October 29, 2006 @ 8:40 pm | Filed under:
Family If you wouldn’t mind, I would be very grateful if we could all agree to postpone Halloween by a week. Even a few extra days would do. Tuesday is just too soon. I can’t locate my salt and pepper shakers at the moment, much less the supplies necessary to concoct five costumes in forty-eight hours. Even if the baby just goes as a Cute Baby, that leaves four costumes I’ll have to whip up from, say, recycled moving boxes and blank newsprint. And yes, I’m well aware that a Google search would probably turn up at least a hundred websites specializing in instructions for constructing Halloween costumes from recycled moving boxes and blank newsprint. It’s just that I doubt Belle, Felicity, and St. Joan of Arc are among the many, many fabulous costumes that can be assembled from cardboard and crumpled paper.
So what do you say? Can we all agree to put a temporary freeze on turning the calendar, and let it be Monday, October 30, for the next four or five days? That would be swell.
Unpacking is like playing with one of those infuriating little handheld puzzles where you have to slide tiles around to rearrange the segments of a picture. You have a stack of boxes here and a bunch of bookcases there, but you can’t get the bookcases in place because there are boxes in the way, and you can’t move the boxes because there’s nowhere to put them. And then suddenly—you have no idea how it happens—you shift one object in just the right way and everything starts to click into place.
We’re not quite there yet, but we’re close.
Scott broke down all the empties yesterday and moved them out to the trash cans, and that helped a lot. He also, and this was key, found shelf pegs for the last six empty bookcases. So far hardly anything has turned up missing in this move, but of course the AWOL items are things that are vitally important. There were supposed to be THREE bags of shelf pegs, but we could only find two. Your umpteen bookcases do you no good at all if you can’t put in the shelves. Scott bought new pegs at Home Depot, and we’ll probably find that third baggie any minute now, because as soon as you pay money to replace something, it comes out of hiding. I’m pretty sure that’s a Rule of Moving.
The other missing item is a kitchen box. I’m sure it’s here somewhere. I thought I’d opened every single box but clearly I have not, because I have yet to locate the carton with my Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt in it, and I know I’d have remembered coming across that one. Scrambled eggs just aren’t the same without my TS SS, sob. Fortunately I know where to score some more, and then I’ll have—according to the Rule of Moving—TWO jars, which will be just fine with me.
Anyway, aside from bland eggs and general disorder, we’re settling in quite nicely. We had a great first week in our new digs. The view may be somewhat less inspiring than our beloved Blue Ridge vista (the guy next door, which is to say about ten feet from where I’m sitting right now, is doing a large and outspread renovation project that takes up his entire yard), but it’s INTERESTING, all right. And the weather is gorgeous. Scott heard something on the radio about how winter is coming, so get ready for…more 72 degree days. Heh.
The girls are making friends already—a certain wonderful online pal of mine gave us the warmest possible welcome and an instant sense of community—and our schedules are already filling up, and I can’t believe we just got here ten days ago.
I’m hoping this week will be a return to rhythm—altered, certainly, but back to our old pattern of mornings spent immersed in books and Latin and nature study and all that fun stuff, and a quiet midday rest period during which I can maybe grab a little writing time, and then afternoons spent exploring and playing. I’m posting this here, on Bonny Glen, because it’s time for the blogs to return to their right rhythm too. Lilting House is supposed to focus on (as you know) homeschooling and special needs children, but I blogged the trip on it because I knew I couldn’t guarantee daily updates on TWO blogs, and I did promise to keep up a certain level of frequency in the posting there. But now our general family stuff will bounce back home to Bonny Glen, along with thoughts about the books we read, and, occasionally, thoughts about the books I write. Of course I’m probably the only one who takes any notice of what kind of post I put on which blog. I suppose I’m just thinking with my fingers here, trying to organize my mental writing space the way I’ve been organizing closets.
On the trip I thought of a new blog I want to start and Alice has promised to help me. It’ll have to be a whenever-we-can-squeeze-it-in kind of project, but I think it’ll be fun. It’s an idea that grew out of our cross-country drive, and the nice thing about it is that all of you can chip in. More on that later. I have to finish my closets first!
