Feels Like Home

Inspirational song: Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)

And just like that, this house is starting to turn into a home. Most of our belongings are still piled in the garage, nothing has been painted, no art has been hung on the walls, and I still have every bit as much crap piled on top of the cooktop as the day we moved in. But the dining room table is assembled and the chairs loosely gathered around it. We ate lunch there today, surrounded by cats who were ecstatic to have their cushy chairs back. It took two days to remember to bring the power drill over, so we could reassemble the bed frame that Mr S-P custom built when we upgraded to a king sized bed at the original Park (all the better to fit two humans and a hundred cats, or however many we keep at any given moment). Since he loaded up the truck in Charleston, we have been squeezed together on the double bed that fits on the antique frame I swiped from my grandparents' old cabin in Oklahoma. It's a cute bed, but it's too small to house us and the random assortment of cats who wander by during a night. And while this basement guest room is wonderfully cool, dark, and quiet for sleeping, I'm ready to move into my new master suite. Maybe tomorrow, once I figure out where we packed the sheets. But as it is, slowly, this place is starting to look like us, and more importantly for our and the cats' well-being, it is starting to smell like us. It's more comforting to all of us, and we like it.

Yesterday was crazy busy, so we took it easy this morning. Only a few things have been pushed vaguely into place. We moved the big armoire that my father-in-law built many decades ago (the one we use as a liquor cabinet, ironically, since I was told he was a big teetotaler) against a wall to see how well we like it, and I was surprised to discover that the upstairs living room is actually really big. Empty I really couldn't tell, and after the frenzy of truck-unloading that left big pieces in the middle of the floor, it just felt crowded everywhere. We have made the decision on who gets which closet, and how we will arrange several things. We haven't gotten the last of the stuff from the apartment, and I was far too sore everywhere to do much cleaning. We still have to go back for one last round, and to mop and clean the kitchen and bathroom out there. I'm not looking forward to that. I wanted to spend tomorrow arranging this house, but we have an obligation to turn the apartment back to our bestie-slash-landlady in move-in condition, especially since she has it rented as of August 1.

We are to that point in the move where we end up at stores like Lowe's twice in one day. This morning we just went to get a few pieces of aluminum channel, so that we could make screens for the apartments and some window-stops for this place (to keep Zoe in more than intruders out). We left with four new plants (clearance plus a rose I needed like I need air to breathe), three vaguely purple-gray paint samples, aqua paint for the bathroom, and another couple bags of supplies. But by the end of the day, before we had even made it home to unload the first trip from the truck, we swung by a different Lowe's for a shelf over the laundry equipment and electric supply notions. And what happens when you go to your favorite store tired and emotionally vulnerable? You end up with a kitschy pineapple solar light. Yes, yes you do. It's the perfect symbol of welcome to my new-old home.