike my collections of small things, I have no anxiety about waving good bye to mattresses, dressers, couches and dining room tables.

There is still a lot of work to be done at the little house before it is “finished” (aka, before the bedrooms and bathroom downstairs are usable, before the kitchen is fully remodeled, and before we can knock down the wall in the living room and open up the house) but I’m taking the long view here. These little idea boards are for the finished house, not the house we are moving into (hopefully this weekend). Imagining and visualizing what could be will be is giving me a bit more patience with this transition. We are moving  into our home, and while it will be in flux for a while, as long as I have a vision and work towards is, I hopefully won’t obsess about what isn’t going according to plan.

I had planned to write out my thoughts on each of these rooms, but it’s 1am, and if I don’t post this tonight Tiffany will call me again tomorrow and ask if I am alive. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance to add notes over on Flickr.

The dining room.

The girls’ room.

Our room.

Next time: Kitchen, living room, playroom and bathrooms.

Something I both love and hate about moving is the necessity to look at each and every thing we own, and ask “Do I need this? Why am I keeping this? Where will I put this at the new house?” The love part comes from the fact that I really do long to live a simple life, and unmoor myself from all these physical belongings. The hate part comes from the fact that, upon opening a kitchen drawer and asking myself “Which of these six can openers do I really need?”, I quickly realize that I love stuff. I love buying stuff, I love owning stuff, I love having storage rooms full of stuff. My desire to own things quickly outweighs my wish for a simple life, and every time we’ve tried to purge in the last few years, we have soon given up, and said “We’ll deal with it when we move”.

And lo, we are moving, and I just want to put it all in boxes and deal with it… later. When we unpack maybe, or after the baby is born, or when we can have a garage sale, or when life slows down. (Ha!) The little house has thrown a few new problems at us (oh hi plumbing, my old nemesis), so the actual physical move has been pushed back a few days, but I’m trying to look at it as a blessing – I now have a few more days to purge the bathroom cabinets of the 4643 bottles of cheap lotion. I have time to sort and box up the clothes the kids have outgrown. I have time to look critically at each piece of clothing I own, and come to terms with the fact that I will never, never be a size 2 again. (Thanks pelvic bones for separating to let those babies out!) I have time to make sure that every single thing we are moving over has a use and a place.

I think I need to tattoo one of my favorite Thoreau quotes on the back of my hand, so each time I reach into the pile, I remember that “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” Either that or a house fire.

(Here, btw, would be where I put a picture of the enormous pile of stuff we did donate to the ARC last week, had I remembered to take a picture. It filled the living room of the little house, and they had to make two trips to fit it all in their van. It was a huge relief to see it go, but oh the panic attacks I had after it was all gone. “What if I forgot something important in there, like my baby book? Why did I get rid of all of those patterns – I could have used one! I could have sold all of that stuff on Craigslist and made millions! Can I call them and ask for it all back? What if I find the frying pan that went with that lid? WOE!” My dear, sweet husband reminded me that I had went though it all twice, that the ARC is a great organization which will put it all to good use, and that I needed to chill the fuck out already, because we still had a lot to go through.  And if that isn’t love, worth more than all the worn out socks I’ve been keeping, just in case, I don’t know what is.)