Category: Home

One week since move in day.  I'm still in my new house (no surprise) and I'm even more in love with the place although I am also far more familiar with its peccadillos.  Well, we all have peccadillos.  I have mine, as I enter my 60th year on this planet, and this house, which is 90 this year, has its as well.  Let us celebrate peccadillos.  Much as we may like shiny new things, it is our eccentricities which make us what we are.

Move in day went swimmingly.  All the boxes were color-coded, although the furniture was not.  This was a good thing, as I am still trying to get the tape residue off a chrome table that the movers stuck tape on when I moved here from New York 5 years ago.  At the same time, some things ended up not where I originally intended.  This too is good and bad.   As to the color coded chart, (and yes, every box had matching color coded tape), I own up to being a nerd, an organized nerd who likes color.  Ignore the "Thanksgivings/Petitions", I borrowed the white board from the church.  At the same time, both thanksgivings and petitions are oddly pertinent to the process of moving, so perhaps it was a serendipitous choice after all.

 

I am not unpacked; I am however partially unpacked.  The living room and dining room are more or less set, furniture wise, although there are boxes of  decorative "objects" (pretend to affect a snooty French pronunciation here) still to be unpacked.  The master bedroom is more set, in that both large and small items are in place, but within the drawers anarchy may be brewing.  

 

The kitchen is more than half unpacked, but has also been re-arranged twice.  I am about to embark on the third rearrangement of the kitchen.  Whether this is necessary, or it is a way to avoid scrubbing the stove and oven (which is desperately in need of scrubbing) is yet to be determined.  I am having friends for dinner tonight, and whether I cook on a newly cleaned stove, bite my lips and cook anyway, or order out, is yet to be revealed.

There have been joys and frustrations and an untold number of trips to Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond.  Among the joys is my evolving spice rack. A friend sent a house-warming gift consisting of a set of 5 spice blends and a copy of The Spice Companion from La Boite NY.  As it happened the box of spices and their nifty little magnetic boxes arrived just as I was wondering what to do about spice storage. In the previous house the spices were in a shallow drawer, which was not my favorite choice as I tend to like spices in easy sight.  In this house I have fewer drawers, but one empty piece of wall.  I went in for a long-overdue haircut shortly after the spice collection arrived and saw these photos of downtown Knoxville. An idea was born.

 

The lower photo will move up and the spice modules will continue to grow around the photos.  I ordered empty spice sets from Food 52, which I filled with the remnants of my intentionally dwindling spice collection, and the collection will continue to grow as needed, eventually occupying much of this wall.  Apparently I like spice and color. Also apparent is that I am inclined to spend too much time fretting about the details and not enough time getting the boxes opened.   It will all happen in its own good time, and I shall continue to putter, more so than in my last move, as there is no one hurrying me along.

 

(A view of dining room joy. the tiny square hanging in the window may prove to be the new curtain fabric, not that you can tell anything in this photo.)

 

Admittedly there have also been moments when I have wondered what the heck I am doing and if I am even cut out for this.  Friday I returned home tired and hungry after running around, fulfilling goodness knows what errands.  It was late, around about 8 PM.  I had just come from Home Depot and I wanted dinner.  I knew I had some nice ground lamb in the fridge, and an eggplant, and I wanted nothing more than to grill a lamb burger and make some kind of spicy eggplant puree to accompany said burger.  It seemed so easy. 

 

Then I realized that the grill was on the deck, conveniently positioned next to the gas outlet, but was not connected.  Why had I not noticed that?  I couldn't get the cap off the gas line in order to hook up the grill.  It appeared to be rusted in place.  In my limited experience with gas lines (we did not have one in NY) the connections had plastic caps, but not this one.  As I mentioned it was late and I was tired and hungry. I didn't feel like rustling through the box of tools George left me, and which I have still managed to avoid organizing.  I wasn't sure I even had the right kind of wrench, and I definitely did not want to go back to Home Depot.  I ended up making a lamb and eggplant saute, which was perfectly good although not what I wanted.  Worst of all, tired and frustrated as I was, I simply doubted myself and the wisdom of my choices.  How could I manage a house if I couldn't even connect a grill to the gas line?

