Iowadrift

Whooo-eeee

I am too incoherent, just in a general way, to do anything but make bullet points.  Thus:

• This house rocks.  We can see stars at night, after years of pink town night skies.  I know what quarter the moon is in all the time.  A rose-breasted grossbeak hopped across our lawn yesterday (are we impressed with my birding yet?  Don't be: be impressed with my father's birding instead).  At the farm next door, cows bellow and goats bleat and chickens make that self-important cluck they do when they've laid an egg.  TTD and Da Boyz walked over the other day and introduced themselves and bought eggs and honey.  The house itself loves our furniture and all the rugs fit.  We keep looking at each other and saying, "We can't believe we live here."
• GEEZ, I am exhausted.  In the last three weeks we have packed up one house, moved ourselves, two boys, two cats, two turtles and a hamster cross-country, unloaded AND UNPACKED (except for curtains and pictures) a new house, started a new job (TTD), started adjusting to life with dramatically less babysitting, started to learn a new town, gone to a new church, and explored a lot of new countryside.  Emotionally, I am WIPED.  My head doesn't even know where to go with this, let alone my heart.  I am so deeply at peace with being here, and so happy, and TTD is doing just so well with everything, and neither of us has any doubts about it...and that doesn't negate for a second that this is a huge change and we have all had our worlds rocked, and now that things are starting to settle a tiny bit, we're feeling it.
• I got so damn much done so fast since January that now that I'm down to the last bits--setting up wireless internet, opening a new bank account, getting the cars registered, buying a microwave, paying the flipping bills, for crying out loud--now that I'm down to that, I've slowed to a crawl.  Well, to be honest, I've come to a screeching halt.  Today I managed to go to one doctor's appointment and do a load of laundry.  Bas.
• Speaking of doctors, I found a great neurologist for my Rest*less Legs Syndrome, hooray.  Aren't you happy to hear about my medical details?  Isn't it interesting?  Read on, it gets better.  See, when I got here I had an appointment with an FNP, to establish care, beause I take Perc*ocet every day and so need regular prescriptions.  The FNP couldn't have been nicer, but it turned out the practice she works for doesn't let NP's prescribe Schedule II drugs.  To which I say, WTF?  Anyway, I had to go BACK the next day to see an internist, who gave me the whole long boring song and dance about geez, I shouldn't be using opiates for RLS (wrong; they're a first-line drug for it), geez, after so many years I might get addicted (wrong: if you don't get addicted early, you don't get addicted, plus if you're using the drugs for a reason, rather than recreation, hello, you don't get addicted anyway.  No, I'm not defensive; why do you ask?), geez, I should take A*mbien (really not).  Then he referred me to Nice Neurologist, who said, "Why did he put you on that, it doesn't work, you should be on opiates if you've failed everything else?"  HA! thought I.  Vindicated!  I am very petty.
• The Nice Neurologist found I had a positive Babinski on the left, which means when he scratched the bottom of my foot my toes went up instead of down.  This is abnormal.  Or maybe not; maybe I'm just that way.  Have to go back in eight weeks and see if it went away.  If not, MRI time.  TTD heard the news and said, So he wants to rule out MS?"  I confess I had not thought of this.  "Oh, thank you dear," said I.  "You're SUCH a help."
• So far, two days in, TTD really likes his job.  This is probably because he hasn't had to see patients so far.  Tomorrow the MA medical board  meets on his license; hold your thumbs.
• Did I mention I kind of can't get a grip?  It's so odd.  On the one hand, this is home in a way Iowa never was.  On the other, our entire life is in the air, and I can't rebuild it in a week.  Friends and activities for the boys, a daily and weekly rhythm, a sense of place and roots...these will take a year or two to settle into place, and even then will change often because of the boys' ages.  But it's so wierd, to feel like we're floating.  The boys are wired and clingy, but otherwise doing very well, and seeing their grandparents every day.  I'm pretty much the same way.  Discombobulated, is the word.
• Rabbit visited his new school, and pronounced it a going concern.  Sighs of relief all round.
• I am working up a post about post-partum depression, drugs, and me.  Stay tuned.
• So tired.  Going to bed.  Write a comment and keep me grounded?  Oh, and I need a new blog name.  It's up to you.

You Are Here

We made it. 

We made it! 

