Hi friends! I know I have been away too long. I’m just catching up with myself, laying low, and resting from the last 6 months of craziness.
Yes, 6 months since the storm. That is crazy town to me. Life looks VERY different than it did then. Different house, different furniture, different school, and very different priorities.
I can sense that there are some big shifts happening inside me, but I can’t really articulate them yet. It must be true that one can’t go through so much activity and change and not be fundamentally affected. It’s all for the good and I wouldn’t undo any of it because of what we have learned in the process.
I made a big push to unpack most of our things, replace what was needed, and have even hung a few pictures on the walls. There’s still much to do (art room is a frustrating mess) but we are getting settled into new routines. I’ve let go of some expectations I had about the rental house feeling like home. It is a good place to spend a year and it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Our neighborhood is changing rapidly. Nearly every house is either torn down, in the process of being raised up, or for sale.
Our own lot is waiting for some action. We closed on the construction loan on Friday, which means we are finally no longer paying our mortgage AND rent. The pool is a mess, so I went over there this morning to plug in an extension cord to a different neighbor’s outlet to see if we can get a temporary pump going while we wait for the city permit. We hope to avoid the expense of having to shock it yet again.
I got to escape for a few days to Miami Beach with Mr. B, tagging along on one of his meetings. It was really great to catch up with some friends there and to spark some life into our marriage. Still 2 weeks later, I feel like we are dating again. 🙂 I have been looking at photo albums of the past 18 years and wondering where I’ve been all that time – was I with the same guy? I see him so differently right now so I must have been taking him for granted before, which is wasted appreciation and opportunity. We are only looking forward though, to more romance and deeper love. To be waiting for his return tonight from a business trip with giddy anticipation is fresh and fun.
The plans are finished for the new house! It’s amazing how many times you can change things! In each version, we’d see something else we wanted to move around. We are making some preliminary selections too – appliances, plumbing fixtures, fireplace, windows and doors. In a couple of weeks, I can show you a rendering of what it will look like.
Now that the school book fair is over, the temple directory is designed and out of my hands, the second move is done, and much of the house paperwork is behind us, I hope to settle into some calmness. This week has been lovely for slowly unpacking the art room and otherwise just doing my own thing. In the past month, I was asked to apply for two different jobs, a high compliment, but I’m not ready for anything new just yet. I don’t trust life just yet to stay at this pace and I want to be ready for the unexpected twist.
I’ve been enjoying curling up with a cup of tea and a good book more and more. Tell me what you are reading lately!
First, I rarely watch TV, so this is noteworthy. While I was having my little personal retreat in the Miami hotel room, I watched a Netflix series called The Paradise. It’s a British costume drama aired in 2012 that lasted 2 seasons. I highly recommend it for some distraction and a fantastic story. I’m rather sad that it’s ended. I plan to start watching The Crown next. Do you have any shows you recommend?
White Houses: A Novel by Amy Bloom
I really like Amy Bloom, but I just could not get into this one and dropped it halfway through. Also, I’ve probably read too many books about Eleanor Roosevelt, so this story was not new to me. This is a look into Lorena Hickok’s decades-long relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. I found the constant switching between Lorena’s reflection on her difficult past and the current action to be confusing and I didn’t feel invested in her past enough to care. I have to say though, I learned more about FDR and his relationships and temperament here than in other books I’ve read. Maybe if it had been told from Eleanor’s point of view it would have been more interesting.
Every woman’s body is an intimate landscape. The hills, the valleys, the narrow ledges, the riverbanks, the sudden eruptions of soft or crinkling hair. Here are the plains, the fine dry slopes. Here are the woods, here is the smooth path to the only door I wish to walk through. Eleanor’s body is the landscape of my true home.
Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford
This is historical fiction at its best. Ford takes the Seattle world’s fair of 1909, the suffrage movement of women, and shows us the best and worst of humanity via two perspectives in time.
Half innocence lost, half substantive love story. I don’t want to give anything away here, so I’ll just say that many of the events in the story are real, though this is a work of fiction. Children were given away at the time, there was much discrimination against foreign orphans, and there was a world of vice and an underbelly to life in Seattle at the turn of the century. It’s a heartfelt story with unique and strong characters I won’t soon forget. I never read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet so that’s one that I’m going to read soon.
“‘My theory,’ Maisie said, ‘is that the best, worst, happiest, saddest, scariest, and most memorable moments are all connected. Those are the important times, good and bad. The rest is just filler.'”
Still Me: A Novel by Jojo Moyes
I just had to read this one and as soon as I got it from the library, I devoured it. It’s nice to see what’s become of Louisa after reading her story in the first two books, but I think I’m done with her now. This one just didn’t grip me the same way as the others did, though I enjoyed it. Like Louisa, I have moved to a new city and tried to hold on to a long-distance relationship and I have also struggled with knowing myself regardless of who I am surrounded by. As Louisa grows even stronger and more into herself, she learns to enjoy what she has and to embrace her new experiences. And, of course, love wins in the end once she learns who she is and what she wants most.
I thought about how you’re shaped so much by the people who surround you, and how careful you have to be in choosing them for this exact reason, and then I thought, despite all that, in the end maybe you have to lose them all in order to truly find yourself.
The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.
Between Me and You: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch
An actress and a screenwriter alternate telling about their marriage, from the start of their relationship as well as from today going backwards. We see the exciting beginnings, the bitter separation, and how they got from one to the other. We don’t yet know as we read if they can figure out what went wrong and try to piece themselves back together. Rather a heartbreaking read.
Being valued, being needed, being seen is an easy thing to underestimate. Like air. Like you don’t realize that it’s necessary to sustain you until it’s suddenly gone.
Naomi, What a 6 months you have had! Wishing you to be surrounded by kindness as you negotiate your new terrain. Thanks for the book reviews, I love to see what you are reading and add to my own reading list! A laugh-out-loud book on my own list this year: The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry.
I will be sure to read that one, Janet. Thank you for the good wishes!
Congratulations on the new house design! So many decisions you had to make. I think your feelings of contentment show that you have made good decisions, you are not worrying about them. I have had some decisions to make too, in my Mom’s life. I think they might turn out OK in the end, but it’s still early days yet. She has been in an assisted living facility for a month now, and is scheming to get out, but it is obvious she is going to stay another month. I am the one paying her bills. The hardest part for me is trying to keep my siblings together, agreeing on the major points and working toward the same goal. The three of us also have three step-siblings, and at times I’ve had to pretend I’m a diplomat, negotiating between branches of the family. Wish me luck!
Contentment = good decisions. I like that!! That sounds like a tough situation but I know you’re up for the challenge. You are such a loving person.