 

As it happens the grill is still not connected.  I either:  1) Don't have the right kind of wrenches to do the job (possible); 2) Don't know what I am doing (more than likely); 3) Have the right idea but don't have the strength to move the rusted cover (also a strong possibility), 4) Am fully capable and have the right tools but am afraid of the gas line (you have that right); or 5) Am generally in over my head.  I'm opting for the latter, but I still have resources.  I can work a drill or a table saw, even though I may prefer not to, but I really don't want to figure out the gas connection.  Luckily I can afford to call for help. 

 

Of course that means that  if I can't count on using the grill, I have to clean the stove.

 

 

Yesterday Tikka and I drove down to Atlanta and back.  We went to Ikea for some Billy bookcases, and since move-in day isn't until Monday I thought I could at least get one or two bookcases assembled in advance.  I will need more, but they can be delivered at a later date.  This week both the drive to Atlanta (slightly over 3 hours each way) and putting together the bookcases are necessary distractions. 

I'm in need of distractions right now.  I'm tired of going to an empty house.  I love seeing each new improvement, watching it evolve, but I'm also frustrated that all I have been able to do is sit and watch.  I need to put something together, to feel the sense of accomplishment of doing something, even something small like putting together a bookcase.

 

I knew that this week would be the hardest week: the third week between houses, the week after my two short trips, to Chicago and Dallas, the week before move-in.  I don't think I'd really realized that I'd be quite as much at loose ends, quite as emotional, quite as ready to just crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head hoping that I'd wake up and find myself all moved in.  It's not that I have nothing to do, just that  I'm just having trouble pulling myself together enough to focus.  I struggle with decisions.  I want to burst into tears.  They aren't necessarily tears of sadness, and they certainly aren't tears of joy either, although I can't say that I am that far from either one of those emotions.  Perhaps it is all just anticipation and frustration and a feeling of being unmoored.  Two weeks was a vacation, now in the third week I just want to be home.

 

The work is winding down at the house, or is the term finishing up?  The contractors will be done tomorrow, except for a few things that haven't arrived yet, but for the most part they are small things.  Life and work can go on without them. The washer and dryer were probably installed in the new laundry room yesterday while I was driving.  The countertop might arrive tomorrow, or it might arrive next week.  I don't have confirmation on that yet, but I'll manage either way.

Today I have to get those Billy bookcases out of my car and upstairs.  Then I can start assembly.  The rugs also come home today. Once the rugs are in perhaps I can set up the loom, perhaps I'll find other small tasks to keep me occupied.  Monday can't come soon enough.

The curtains came down yesterday in the house I currently live in, but which I now, refer to as my old house.  Tomorrow the photographer comes, after which, I am officially but a caretaker.

 

And this is a true thing, that the house I currently live in is my old house.  I'm not in my new house yet.  And so the process of transition continues to move purposefully forward, and occasionally backwards, catching me by surprise.   I live here and yet I don't.   Last week furniture was removed from the old house, but the curtains remained, leaving the house feeling somewhat unbalanced, the comforts of material wealth at odds with the increasing minimalist sparseness.

The heavy planters which had previously flanked my garage doors were also moved, and they have found a new home here in the entryway to the new house.  In fact they may be slightly large for the space, although that is not particularly evident in this photo. Seeing them here I am reminded of my first visit to the this house, before I knew I would buy it, or perhaps some part of me knew, when I said to myself something along the lines of "my planters will look good on this porch".

 

But I digress.

 

Yesterday the curtains came down and the old house assumed a state of minimalist balance.  I too felt balanced and settled.  This was in contrast to my feelings over the weekend, when I had felt more at odds with my space.  My sanctuary had been invaded. Worse, I had been the perpetrator of the crime.  I felt aimless and occasionally teary-eyed, not due to regret really, more likely due to some sense of being partially uprooted, neither here nor there.  I'm sure it was mostly that I was over-tired,  and although my efficient, intellectual side was happy ticking off boxes, I had not allowed enough time for my emotions to catch up.   Today, with both furniture and curtains gone, it seems the undoing is complete and a sense of balance has returned –  my pieces but in a more minimalist setting. 

 

This is something else that surprised me, the importance of my own sense of balance in the space.   Today, as I look around the old house, the same house that made me teary with loss on Saturday, I can say, quite honestly, that this was never my house.  I made it something nice, and now it is time to let it go.