Well, sort of.  Some of us are here, and some of us are still on the road with two cats, two turtles, and a hamster.  And some--wait, make that all--of our worldly goods are, like, on the New York State Thruway right now.

But still, thank you God!

The last week really could not have gone more smoothly (if you discount the tremendous physical and emotional upheaval).  Thus:

Friday: TTD finishes his job and relaxes visibly, almost glowing with relief

Saturday: We pack, or rather, TTD packs and I wrangle small children

Sunday: We say good-bye to our wonderful church, and pack.  Or rather, see the above.  I take down the pictures and the house starts to echo.  The kids watch about eighteen episodes of Go, Diego, Go! and begin spouting facts about meerkats and tree frogs and such.  I emote, because I think that Monday we're going to a hotel.

Monday:  TTD awakens me at 9:30 (!!!) with the news that he's called off the packers b/c he's gotten so much done, so we have a whole day at home we hadn't anticipated.  I inform him that he'll be rewarded for this, most likely with lots of sex (pretend you didn't see that, parentals!  Though I guess what with my having two kids and all you probably already guessed that TTD and I get up to something occasionally.  Then we have a few last playdates and keep packing all that dreadful last-minute mess of bath towels, sheets, phones, two saucepans, four plates, three glasses, and the cat litter.  Not to mention the cats.  THEN we spend our REAL last night in the house.  I go outside and sit on the porch and say thank you to the little house which has sheltered us through so much joy and pain.

Tuesday morning: Beautiful and warm.  Brilliant Friend picks us up at eight, just as a huge moving van pulls up.  Ideal, kind, competent middle-aged woman driver and her husband and dog hop out and proceed to organize us within an inch of our lives.  I walk out the red front door for the last time and watch the house receed in the distance, the moving van bulking large in front of it and the neighbor's cherry tree shedding pink blossoms around it.

Tuesday midday:  Boyz and I have absolutely flawless trip, not one split-second of delay, everyone perfectly behaved and relaxed, glory hallelujah.  Choose to take this as sign that move is meant to be.  Arrive in Boston on time, come home, find that sweet Grandfather (aka my father) has put Rabbit-height sign up on front door: Welcome Rabbit and Urplet!, with funny cartoon pictures as only he can draw them.  Delighted children play in Grandmother and Grandfather's yard, everyone collapses in bed early. 

Tuesday night:  TTD sleeps in empty house and says that it no longer feels like home without us.

Wednesday:  First journey to new house.  Excellent Brother loans me his Jeep, complete with iPod to listen to, and I drive the forty minutes to my new home.  Beautiful old seacoast town, then a five minute drive into the country, and there it is: yellow, unassuming, perfect: home.  I walk around and through, breathing deeply, and discover that the attic smells like my favorite house on earth, the 150 year old "cottage" in the White Mountains which has been in my family for five generations.  Grandmother (aka my mother) arrives with small boys: Urp is fast asleep in his car seat, and Rabbit and I explore slowly and quietly, holding hands.  He loves it like I do, with a steady and unspectacular and deep love.  I can tell.

Wednesday night:  TTD calls from the road.  Two pissed-off turtles in Tupperware, one confused hamster in a cage wired on top of them so he won't cannon into the dashboard at every stoplight, one fat yellow cat sitting in a car seat and watching out the window, one nervous pink fluffy cat in TTD's lap, ears pinned back and one paw on the steering wheel.  All systems go.

Wednesday late night: I am going to bed.  Good night!  And thank you all for all your good wishes.  I cannot tell you how much they mean to me.

As Time Goes By

Three weeks?  I haven't posted for three weeks?  Even for me, that's a record. 

Usually I love posting.  I look forward to it; it's fun, and easy (as one friend said, the only thing easier than blogging is rolling over and going back to sleep) and I like talking to my friends inside the computer.  But recently, obviously, I've been avoiding it.  I asked myself why: "Self," I said, 'why are you avoiding posting?"  And Self sat back, took a big swig of gin and tonic, crossed its legs comfortably, and said, "Hmmm.  Well may you ask."  "I DO ask," I said plaintively.  "What do you think?"  "I think this," said Self:

The first and most obvious reason is a corollary to the adage, well known in medicine, which holds that the later you stay (at the hospital), the later you stay.  In my case, the more I blog, the more I blog, and vice versa.  So when I get a few days over my usual posting times, I start to get worried and feel guilty, and then I avoid posting, and it mushrooms, and really, can you imagine anything dumber?  Because this is a BLOG we're talking about here, and a tiny blog at that.  So it's not a suitable forum for guilt: it's not a suitable forum for ANYTHING except blogging.  So, there we are: misplaced, overachieving-white-girl guilt.

