Every day, we move another little bit of stuff into the new house, but we haven't moved anything big, like the furniture....or the dog. We did take the dog to the new place to let him sniff it and walk the perimeter of the yard. Winston is not much for wandering. He'll only go out of his yard if he really sees something that interests him - usually a person he knows will pet him. In the summer time, if The Hub is doing yard work and the dog is outside, Winston will just go sit up on the porch until he's done....and, of course, if we're cooking out he hangs out right by the grill!

Still, when we moved here, it took him a little while to understand that the yard was HIS yard - I think that was because the people who were here before had a little mini-collie. I'd walk him around and around the perimeter of the yard, hoping he would get the idea that he could poop there....

(Winston will almost never poop anyplace except for his own yard. If he's in the car and we have to make a rest stop he goes behind a tree in the "pet area" looking monumentally embarrassed, the poor dog) Just when he would start to relax, the little yippie dogs who belong to our only unfriendly neighbor would come out to the edge of their fence and bark aggressively at him.

I shouldn't say the man is unfriendly. He just doesn't speak to anybody one way or the other, nor respond to smiles or waves. He's rather elderly, so it's possible that he's just kind of deaf and doesn't feel like getting into it with new people. Maybe it's just the little yippie dogs who are unfriendly. Or, at least, they were underwhelmed to see a dog 10 times their size move in.

Anyhow, my point is that we are trying to move. This move should be "easy" because we don't have far to go and our time line is flexable. It is true that we don't have to elaborately bubble wrap everything, accidentally pack the alarm clock weeks in advance, run around the house trying to remember what box something is in yelling "where's the manifest?!" This should be a lot easier than it was to move from Massachusetts. But rather than having a key transfering, final severing "moving day" we have a sort of slow peeling away from the old house, which still needs more work, into the new house, giving me the unpleasant feeling that I don't really live anywhere.

I have begun to embrace the new house a little more. For instance, I have decided on a bright yellow paint for the kitchen. This is a paint that we have a great deal of because it is left over from a job. It's BRIGHT! But the thing about the new kitchen - a small galley style kitchen (grr) - is that it's one of the darkest rooms in the house. The front lawn is heavily shaded by pine trees, and the window faces the front yard.

My mom never liked that kitchen, and it does have some serious design problems, not the least of which is that the refrigerator is located right next to the stove. In time, after The Hub and I are in a position to buy the house, we'll be able to solve that through renovation, but we won't be able to do that right away. Thus, I'm heavily invested in the bright color to lighten the place up. l love yellow, it's my favorite color - I'm really grateful that my parents are okay with me painting in there. But, looking on the bright side, a small kitchen is good if I have mobility issues - and as long as The Hub isn't stomping around in there at the same time as I am I feel that I can set it up efficiently. (The poor Hub. He always stomps. He can't really help it. He's 6 ft 4 and used to working in places like trucking terminals and The Depot.)

We've decided to sell the china closet, which won't really fit anywhere in the new house, and the huge entertainment center, so those will be two fewer things we'll have to move. My mother left my grandmother's old bedroom set in my old bedroom. I really love that furniture, and would like for The Hub and I to use it. I've decided to move it into the master bedroom and use the east bedroom - my childhood bedroom - as a spare room.

My brother and I both thought we got the best deal when we moved into that house. Because I was cold all the time, I zoomed in on the east bedroom because it was adjacent to the chimney. My brother went right for the larger, brighter north bedroom. My parents thought it was great because there was no fight. "Well. That was easy." But, later my brother did take over the east bedroom after I left home.

That room is really dark too - again, the pine tree issue. That's the room where I slept when I had the late night conversations with the owl who sometimes sat outside. Not that I ever knew what we were talking about. Possibly the owl didn't either - I suspect that, if I speak owl at all, it must be with a horrific accent. It was in that room that I learned one of my first decorating lessons: always, always, always look at a paint chip in morning, afternoon, and lamp light before you paint. The soft lilac color I chose for that room looked great in daylight - the hours when I was in school. Under lamp light it was like battleship grey. It was like being in prison, and I didn't dare complain, having chosen the color myself. My brother came along and painted it an even darker color - a blue, and my mother painted it back to eggshell again. But it still has the purple shag carpet I thought was the greatest thing when I was in 7th grade. Yikes! It's like carpet karma....it's all coming back to me!

In short, I have to actively do things to make the family home the home for my family - thats me, The Hub, the dog, the fish and the pair-a-tweeters. I can't be wishy washy. I have to be decisive. I guess, after awhile, I won't be bombarded with memories of times past as The Hub and I create new memories in the house. Change is the only constant....and, if I have wound up in this place there must be something I'm supposed to learn from it. It probably isn't how to paint. I already know how to do that, even if The Hub thinks I do a crappy job.

It's not that there aren't a lot of happy memories in the house - there are. It was to that house my family moved from The Land That Time Forgot, and each one of us healed up in our own way from the 10 years we lived on Bad Memory Lane. This place is just Memory Lane....but all memories have dashes of bitter among the sweet, even if it's just the memory of a loved one who has passed away or of any of us as younger people, more innocent and not quite so battle scarred. I tried telling myself "it's just a house. It's only bricks and mortar, walls and doors, like any other place you've lived the many times you've moved". But that's not going to work for me, because that's not exactly true.

In all of these moves I've been hoping to find a home. What could be better for me than the home of my youth? How much more of a home this will be - a place that was once before my home. How much more welcome could I be than in the house of my memories and those of my family who are still nearby and willing to help me.

Thanks to all of you who offered help - I really appreciate it, and I will be sure to let you know if we need it....though I have to say, I'm pretty sure we don't need any garden gnomes. Unless they are willing to move workshop equipment....then, by all means, bring them over!