Where the Heart Is

We are officially moved into our new home. This past Friday, Roy spent several hours with the help of four muscled-boys and a 40 foot U-Haul bringing loads from the rental to our new home. They are only about 3 miles apart; however, one has to traverse several stop signs and 20 mph speed limits each jaunt, making the distance feel much further than it actually is.

Meanwhile, while the guys loaded up the house one truck-full at a time, I worked on the "lived in" part of the house: the bathrooms, the closets, the kitchen. We had only unpacked essentials and so Roy and I decided that would be the game plan rather than officially "re-boxing" everything for the boys to load. I had about 5 smaller boxes that I loaded up, hauled out to the trunk of the car, drove to our new home, popped the truck, carried in those boxes, and unloaded them in the appropriate place.

Repeat. A few hundred times.

We started at 9:30 in the morning (as that is when we got back with the U-Haul) and finished well past sundown. Three of the boys stopped around 7:00 that evening, but one of them--Sean-- stayed until the bitter end. Sean was "our kid" for four years at Sunnydale and that is one loyal boy. Roy is "Coach" to him, and Sean would go to the ends of the earth to help him. He's that sort of guy and we are so grateful.

It was a long, hard day. And when we finally laid out heads down on our mattress that night, Roy sighed and said, "It sure feels good to be horizontal."

(That's his infamous line after a hard day's work.)

And so, we have spent the weekend unpacking and organizing and rearranging and shifting and considering. We have gotten up early and gone to bed late. Roy's "to-do" list is monstrous. My educated guess is that it will take him approximately 22.5 years to accomplish it all; however, he says it will all be done by Christmas.

All bets are on; I'll probably lose.

We've turned into country folk. We have two burn barrels with metal grates over them out in the back by the shop that Roy has burning most of the day as otherwise we have too much trash for our big blue trash cans that the city picks up every Tuesday. And when I sit on the back porch in my rocking chair? I look out at property that is mine and I watch the sky ablaze with shades of gold and pink and hues of blue that make me gaze in wonder. Though our house is on the edge of town, once you pull into the driveway, you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.

It's quiet. It's cozy.

It's home.