Then there's the anxiety that I'll lose the already small number of readers I have.  If I don't post, Sitemeter complains, and then I feel like no one's reading anyway and get worried that if I don't post soon I'll lose EVERYONE, and then I avoid thinking about it, which leads to avoiding blogging altogether.  Again: so logical!  See how I am so much with the logic!  I am a ding-dong, really, because what, it comes as news to me that I'm not Dooce?

And then there's the real reason, which is that if I sit down and blog, that means I have to sit down and feel/think/write though this move, and I've not felt up to that.  I have been DOING this move like mad, and since the packers come the 23rd and the truck loads and leaves the 24th (to arrive in MA the 30th, is the theory), this move is definitely a busy thing right now.  But it's busy in our hearts and minds, as well, and since we're still in the taking-everything-apart-and-saying-goodbye-and-leaving phase, not the arriving-and-setting-up-a-new-life phase, I've been even busier trying to just work through and past the waves of emotion instead of sitting down and letting them wash over me.  Is anybody following me after that last sentence?

But with four days left in Iowa, emotion is just washing away, regardless.  The "lasts" come thick and fast: last day of Gorgeous Babysitter, last day of work for me, last day of work for TTD (did you know I gave him a fleece for Christmas with TTD embroidered on the pocket?), last day of preschool for Rabbit, last day of church, last playdates with so many friends, last nights in the house, last and last and last.  It's OK: I've done this so many times before, and I know that if you walk right through it and feel it and mourn as you need to, then you're free to be excited and interested when you move on.  But the thing is, right now?  I'm walking through it.

More, my children are walking with me.  Rabbit is old enough to know exactly what's going on, and to be unsettled and upset, though brave and interested as well.  We've done all the things y'all so wonderfully recommended in the comments a few posts ago: videotapes, postcards, books, talks, making special boxes and having him pack his own toys.  And it helps, and I know deep down he's going to be fine; he's going to flourish, even.  But right now he's teary and difficult and recalcitrant and clingy, and with good reason.  This morning he said, "I don't want to move," and tears began running down his face and dripping on my heart (which is still a little soggy).  I hugged him and squeezed him and held him and talked about how yes, it's hard, and soon he was cheerfully eating grilled cheese and watching Diego (and don't get me started on how much TV we're watching right now!).  But part of me feels guilty for asking him to leave, especially since he has such good friends here now. 

TTD and Urp are hanging in there, with Urp no more tantrum-prone than usual.  Though perhaps even more hilarious; the other day they were watching a penguin video (see about the videos?) and I said, "Can you waddle like a penguing, dude?" and Urp, annoyed, said, "I don't WANT waddle!"  Which is already a watchword in our house.  And TTD is holding his own, amid many good-bye parties at work, and good-byes to family as well.  We sort of take turns holding each other up, and egging each other on with our coping strategies, which right now consist, for both of us, in ignoring the packing and curling up in bed every evening with chocolate and novels. 

Oy, and speaking of packing, I need to go and do some.  And write notes to all the preschool teachers, and help Rabbit make a big card for his class, and bake a cake for same.  Rabbit wants to make green icing, so I have the requisite food coloring.  And sprinkles for the cake, and you name it.  And a mantra, which I keep repeating: this time next week, this time next week, this time next week.  Not to skip over the present/avoid living in the now/etc., but still...this time next week.

Lost

Oy, vey.  I had this whole lovely post about yesterday being my last shift at work, and what I would miss about my job, and how I loved the balance it brought to me, and how I did not love getting home at one in the merry morning after a night of handing out narcotics to shady people, and the computer up and ate the whole darn thing (the post, not the shady people) just as I was remembering to save it. 

Damn and damn and damn.

I refuse to be sat upon by a machine, though.  Which is why, though I can't re-create the post, I can at least make a list.

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT MY JOB

1) I got to walk into a room, change out of my Mom clothes and into my scrubs, and walk out in the ER.  Externalizing the change in roles from home to work was very helpful.  Also, when I hit the door and smelled that hospital smell, my brain clicked into medical mode and out of Mom mode, which was a relief.

