Incommunicado

Finally settled, we spent our first night in our new house last night. Not surprisingly, the bed from the old place was a little softer than I remember, the sheets a little cozier and the morning sunlight wasn’t as harsh as it seemed in the last home. Mind you, ‘settled’ does not equate to ‘unpacked’ but we’re not too far from that either.

Friday is still a bit on guard, although like us he probably slept more soundly last night than he has in the weeks we’ve been packing. The constant to and fro of our traveling between residences has him bracing for another trip back to the apartment.

So our night was greatly uninterrupted, aside from the aches and pains of moving that wake you when you shift during the night and a short-lived episode at 3 a.m. that turned out to be nothing more than getting used to the mid-night sounds of a new house. Although I’m sure it seemed quite real to Ryan and normally I would be willing to defend my spouse-to-be, at the time I conceded that if the noise was indeed a burglar, he would have an easy night and could raid the house as he pleased.

Now the only thing left to connect us to the outside world is our Internet connection, which at this point isn’t scheduled until next week. Normally this sort of tourniquet in the bloodline of media that streams into our house would be unacceptable for us technology-dependent individuals, but considering that the computer isn’t even unpacked yet, I suspect that the most we’ll suffer is a short communication gap for WaitingonFriday.com.

posted by paula 12:53 PM

Making it Our Own

When you spend a little time straddled between households, one tends to get this crazy melancholy feeling where part of you is excited but part of you just wants the whole ordeal over with. Everything about our close went successfully, despite the numerous house-buying horror stories I had been told and even witnessed over the past few weeks. So we’ve had plenty of opportunity to inspect our new little place in this world; our bona fide and official departure into claiming a plot of land on this continent as ours. Excited at the revelation that the driveway we pulled into was now ours and that bushes and floors and deck were now ours as well, that excitement was squelched when our first piece of mail was a bill from the rubbish collectors and the second was a statement of our mortgage. And shortly after when we stood in inside the house, there was a hollow feeling through out me that neglected to accept that the space we stood in was actually ours, because it was not completely us.

I suspect that although the color of the paint or the window trimmings is just fine, that come fall when the days grow too cold to enjoy outside I will grow increasingly restless with the color and choose something that is more like us. Likewise with the fixtures or shrubs. There is also a smell about the house that is not unpleasant, but again, it is them and not us. I can only hope that all of this will change with time.

But among the growing list of things I want to change about our new surroundings is a fixture that I know I would not want to change. This weekend, when my future in-laws came to visit the new house, I realized something more important than I expected: making a house your own has very little to do with the color of the paint or the pictures you place on the mantle and has everything to do with whom you put in that house.

This weekend, the things that made me feel most comfortable were having those around to share it with us; in other words, those “to bes” who were in our home-to-be. A dedicated mother-in-law who, for over an hour scraped the remainders of Thanksgiving dinners and baking endeavors past from the oven. A father-in-law who did the same and then attempted to fix a faulty deadlock. A sister-in-law who already talked of our first garage sale and dinner party and a brother-in-law-by-marriage who brought a wealth of home fix-it supplies and eagerness to help on our first projects.

So while we’re not completely settled in our home, I’m completely comfortable with the fact that it may take a bit before this house feels more like ours and less like theirs. That and the undeniable fact that I might possibly have some of the best future in-laws that one could want.

posted by paula 1:26 PM