These camellias are blooming at the new house.  The fire columns have been temporarily been relocated onto this patio, although I'm not convinced this will be their final position.  For now they are safe and out of the way until after the process of moving is complete.  I've brought a table over as well, and a couple of chairs,  so I can sit here on a sunny afternoon and enjoy the exuberance of blossoms in this space that is rapidly becoming my new sanctuary,

 

 

Draperies were hung in the master bedroom, which means that room is, more or less, finished.  At least as finished as I can handle at this juncture.  I need to move a recliner from the guest bedroom, where it is too large for the space, into this room, and eventually I will change out the coverlet and pursue other small bits, but I am not prepared to tackle any further changes at this time. Now it is time to settle in.

 

 

Hanging the draperies, and finishing the master bedroom is a huge relief, and, just as I was rather startled that it was so important to me, I am bemused at how happy I feel.  Of course, having the bedroom appear  "dressed" suits its location at the center of the public living spaces in this house, as I began to discuss back in September, when I wrote about my discomfort with this one aspect of the layout of this house, a layout I otherwise love.  I smile, a tiny bit mockingly, at myself because this is the most formally styled wall in my house, the most  "done", and I recognize that this level of symmetrical formality is important here simply because this is the most problematic space for me. I would perhaps prefer a bit more emotional distance in the layout of the house, between sleeping quarters and public quarters, but I also recognize that it is not the presence of the bed that I find too personal, unless of course I left it unmade and rumpled.    I suppose that is what bothered me before; the bedroom was an afterthought, a bed and scattered bits of furniture that fit nowhere else.  It was not cohesive, and truthfully not even that comfortable or functional.  It was that very sense of unfinishedness that felt like an invasion of privacy, combined with an odd mixture of feeling both unwelcoming and exposed, and I live here.  I could, and did, close the door, but in my own convoluted psychology, I find the closed door to be more of an affront than an open door.  But an open door requires acknowledgement of the line between public and private, a public face for an essentially private space.  Now that I think of it, much like the photograph by Matthew Pillsbury above the bed, shown below, also a study in the public and the private, but from the opposite perspective.  In the photo, we are within the realm of the private looking out, the photo is the focal point of space designed to be seen from the public, looking in.   Public and private, juxtapositions and contrasts.

 

This is the first house in my adult life in which I have hung draperies.  I made draperies for home economics in 9th grade, I seem to recall that the project entailed lined floor to ceiling draperies in pink polished cotton for a 9 foot wall.   My mother insisted I do them properly and perfectly and it was probably the first big project I ever undertook and actually finished.  When I moved into George's house we pulled down all the draperies ostensibly because I thought they were ugly, but even more importantly, because they were badly made, and that alone drove me to distraction.  We never put up new drapes.  Neither of us was so inclined. My own taste tends to run toward shutters and bamboo shades, but neither of those really worked in that house, and we had fabric shades installed. We had the same kind of honeycomb shades installed in this house, but although I never missed draperies in Hyde Park, here the lack of draperies, at least in a couple or rooms, really niggled away in a corner of my brain. 

 

The other thing that really tickles me no end, and is kind of silly, is that this is the bedroom I might have wished I had 2 1/2 years ago, in March through May of 2014, when I was a prisoner in my own bedroom.  It is the room I wished I lived in when  I could not stand for more than 20 or 30 seconds, could not sit that long, when even those rare 20 second excursions left me in severe pain for hours. And yet my friends visited me, brought me flowers and made me tea, brought me food and stayed to chat.  They didn't come for the décor, and on one level the décor doesn't matter.  It is all ephemeral.  I probably won't live here forever.  I hopefully will not be confined to that room again, but if it does become my world I will be happy.  I can equally hold onto my penchant for the particulars of how a space looked, an inclination not realized until fairly recently, and my complete belief and understanding that it doesn't matter. 

 

The funny thing is that, even though I was in pain, even though I was terribly dependent on others, even though my house was a mess and was beyond my control, I could be happy.  I had no control over my physical circumstances, but I did have control over my inner self. Happiness doesn't come from things, or even necessarily from the circumstances of life or the world around you.  It comes from within.  But we are also all human, and we all have our little indulgences, and the things we do over and over again. And we all like to put up a good front when we can, even sometimes if it is too little too late.  It is a delicate balance, this act of respecting and honoring ourselves and others while at the same time holding ourselves and each other both closely and lightly. Let us watch ourselves and each other with bemused tenderness, and seize joy where we find it.