2) I was usually so busy I forgot about everything but what I was doing that instant, which was persepctive-making.  By the time I was driving home and remembered whatever worries I'd left behind that morning (what has suddenly inspired the boys to demand I dress them alike: did I actually pay the Visa bill or just THINK about paying it: where did the Urplet hide my iPod: why do I never seem to have any underwear that fits: will our current health insurance bridge until TTD's new insurance kicks in 3 months after his start date?) the time and distance had sort of pulled said worries' teeth.

3) I liked the balance of hand skills, judgement, intuition, linear scientific thinking, and common sense my job demanded.  I liked walking the daily tightrope of trusting my own judgement while continually second-guessing myself.  I liked seeing how far I could push my skills (safely, of course!) and I liked the constant learning. 

4) I liked the cameraderie among the ER staff.  I liked being one of them.

5) I liked some of the patients.  I loved explaining something and having their eyes light up as they said, "Oh!  No one ever told me that before!"  I liked being able to ease pain.

6) I liked driving away from the house and knowing I wouldn't see my kids until the next morning.

7) I liked the paycheck.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT MY JOB

1) I did not like spending ten hours on my feet with no time to eat or pee, while patients hurled themselves at the ER as though they were lemmings and we were the cliff. 

2) I did not like feeling as though all my years of training had boiled down to handing out narcotics to deadbeats in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

3) I did not like being cursed at by patients because I WOULDN"T hand out narcotics.

4) I developed a fiery hatred for low back pain: both treating it and experiencing it.

5) I hated suturing kids

6) I dreaded having the radiologist call me from the reading room and say, "Now, what exactly were you hoping to learn by ordering a CT on that patient?"

7) I hated driving away from the house knowing I wouldn't see my kids until the next morning.

What about you?  If you left your job tomorrow, what would you miss?  What would you be delirious with joy to leave behind?  My biggest worry now is how I will integrate the change in role: I'm still an NP, but I'm an unemployed one for the time being, and I always find that challenging--and delightful, to be sure, because I am all for long, lazy mornings in bed...no, wait, that was before I had kids: never mind.  Anyway, what challenges would you face, sans job, and how would you approach them?

Also, we have discovered that the new floor we were going to put into the basement shower before the buyers took over the house?  Is going to have to turn into a new floor for the whole damn bathroom, along with a whole new wall and a whole $4,000 more than we thought.  So, you know, you could send money, too.

8)

I Hope To Be Drinking Gin On This Porch When I'm Eighty

Why are these so blurry?  Somebody help me!  But nevermind: if you click on them they  open a window and clear up.  I am an idiot, but a happy idiot.

What I Did On My Spring Vacation

This:

1)  Closed on the house.  After the predictable last-minute drama (Wait!  It's zoned wrong!  Wait!  No, it's not!) we now own a beautiful 250 year old farmhouse on three acres of land, or rather, the bank does.  We probably own the bathroom or something.

2)  Bleached my hair.  All of it.  Peroxide-blond.  I love it.  Evidently sometimes a girl just has to let out her inner Trailer Trash.

3)  Bought three one-way plane tickets for Boston, departing April 24th.  The fourth member of the entourage, TTD, will be driving the van out, loaded with two turtles, a hamster, and two cats.  The Beloved Babysitter will drive the Subaru.  This all feels very REAL.

4)  Set up visits at three preschools for Rabbit, who is brave but teary about leaving his friends.

5)  Bought Thomas the Tank Engine underwear for Urplet, WHO IS POOPING ON THE TOILET.  Yes!  The 25 month old has begun saying, "Poop in toilet, Mama?"  at the appropriate time.  The first time he did it I thought he was...well, I just didn't register it, because it didn't seem possible.  But damn if he didn't proceed to poop in his diaper.  So the next time I hustled his delectable pink butt into the bathroom when he made his announcement, and whoopee!  After a few preliminary farts, he did the deed, and how!  He's repeated the process twice, and spent two recent mornings diaperless and dutifully piddling in the potty when I sat him on it.  SO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FOUR YEARS I CAN LOOK FORWARD TO A DIAPERLESS EXISTENCE.  This is big.  Hence the capitals.

7)  Tried to get my head around the rapidity of the change around here.  Didn't manage it, but had fun trying.  Am now surfing the sea of transition and still having fun.

