What’s New?

I haven’t been very good about keeping up with my blogging. (That said, the husband and I have semi-resurrected our former online magazine, The Green Room, recently!) I’ve been too busy living (and restructuring!) my life, to sit down and blog about it.

• After 10 months of unemployment, O started a new job in May! Just over a month into it, he’s still very much enjoying what he’s doing.
• When my temporary assignment with the Census ended, I began taking on new projects, and honing my skills toward what I really want to do with my professional life. This has included volunteering in the office of the local Unitarian Universalist church once a week, editing the monthly and weekly newsletters for the same, and recently starting some work with a local group dedicated to environmentalism and peace.
• L started attending a Montessori preschool, where he spends 5 mornings each week, and he is happy as a clam there!
• We bought a new-to-us car. *
• Next month, we’re headed to NY to unload the storage unit we’ve been renting since August (and of course to visit family and friends up there!), and we’re on the hunt for our next rental home.
• … and I’m going to the gym three times a week.

All together, this whole list means that we’re finally starting to put our lives back together. I spent SO long saying, “I want my life back!” after we moved down here. It feels so good to be moving forward again. We’ll never have the life we left behind, and I’ve accepted that. But now, finally, it feels like we have a reasonable substitute. A new beginning, and a stable foundation upon which to continue to build. I still yearn for more in the way of socialization, but the pieces that were previously scattered or missing are now starting to fall into place.

Life doesn’t feel quite so broken, anymore.

* More on this topic in a future post.

Hurry Up. No, Wait!

My husband and I are buying a house. This is the first house either of us have ever bought, so it’s a whole, brand new adventure.

Sale Pending sign from istockphoto.com

(In waiting.)

It feels like months ago that I received the e-mail notification about a house, forwarded it to Bear at work, and made an appointment to go see it. The day after we saw it, we submitted our initial offer, which was accepted fairly quickly. This all happened at the end of May/beginning of June, which really wasn’t that long ago, but it feels much longer.

Since that time, we’ve gone back and forth on the tiniest of details – (proposed) closing date, sellers’ concessions, etc. Each one has required its own set of initials from us and from the seller, until finally all the t’s were dotted and the i’s were crossed. Or something. Today, we finally (2 days from our 7 day deadline) were able to schedule the home inspection. Finally, the process is moving forward again.

Those of you who are not new to this process are probably groaning and rolling your eyes, remembering your own piles of paperwork and weeks of playing the “hurry up and wait” game.

I know it will all be worthwhile when we sign that final piece of paper and a set of keys are placed in our hands. I know that the first time I take Bug outside to play in our very own backyard, all the red tape that got us there will vanish into the ether.

And I know there will be other bumps along the way, both in the buying process and once we officially become homeowners.  Still, that knowledge doesn’t making the waiting game any more fun, nor me any less anxious to get the ball rolling.

“Hanging” on to Memories

Laundry seems a strange thing to be nostalgic about.  Yet there I was today, out in my backyard (by which I mean the postage-stamp-sized lot in back of the duplex in which I rent), hanging my first load(s) of laundry for this season, and remembering.

Buggie outside at 4 1/2 months

Last spring and summer when I would go outside, it took numerous trips.  I needed to get the laundry, a blanket, some toys, and then finally the baby.  I would put him on the blanket in the shade with his toys while I hung the laundry, and he would just stay there.  He would sometimes play with the toys, but he was also just content to watch the world go by around him.  He loved the change of scenery.  When the laundry was hung, the whole process was reversed – baby inside, then the blanket and toys.  (The laundry would stay put, obviously.)  In the spring, he was only just rolling over.  By summer, he could sit up, but crawling wouldn’t come for a while yet.

Me at 31 weeks pregnant

Let’s back up by another year, then.  Two summers ago, I was pregnant.  As the weather got warmer and warmer, I got bigger and bigger.  I remember the unique challenges in hanging maternity clothes because the seams don’t line up quite the same way as they do in regular clothes.  I remember the end of summer, when I received my first lot of hand-me-down baby clothes.  I washed them and hung those outside as well.  It made me smile to see those tiny garments on my clothesline.  Burpcloths, receiving blankets, and tiny, tiny little clothes.  We never had any “newborn” sizes, which was just fine.  At 8 pounds and 5 ounces and 21 inches long, Buggie would never have fit into them anyway.

Buggie at 16 months old

This year, I have neither a growing belly, nor a tiny little baby.  Now I have a toddler.  Today, he came outside with me again.  This time, we didn’t have the blanket, but we still had toys.  I didn’t have to carry him out to the backyard; he walked there himself.  I couldn’t just park him in the shade because he’s so very mobile, which meant being sure he was slathered with sunblock and wearing a hat.  Today, he kept me company as I hung up our clothes – his (which keep getting bigger!), his daddy’s, and my own.  He “helped” by taking the clothes out of the basket, and either handing them to me or (more often) dropping them on the ground next to it.  Once or  twice, he started to wander off, but mostly he stayed right nearby, finding his own amusements.

By next summer, I expect even more changes.  By then, we hope to have bought and moved into our own home.  Perhaps I’ll have returned to the workforce and Buggie will be in daycare.  Will we be expecting baby #2 then?  What changes will be shown on 2010′s clotheslines?

Feeling Like a Grown-up

(not our actual car)

In 2004, my husband and I bought our first “real” car. It was actually the third car we owned together – the first we bought from a guy down the street for $600, and the second was given to us by O’s brother. Our current car, a Subaru Outback sedan, was our first experience with going to a dealership, taking test drives, getting financing, and eventually coming home with a shiny new-to-us vehicle.

Throughout the whole experience, I remembered going to car dealerships (and being bored to tears!) with my parents, when I was a child. It’s rather surreal to do things for yourself that you remember your parents doing when you were a child. It really hit me then (at age 28) – I was a grown-up, at least in one way.

one of the houses we looked at

This year, O and I started shopping for houses. That, too, brought back memories of trips with my parents to view homes. Doing it myself, though, was overwhelming and more than a little terrifying. Somehow it was a lot less scary dealing with cars than with houses. Perhaps because instead of the 5-figures of debt that a car purchase brings, we were looking at going for 6. Six-figure sums are pretty intimidating to think about! Besides, we were choosing the place where our son would grow up, thereby reminding me of all the responsibilities in my life. So again, now at 33 years of age, I was becoming a grown-up in a whole new way.

People ask me sometimes what I want to be when I “grow up,” and I jokingly respond that I don’t necessarily plan to grow up at all. Those who know my family well know that we all tend to stay pretty young-at-heart well into our golden years. I’ve gotten married (twice), become a mother, graduated from college. I’ve made life-changing decisions, and moved way from the area that was my home for nearly 26 years. I know what I want my career to be, and I am taking steps in that direction. I’m the one who generally handles our finances, and I am very responsible with our spending.

Somewhere along the line, when I wasn’t looking, I think I actually did become a Grown-up. In all the ways that count.