Time For a Fresh Start

We're moving. And it's high time I started blogging again.

So here's the deal: we're leaving the place we've been for the past six years and moving to a totally new town. It's only about twenty minutes' drive away, but it does have a different area code. I have mixed feelings about this.

Con: I'll miss the people I know here, the kids' wonderful school, the familiar sights. This is a nice area and has a lot going for it. I just put in some new fruit trees a couple years ago and they might actually produce this year, and I'll miss it. And my garden plans are on hold till I figure out where the heck to plant those tomatoes.

Pro: We get to start out fresh with people who don't already know how weird I am. The house is bigger. I'll have my own office! With a door! It actually has two doors! We'll have three bathrooms. My son will have a bedroom that's bigger than a closet. The yard is really big too - 1.2 acres. I can garden to my heart's content.

Con: That mortgage payment is HUGE.

Pro: It'll be less huge when we sell our current house and refinance.

Con: Moving sucks.

Pro: This is the last time we plan to move, ever, and it's better to get it over with while we're still young enough to haul heavy objects. Or foolish enough to think we can.

The house is "in the country". Well, it feels like the country to us, a couple of suburbanites. True rural folks would laugh at this. One and a quarter acres on a two-lane paved road with cable TV and city water would not be what everyone considers "in the country." It's also about five minutes' drive from the nearest grocery store, and a main road with several fast food places. But dude, it's one and a quarter acres! There's a horse farm down the street, and last weekend when we drove by we saw people riding their horses in the road. Right on our street. There was horse poo on the pavement. That is "in the country."

So I've got this whole "Little House On The Prairie" vibe going on. I want to dress up like Ma Ingalls - full skirts, hair in a neat little bun - and provide for my family. I'll plant a crop. I'll sew all the curtains and even some of the kids' clothes. I'll quilt. I'll make jam and can the tomatoes. How virtuous I'll be!

Well, aside from the pioneer costume, the rest is quite likely. I've already been canning my homegrown tomatoes and sewing a few things. I enjoy doing that sort of thing. I never thought I would, but I do. It takes me a little while to get started, really to convince myself that gardening, sewing, cooking, canning and all those things aren't nearly as complicated or exhausting as at first they seem. Maintaining that connection to the seasonal rituals of keeping a home is important to me.

See, I tend to live too much inside my own head, being sedentary and feeling disconnected from the physical plane. It's a writer's curse, to live in words on paper or the computer screen. And so often I feel incompetent with real-world things. Accomplishing the tasks of old-fashioned homemaking gives me a wonderful sense of competency - truly, if I can do these things, I can do anything. And that's a wonderful way to feel.

Would I have to move to our new house to complete that feeling? No, but the lifestyle I mention is much more suited to a one-point-two-acre lot than a tiny one in the suburbs.