Thanksgiving Stuff

My husband and and my girls just got back from a whirlwind Thanksgiving trip. We squeezed in months worth of visiting with his family, my inlaws and old friends in less than 72 hours. We had mechanical problems with our car, I came back with a cold, and a car full of luggage and newly acquired stuff to unpack and sort. It's good to be home.

In the midst of the trip, I was in survival mode and didn't really have time to enjoy the moments but as we got closer and closer to home, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratefulness for my life. I am so thankful for my loving, sweet husband. He is the most amazing person I have ever met. I finally got it right. I know what a healthy, loving relationship is like. I'm grateful for my three kids, Jesse, tall, blonde, gangly, sensitive...my only son. Stevey, also tall, brunette, clumsy, sweet, slightly neurotic, beautiful oldest daughter. Sara, not so tall, brunette, smart, outgoing, beautiful, sweet, slightly selfish and cynical baby of the family. My grandchildren, sweet, baby Brian and hilarious, active Makaila.

I need never complain, although I know I will. Read my last blog. Or don't.

And thanks, D, for the gift to the right! I love guitar girl and I know just where I'll put her...

Happy Thanksgiving!

The water's fine...really

This is my first little piece of writing for nanowrimo. I've managed to squeeze out 447 words, way below where I should be on day four, but still I'm pleased. Pleased because I started with one sentence that popped into my head that I liked and God knows, that's a miracle with all the crap that's circulating in their lately. I have always been one who warms up to new ideas very slowly, almost begrudgingly, so this is me...sticking my big toe in the water, testing the temperature....

I have never wanted to live in this house.

It was Stuart’s idea. He saw it, fell in love with it and purchased it without ever talking to me. I was content in the Autumn Street house and had been for five years. I knew every crack in the wall, which stairs creaked and how long it took for the water to get hot in the downstairs bathroom. I knew how to jiggle the key to get the front door unlocked and about the leak under the kitchen sink which Stuart never fixed, no matter how many times he tried. We called it the mystery leak. We sat a bucket under the sink and changed it periodically. Sometimes we forgot for months until one of us noticed the damp, moldy smell coming from beneath the sink.

This was the home we first made love in, the home we embarked on our first few years of marriage in and had our first argument in. The home in which we became a family. I never wanted to leave it but it’s possible that Stuart felt the house was more mine than his. I bought the home on my own before we met and have always been very proud of this accomplishment. It had character, unique space and quirky traits that felt like me.

Stuart’s purchase of the Summer Street home was out of character for him. He never made a move without talking to me first. I cannot say the same. My personality has been molded and shaped from years of neglectful relationships. I forge ahead often as if there isn’t anyone else to consider. It’s mostly out of habit but it is also a conscious effort to remain independent. Inconsiderate, yes, to Stuart but necessary for my survival. I’ve been in love before and I’ve been left before and I never want to feel that loss again.

If you’re thinking that there is a gentle, sweet foreshadowing of moving from a home on Autumn Street to Summer Street, you’d be wrong. Things aren’t always what they seem they should be and in my life, my summer’s have always been harsher than my autumns. That was my foreshadowing but Stuart wouldn’t listen. He has always said that I think too much. At times he is right, but at other times, I am right but he doesn’t hear me for all of the noise that I am constantly making. He loved me then and found my over-analytical brain amusing and endearing. Why is that the things you love the most about a person in the beginning become the things you despise most about that person later?