Da Boyz

The boys are getting bigger (and bigger and bigger).  I realized the other night when I picked up an untimely-awakened Urp that his head no longer fits nicely under my chin, and he is all long limbs and knobby corners, with a bottom which has gone from delicious squishiness to delectable firmness.  He talks now; he even makes polite conversation. He'll pitter-pat into the kitchen, holding up some new find like a dead ladybug, and ask, "What's that?"  On being informed that it's an insect, he'll chirp, "Oh, that's nice."   I offered him a bit of my bread salad the other day, and he peered at it earnestly, then sat back and announced, "That's disgusting!"  On the other end of the spectrum, he'll sometimes announce, "I'm delicious!" which is all too true.  He can sing the alphabet song and Row Row Row Your Boat, and he has the usual passion for Thomas the Tank Engine.  He also likes to have me dump flour or sugar into a bowl, then give him another bowl or two and some measuring cups so he can transfer staple foods from bowl to bowl, then to the floor, for half an hour at a time.  The kitchen floor after this activity is unspeakable, and so are the Urpclothes, but his happiness and seriousness are so complete that I cannot resist indulging him. 

As much as he loves sugar, he hates clothing.  The child hates shoes.  He hates coats.  He hates gloves, and snowpants, and mittens and socks.  He hates turtlenecks and most sweaters.  And forget a snowsuit: just forget it.  We have quit fighting the battle, unless we're going sledding or out for some other activity where shoelessness would result in frozen feet, but we do get some strange looks at the mall as I run from the parking lot with a barefoot, T-shirt-clad limpet clinging to my chest and yelling, "Cold, Mama!" while violently resisting my attempts to wrap him in my jacket and his Lovey.

He also throws tantrums, which distress him more than they do us because he doesn't quite know how to stop himself.  My mother says she remembers doing this as a child, and being quite frightened because she couldn't stop.  So when the Urplet hits the deck, purple and shrieking with snot pouring out of his nose and his spine arced in a bow, I stand by and wait for a break in the storm, then try to offer comfort if he can handle it.  If he can't, well, then I pick him up and remove him from the store, or wherever, if necessary; if we're home, I just go into another room and check back in a few minutes.  Presently he'll come to me sadly, thumb in mouth, and ask for Lovey and want to be held.  A few minutes later he'll sit up, smile, and announce, "Feel better now."

Rabbit is a different story.  We thought he was four, but apparently he's fourteen, because the drama in our house?  Has a distinctly adolescent flavor.  The strangest things throw him into a state of high dudgeon--a wayward pea mixed with the rice: the wrong sippy cup at dinner: not being allowed to bonk his brother on the head a third time--and then, if he hasn't managed to get himself put in time out, he puts HIMSELF into the equivalent by storming off to the downstairs bathroom, dragging a kitchen stool in with him, and locking the door from the inside by standing on the stool to reach the little hook-and-eye lock.  Then he either hides behind the toilet or amuses himself by placing my back issues of VOGUE carefully between the screen and storm windows behind the toilet.  Eventually he comes back out.

He's a much more mysterious person than Urp, more prone to silences and private joys and sorrows.  He likes to be alone in his room, playing quietly; he likes to have a door to shut (this is how we know he's definitely related to both TTD and me).  He looks out for his little brother, shepherding him through the maze at the McDonald's play pit and unbuckling his car seat belt when we arrive home, and then spends the rest of his time tormenting same by snatching toys, disturbing little worlds Urp's created with three plastic easter eggs, a metal dump truck, and a sock, and fighting for room in Mama's lap, which is not getting any bigger even though the boys most certainly are.  He veers from mature, thoughtful, sweet and funny to annoying, rude, loud, rough, and aggressive.  One moment he's cuddled in my lap, observing some streaks of cloud far overhead and concluding they are "God's footprints," and the next he's knocking the Urp's Leggo's over and zooming away, giggling maniacally and pretending he can't hear a word I say, which makes me CRAZY MAD.  Off on a car trip with just me, he trots around the grocery store happily and helps me load the shopping cart: going to bed, he moves with snail-like slowness (if snails were passive-aggressive) and just...can't...quite...bring...himself...to...do...anything...he's...told.  Until Time Out appears on the menu or I start shrieking, whichever comes first.

In other words, Urplet is now two, and Rabbit is four.

