I’m feeling a little like a nomad of late, only without all the camels.
I am also feeling so incredibly lucky and thankful that my overly generous in-laws refused to allow us to be homeless for the eleven weeks between when we turned off the lights and locked the door for the very last time at our house on Apple Blossom Drive and when we get to move into our lovely new home. They have welcomed us and our several Jeeps full of too may things into their totally-comfortable-for-two-people but slightly-less-comfortable-for-seven-people home.
Everyone wants to know how it’s going, of course, and it’s probably going just about as you would expect.
It’s hard for any human to be in a space that’s not her own, and you toss in a thriving anxiety disorder on top of that, and, well, I’m trying to appreciate all the good (and trust me, there’s so much good—my mother-in-law baked cookies with Isabella and simultaneously gave her a fraction math lesson) and breathe through the resurgence of panic attacks. I hadn’t had one in a very long time, but they returned with an am-I-having-a-kidney-stone-and-heart-attack-combo vengeance on the night that we moved and haven’t much let up since. {Note to self: call doctor}
I’m trying desperately to remember that this is very hard for my kids, too, to be sharing a room and/or to be sleeping in the basement. Things are different and require shifting and helping and adapting and thinking outside the box. I’m working hard on my patience, and on not being Betty Draper Francis. But they are staying up too late, and having to get up earlier, since school is in an entirely different neighborhood now. They are fight-picky with their siblings and crankier and moodier and full of extra doses of eyerolls and arms foldings, you know, children. Disciplining is hard in someone else’s home, and time apart from them is essentially non-existent.
I had to watch the Mad Men finale two days late and I can’t find any of our things, so Josh keeps getting new underpants and I have been wearing a t-shirt—in public—that may or may not be literally falling apart. I’ve had to change around my work schedule so I can do 3:15 afternoon pickups, which are convenient for exactly no working parent on this earth. There’s a lot of bathroom door knocking, especially in the mornings.
And you know, when you live in someone else’s house you can’t stand at your kitchen counter without pants on and eat the remnants of your own birthday cake with your fingers. {Related: I’m kind of disgusting}
There is such a beautiful and exciting light at the end of this 11-week tunnel. I just wish I could find my shoes so I could walk more steadily through it.
Although I guess nomads don’t even wear shoes.
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