"Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world."

- T'ien Yiheng

If the above quote is true...and I think it is...imagine what tea drunk in a sunny backyard can accomplish.

A picture is a worth a thousand words they say...so here's about 8000 of my most eloquent.

Fresh cherries, just washed-
beads of ruby strewn across
white bowl's shiny gloss-
dainty stems crisscrossed.


-ephemera

"Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."


-G.K. Chesterton



So including my husband our new neighborhood currently houses 3 Firefighter/paramedics, 1 Police officer, 1 State trooper and 1 retired Sheriff. You'd think that as a result our neighborhood would be one of the safest around. And I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying I find it kind of amazing that our next door neighbor's car was stolen early Sunday morning. 


Then again, maybe it isn't that amazing. Maybe no one has bothered to informed the criminal element that in our neighborhood their chances of stealing from either law enforcement or Fire department employees is statistically very high. And therefore statistically ill-advised.

A friend of mine asked me the other day how our daughter Elli is adjusting to the new house.


"Pretty well," I said.


Tomorrow she'll have been living here with us exactly one week and in that time she has miscalculated the distance to the bathroom and therefore peed on the floor twice. She has dismantled the new decor hanging on her bedroom wall. She has figured out how to stretch window-blind cord about halfway across her room. (If that doesn't strike fear in the heart of a parent not much will...) She has broken a lamp. She has used her bed as a trampoline/tumbling mat and she has consumed a quarter of a stick of butter. No, eating a quarter of a stick of butter has very little to do with moving into a new house. But it happened because the kitchen and the dining room are now separated by a door and she thought that because we couldn't see her we would therefore never find out. Seeing that just unwrapped stick of butter - organic, grass-fed no less - marred and mutilated by grubby little fingers also significantly added to the "Really? Are you kidding me?" level of our incredulous disbelief and escalating frustration.


So, to recap...yeah...pretty well?

"When I'm alone at night every noise I hear is a serial killer..."


-Pinterest


So. I just completed my first day in our new house alone.

Did every strange noise have me paranoid and freaking out and envisioning an intruder? No.

Did the unfamiliar quirks and idiosyncrasies of our new home suddenly take on a more malevolent feel and slightly unnerve me? Yes indeed.

There was the spontaneous grinding, sucking sound that emanated from the sink drain when I ran the dishwasher. There was the pipe-rattling noise that shook the floor of the bathroom when I attempted to fill the bathtub. And then there was the brown colored water that poured from the downstairs faucet after I flushed the toilet. (Interesting, is it not, how all those involve water? Interesting and probably not a coincidence.)

I grew up in an old house. I'm not some naive alarmist. Were my husband home I'd merely mention the noise or the sound or the color of the water to him in a "just so you know" kind of way and shrug it off; content in the knowledge that he, of the infinitely more capable handyman skills, would have an answer or explanation or solution.

But he's not here. I am. Alone.

And I find myself thoroughly convinced that I have somehow broke the new house.

Buyer's remorse is a common affliction among new home owners. Just because you have a sudden urge to weep doesn't mean you've made a mistake. Everybody knows old houses have their quirks...
The trick to overcoming buyer's remorse is to have a plan. Pick one room and make it yours. Go slowly through the house. Be polite, introduce yourself, so it can introduce itself to you.

- Frances Mayes ( as played by Diane Lane in the movie Under The Tuscan Sun. )

Do we have buyer's remorse?

No way. We couldn't be more thrilled. Even the work (and there has been A LOT of work) is a joy, we are finding. When it means you are creating a home.

But there have been new, shall we say, less than ideal experiences. Being locked out of our house? Yeah, that's one of them. Finding out we need to rewire our dryer hook-up is another. Working in the yard until 10:00 at night, coming in filthy, exhausted, covered in a million tiny cuts and scrapes and bruises, just getting settled in the bathtub and fully lathered-up in shampoo only to find the hot water suddenly not working...? 

I won't lie to you. That pretty much sucked.

But it's an old house, as my husband says. It has it's quirks, as Frances Mayes says. And it's all part of the charm.

Did I tell you we are only the fourth owners? Since 1920.

The doors and door frames in the bedrooms bear measurement marks from 2 different generations. As the new-comers we are the hot conversation topic amongst the neighbors. And we've already met most of those that live immediately around us. (They all know we have a daughter too, though they have yet to meet her.) We've been brought flowers, invited to the annual picnic and given a map of the whole circle complete with everyone's name and all their children's ages.

So, sketchy hot water after 10:00 at night? Small price to pay, I think...

I must apologize. I meant to take pictures of the BIG MOVE yesterday...but, alas...I couldn't.

A little before 7:30 in the morning 12 Firefighters (I know. Every girl's dream come true, right?) descended upon our condo and in a show of brute strength and impressive masculinity proceeded to load up all our belonging and transport them to our new house. And quite honestly they were so fast I was unable to capture them on film.

Really and truly.

You have your doubts?

Well, we were loaded and unloaded in an hour and a half.