And the hardest thing for me is that now they're older, more complex, and demand more thoughtful discipline and response from me, and while I love that (I am not so much with the infants), I find it demands a balance of detachment and attachment which is hard hard hard.  On the one hand, I am attached to these children as I am to no one else in the world.  I feel their pain and disappointment and frustration deep within not only my heart but my gut, as though someone's tugging on a cable which connects me to them from a region which has nothing to do with my brain.  When they get hurt physically, the soles of my feet tingle; when they cry in sadness or disapointment, my heart breaks.  My heart often gets tired of feeling not only my emotions but theirs too.  Not that I co-opt their right to their own emotions, not at all: it's just that right now, they're so young and so close to me that their pain is sort of simple and immediate and in my face, so it's easy to experience it viscerally.

On the other hand, I'm the mother, not the child.  I'm the grown-up in this equation, and while of course I'm allowed my emotions, I'm also required to use my brain and my judgement and all that good stuff.  To survive, I need a modicum of detachment, both for my own sake--I have to be able to walk out the door to work sometimes, even when there's a child crying for me, and not have it destroy me--and for theirs (if I respond to a fraternal quarrel with some kind of thought and reason and control, things work out a lot better than if I react the way I'd LIKE to, which is to scream bloody murder and lock myself in the bedroom with a bottle of gin and PEOPLE magazine).  To be any kind of a good mother, I need skill as well as heart.

I don't have this down.  I suspect I never will.  Because it's not as though I can just make rules and that's that; there are a million factors which go into every decision, all day, every day, ranging from how tired Urplet is to what kind of day Rabbit's had at precshool to how crappy I feel after a work shift.  There's a continuum, and I slide back and forth along it, from hugs to tirades, and so do the children.  Often we collide.

But sometimes, sometimes, sometimes.....we dance.

Faxed to Death

First of all, thank you for so many wonderful, Rabbit-helping ideas about the move.  I am already working on a lot of them--the videos and pictures are a great idea, as is the decorating moving boxes and letting him fill them himself; he's very pleased--and just feel better in general with so much sensible, practical, yet imaginative advice to hold on to.  Y'all rock!

And speaking of moves...we are the Salvation Army's new best friend.  Unnervingly phallic McDonald's Happy Meal toys, paperback bodice-rippers aimed at Christian teenage girls (left behind by inlaws), tiny dinosaur slippers with red eyes that flash when you stamp your tiny feet, mugs bearing fake school crests and the legend "Psychotic State,"  approximately 1,000 matchbox cars, a menagerie of stuffed animals tending toward the ursine, and black cotton sheets left over from TTD's bachelor days: all these and more have made their way into the donation bins at the local Army store over the past weeks.  Not a cupboard, not a closet, not a drawer in this house but has been hauled into an interrogation room, strapped to a chair, and subjected to harsh questioning about the fugitives it has been harboring for lo these many years.  We are ruthless and unflaggingly energetic in our pursuit of wayward stuff, so much so that after several weeks all we have to do is fling open a closet door and the mismatched winter boots (size 3), crumpled scarves, and black knit hats which fit nobody just sigh and march themselves resignedly  into the waiting boxes.  "Cheer up," we say.  "You're going to love your new home!"

It's the fun part of moving, this lightening the material load.  We feel wonderfully stripped down, monastically so, even though I don't know which religion provides monks with thirty-gallon turtle tanks (complete with turtles), garages full of tricycles and deflated, lily-pad-shaped swim floats for toddlers, and a deviled-egg dish which can't be thrown away due to its status as a mother-in-law wedding present.  But still, the order!  Is thrilling!

Of course, there are the not-so-fun parts of moving as well, the parts which are chilling rather than thrilling (sorry:irresistable).  The endless faxing: the large amounts of money required every hour on the half hour: the lists.  We are really in the thick of it now, jumping hurdles as fast as we can--or is it jumping through hoops?  Anyway, the new house has undergone an inspection and passed with flying colors, we've gotten a committment letter on the mortgage (pause for cheers and sighs of relief), and theoretically we put the second deposit down tomorrow and sign the purchase-and-sale agreement.  Except that there's some complications with the amount of the deposit, yadayadayada, the lawyer wants to review the P+S but only just got to it on Friday, we have to be out of the house all day tomorrow for the inspection on this end, which of course was scheduled during Urp's nap, and the sellers on the other end are out of town for a funeral. 

