On Your Mark, Get Set....

I'm sitting here like I'm waiting for the starter's gun to sound.  The new house is being "professionally cleaned" as I type.  As soon as they are done, I can start moving things in.  So far we've moved the patio furniture into the new yard and the new garage is filled with the items from the storage unit.  I hate that this process doesn't move along in an orderly fashion.  Ever since we bought the house back in May, we had the close date set at Friday, August 11th.  It felt written in stone.   But, in yet another moving/birth parallel, the close date became more like a due date, nothing more than an educated guess.  Originally, the house was going to be cleaned last Thursday so it would be all ready when we took possession on Friday.  But then we decided to resurface the wood floors and the current owner let us get the jump on that before the close date.  That was supposed to take until Friday.  No point in having the house cleaned before that sawdusty process was complete so it got pushed back til Monday.  But the floors were done on Thursday, and the house has just been sitting there empty and dirty all weekend.  I considered going in and at least cleaning the bonus room myself, but Ritu made me promise to wait.  I'm not good at waiting.  When there are things to be done, I want to jump in and work until it's done.  I don't want loose ends.  I don't want setbacks and for the love of God, I don't want to reschedule once the plan is made.  I want to go, get it done, and be done with it.  Knowing there was a mountain of work to do, but being powerless to do it is what kept me awake those nights last week.  The untapped adrenaline made my brain spin like a revving engine.  I remember feeling this same sort of frustration while planning our wedding.  All the visits with florists, all the invitations to consider, all the contingencies.  I just wanted to make a decision and MOVE FORWARD.  I like a process with an established  beginning and endpoint.  My satisfaction comes from a job clearly defined and cleanly executed.  But this is all old ground, isn't it?

 

Last night, we invited some friends and neighbors over to test out the fire pit in the back yard.  We made a fire (and when I say "we" I mean my friend Karen who used to be a Campfire Girl) and roasted marshmallows on poky metal skewers.  The kids all had a blast and nobody lost an eye.  Even though we were only in the back yard, it was the first time that the house really felt like mine.  I haven't quite wrapped my brain around the fact that we are planning to live in this house basically forever.  I haven't had long-term roots in a single community since I graduated from high school 22 years ago.  This city, this neighborhood, and this house feel right to us.   I'm going to keep one of those skewers to remember this feeling.  And in four years, when I get the itch to move again, I'm going to jab myself with it until the urge passes.