SO...I predict a day of driving from recycling to Salvation Army to Mailboxes to bank, ditching STUFF and pestering the lawyer on my cell phone (so I know what the hell to send to whom when as far as money and documents; can you tell this is making me tense?), then printing emails, dragging them and the napless children to TTD's office to make him sign things, herding everyone through Mailboxes to overnight yet another set of documents, wiring money from the bank, and changing diapers along the way.  It will be exciting, the way watching a hamster motor around the room in his little plastic ball and bump into corners is exciting.  Bonk!

But it's worth it.  I am constantly terrified that money won't come through, our house won't pass inspection, the buyer will drop out, a hurricane will push a tree through the roof of our new house, or  [insert random disaster here].  I am kind of chasing my own tail up my own ass with the saying good-bye here while I prepare for the moving there, but honestly? I do better with transition than I do with ordinary day-to-day living, and I love the sense of being on the brink, the feeling of everything about to change.  I am almost forty and I love the idea of a fresh start, even given the "no matter where you go, there you are" factor.  A fresh start and a homecoming at once: I've never had that before.  It's truly lovely to have people waiting for us, ready to love and help and tell us how our new town does its recycling and when storytime is at the new library.  It's a new experience for me to feel I'm moving toward permanence, a permanence I want and welcome.  I will always travel, and I look forward to bringing the boys to Africa for several years in the not-too-distant future, but I feel like we may have found our home base now.  It feels more than good.  Also,it feels like maybe we should get some chickens.  Chickens!  Bawk!  Because what is an old farmhouse without chickens?

Find Stillness, She Says

I was doing my yoga this morning, and though I've done this particular tape many times before, this morning I noticed the instructor admonishing me, as I twisted one leg, like, behind my ear, to "find stillness."  You know, because it's just that simple. Stillness, stillness...now where did I put that stillness?  I know I had it a minute ago: aha!  There it is!  Over by the toilet brush where the little boys left it.  Hey, stillness, over here!  I need you!

I mock, but actually I have been in search of stillness lately, or at least, I have been trying to remember that stillness exists, because it has not been much in evidence around here.  Though its absence has been all to the good, because the amazing rush of activity which has kept me blogless for what feels like weeks has led to 1) a four day, boyless househunting trip to MA, during which TTD and I discovered that hey, we really like hanging out together, 2) a purchase agreement on the house of our dreams (we'd been going around saying, "Why doesn't someone build the perfect house and sell it to us," and lo and behold, 250 years ago, someone DID build us the perfect house!  More on that later...) and 3) a purchase agreement on our house here in Iowa.  Yes: in the course of 48 hours we bought one house and sold another.  That sound you hear is my brain trying to wrap itself around the idea.  Whooooeeee.

There are, of course, many many hoops through which we must jump, both as buyers and as sellers, before this whole thing is over.  TTD still has to get his MA license--he's in the throes of the beauracracy now--and we still have to move.  There are schools to find, jobs to get (for me), a million details to arrange (I have this feeling I'm going to neglect something major like, say, utilities, and arrive to a lightless house.)  But a lot of big steps have been taken: we decided to move, TTD has a job contract, TTD passed his boards (everyone write a comment and congratulate him, because reboarding is no small feat; he studied for A YEAR), we found a house so wonderful I am scared to write about it, and a buyer for our Iowa house.  TTD and I both feel this probably means we're heading in the right direction...or for a major fall if it doesn't work out.  You do the math.

So, here we go.  The plan right now is to move between TTD's last day of work, on April 20th, and his first day at the new job, on April 30th.   More than that, I really don't know.  I am trying to be OK with that, to just get done what needs to get done in each day and let the emotions--anticipation, loss, excitement, apprehension, more excitement, desire for chocolate and wine--swirl around and slosh away and make a big old mess as they will, that's fine, I'm used to messes, I'll clean it up later.

My little boys, though, are not used to mess, and here's where you come in.  Urperooni is too young to really get what's going on, but Rabbit is able to comprehend it, and while he is very excited and pleased at the prospect of new house and ocean and grandparents, he is teary at the prospect of leaving his friends, and I can just sense the apprehension in his little voice as he asks, "Are we going to take all the knives and forks along when we go?"  So, advice?  Have you moved with your children, or when you were a child?  What helped?  What hurt?  What can a Mama do that's comforting and good, and realistic and brave-making, for a little boy of four years who's leaving a lot he knows behind?  I'm doing all the usual stuff, reassuring him that everything's coming with (and TTD has taken him on box-hunting expeditions so he has boxes to pack his toys in; that helped), holding him when he worries about missing his friends, telling him about the new house and showing pictures, talking about the things in the area he already knows and likes, etc.  But what else?  You guys have always come through for me on questions--I still re-read the notes you gave me on growing up in the sixties and seventies--so please, come through on this too.

I'm hoping that the next few weeks will slow down a little before the final box-filled moving days,because I have lots of posts in my head, including a birthday post for Urp, whose birthday it is today, and Happy Birthday miraculous, adorable blond boy of mine!  I think I'll tell his birth story next time, since I haven't done that yet for either boy and it would be nice to have a break from obsessing about the details of moving.  And I'll tell about the new house, too, when I get over the feeling I'm going to jinx things by talking about it.  As soon as we close, I'll post photos (March 22, is the plan.)

Oy.  I just read over this post and it sounds very self-pitying and frightened, which is not at all how I feel.  I feel so excited and happy about this move, so right and good.  For twenty years I've been moving around, by my own choice, and it's been wonderful, but now I'm going home, and it's a whole new delight.  Home!  I'm finally, for the first time, moving toward what I know and not away from it! 

It's a wonderful feeling.  Now if I can just get the inspection done on the new house by March 2nd.....

For Sale

Whoa.  The realtor came by Thursday and put up the For Sale sign in front of the house, and we've had three showings already.  We are On The Market, and how.

It's the oddest feeling!  Suddenly, of course, I love everything about the house and appreciate its every mood and whim, excluding the upstairs bathroom's fluorescent light, which is having a sort of nervous breakdown and is forever getting stuck mid-flicker, leaving me to shower in the semi-darkness, which is not at all romantic the way taking a candlelit bath would be.  But apart from that, and the ratty screen porch on the back which makes us look like we should have a few cars on blocks in the yard, and maybe a washing machine or two, the house seems perfection itself.  The hardwood floors, the lovely big windows, the south-facing sunroom off the kitchen, the small-yet-liveable, non-McMansionyness of it all.  The steep red roof which TTD reshingled, all by himself, armed only with a hammer and a climbing rope (which I made him use to belay himself off the chimney, because that roof is STEEP, man, and it took him three months to do it and by the time he was finishing he was working in a snowstorm).  And, I kid you not, the picket fence which TTD put up two summers ago.

It's not just the house, of course, though it is a terrific little place.  It's the fact that we moved here when Rabbit was six months old.  It's the fact it was our first house.  Urplet was made here; I left this house on a cold February day to have him, and returned two days later with him in his little baby carrier seat.  This is the house where both my children learned to walk and talk.  The house where they became people.  The house where Miss Iowa the cat is buried in the backyard.  The house where I wrote four drafts of one still-unpublished novel.  The house where I sat on my bed one night almost two years ago and started a blog.  The house where we became a family, and I became (am becoming) a mother, and TTD became a Daddy.  It's the house of no sleep, of tantrums and poop and vomit and crying and bonking over the head with toys.  All of the children's birthdays have been here.  There have been a lot of baby showers, and a lot of parties with everyone ending up drinking wine in the kitchen.  There has been vicious PPD, and there has been healing.  This house has given shelter to it all.

And now there's a sign out front, and people come through while we're not here and decide if they like it.  There's a strange sense that we've entered the public domain, and that this little sphere of us-ness has become part of the bigger world, no longer our exclusive circle.  We are starting to have to let go. One of these days soon (Inshallah...oh, how I hope it sells), we will walk through the house and our footsteps will echo, and the memories will be just that, memories; the house will be in our hearts, but no longer part of our daily life.  It will go from being our address to being, "When we lived in Iowa."

This is not a bad thing.  But it's an intense thing, and I want to feel the feelings and not avoid them as we go through this transition.  And if that means a dreadful earnest-ness pervades the blog, then so be it.  It helps to write it all down (she said, with stunning originality) and sit with the mix of loss and hope and excitement and anticipation and dread and anxiety which is aswirl in me these days. 

And of course, it's all in service of my new goal, suggested by Best Friend (aka The Most Intelligent Woman In The World): I am going to become the Boddhisattva of Real Estate.  Om mani padme om...om mani padme om....om mani new house om....om mani 2.5 acres and detached garage om...om mani master bath om...