Love Letter to my House

      We are in the process of leaving behind a home we've lived in for 22 years, so far.  Only one baby was born here, but the other three barely remember our previous house.  They were something like 9, 6, 2 and not here yet when we moved to this 1898 Victorian.  It has five bedrooms, two baths, two stairways, and much more.  Most people walking through my house would probably think 'Charming but a bit lived-in perhaps?'  But I see below the surface level of newspapers and ankle boots and dog toys.  And as I look to moving from this house to something much smaller and a good 50 years newer, I want to document what I will miss about our Park Avenue house.  Leaving out the broad expanses of dog hair and dirty dishes that we all have, right?
     First, there is the address.  Wherever you go people take a second look when you say 'Park Avenue', I assume because of NYC and the songs.  Second is the boulevard down the center.  Who gets to live on a street with trees and flags down the center?  Not many!
     Then there are the friendly dog-walking neighbors at all time of day or night.  Reliably looking up at the architecture or porches of many more illustrious houses than my own. 


But my house, the things I want to document so I can look back some day, is in the details.  Details like the front door knob. 

Details like the trim around every window and doorway in this place (I think we have 25 windows).

Details like this broken finial (?) that I have refused to fix so it reminds me of my wonderful life, just like the movie. 

The fact the house had a lily carved in the newel post and we had a daughter named Lily probably has something to do with us taking this on and gutting it 20 years ago.

     Going back outside, there is the sidewalk that runs all the way around the house in a big oval that all the kids could ride their bikes or trikes or scooters around.  I didn't grow up with that, but it is a great thing for a family. Details like a porch swing and spindles and this bright red door that came to us this way.  Its always the perfect color once a year at Christmas-time.

Details like the windows, some of which I've written about before more eloquently in the past, but nothing is the same.  It is all unique.  That's how they did it in 1898. 

Some things I always wanted in a house include this pocket door that is still in great shape, never refinished, because it is usually hidden away.

My next house is so much smaller, I'm pretty sure it wont have a 'Christmas-tree room' like we have now.  Or two stairways, one with room for many more stockings than the 9 we have  hanging this year. 

Or this nook at the top of the stairs I've always been in love with because of its utter impracticality.

     love this picture because it represents our marriage so well.  Chuck built this pantry the first year we moved into the kitchen.  But one year for Christmas without me knowing it he added a light inside.  Something I'd waited a good 18 years for, lol.  The pantry was something we added, and are leaving behind for the next owners:

     Don't you look back and childhood photos of birthday cakes, and really, what is fun to see, is the counter behind everyone with the pencils and phone and the notepad to take messages on (no one ever used).  Or the crazy rec room carpet pattern on the floor.  It is the details that bring back childhood, and even though this house doesn't represent my own childhood, it represents my own children's childhood.  As my friends know, I'm not particularly sentimental.  About pets, or kids going to college, or empty nests.  But I am sentimental about leaving this house.  I feel good about it.  It is time.  But I do feel nostalgic for all the impromptu tumbling classes we had in the long front rooms, the coat closet at the back door I would literally throw my weight into to close with all those snowpants and snowboots and mittens.  Our chandelier that I once broke, using it as a life ring as I fell while cleaning it.  And paid a hefty penny to restore, or so it seemed at the time.  I've never made that mistake again (of cleaning it haha)...

     This is where Santa visited with a vengeance and backpacks were tossed and tossed, and tossed as they all arrived home from their respective schools to turn on Rugrats and drink their capri suns :)

So many moments here, and I'm just hoping I can remember as many as possible for safekeeping.  On to the next adventure (eventually).  We don't do anything quickly!
     Of all the houses we've had or will have, this is without a doubt the best one for Christmas-y feelings.  Last year for it!

Too much of a good thing

On Christmas day, it’s a cliché, but one of my dreams came true.  I woke up, had a decadent breakfast in my pajamas with all four of my kids at the same dining room table with Chuck and I, and then stayed in those pajamas, all day.  I fantasize of days like this.  Christmas day I read, I puzzled, I conversed, I played a board game, I noshed on Maurie's turtles and cold ham and brioche rolls.  Candles were burned, new soft throws were involved.  So stress free.  So obligation free. So free.  I had a warmth in my chest that could only be described as deep contentment.  And very pointed gratitude.

Fast forward to New Years day, when I somewhat recreated this scenario.  Well, not exactly.  First of all not surrounded by my kids.  Second, no good leftovers.  But it was another glorious day with no plans or obligations, and I stayed in my pajamas….until about 3pm when I broke out of jail.  Where was the contentment?  Where was the warm feeling?  Instead I was plagued with the need to do. Be productive.  Put away Christmas or work on my novel or establish some goals or buy new pillows.

My first thought is the old 'too much of a good thing is not a good thing'.  Even though I covet free time and would happily quit my job and fill my days with projects and trips and reading and writing and ‘rithmatic, the pajama fantasy is limited.  I was cracking good at one solid day of it. 

I am not good at doing the same thing twice in a row and have written about this before.  That is why I have chosen to work in a workplace where in the same forty-five minutes I might help the volunteer in the gift shop reboot her credit card machine, notify the Peds providers they are missing Meaningful Use due to measure 17, and jot out an implementation plan for transitioning our 50 or so live interfaces from eGate to Intersystems interface engine. In most IT shops this would be three different people if not three entirely distinct teams. 

This is why I have three separate Pinterest boards for houses: new construction, flipping, and remodeling ours.  If I just focused on the one I would die of monotony. 

This is why I have unread books on my bedside table, in my kindle, on my upstairs bookshelf, on my phone, in my car and on my to-be-read shelf in Goodreads, Pinterest, and Amazon.  Reading is a classic ADD soother. You can be in Witchita, KS as a sous chef and the same day be a 60-something private detective in Nova Scotia. Variety is built in.  Who would settle for less? Heck, maybe reading incessantly since 5^th grade is the cause of my self-diagnosed ADD. 

This is why yesterday I watched four episodes of a video series on writing well, I colored in my adult coloring book, I surfed vacations for June and real estate for retirement.  I perused my high school yearbook reading some of the tributes. I also did take down the tree, shop for a calendar and fill it out, invite people for lunch tomorrow and put an old pillowcase on a new pillow. 

OK, I’m getting that quite familiar sensation that I have what others call 'issues'.  It isn’t medically-diagnosed ADD because I’m able to focus.  It is probably a more superficial inability to be bored.  Boredom intolerance.  Variety junkie.  I would say ‘spoiled brat syndrome’ but immediately my internal defender can point to hours, weeks, and years I do perform tedious repetitive tasks, I just don’t chose to write about them.  I mean I make my stupid bed every week at least.  

The thing is, today, just 24 hours later I don’t feel that way.  I feel like sitting here staring at my blinking cursor, angst-free, is a reasonable and appropriate activity.  I might do the dishes. Or not. I guess since I invited people to lunch for tomorrow I will. I 'suffer from' some watered-down variation of bi-polarity, which my theory is everyone has to some degree.  We’re all on that ‘spectrum’ as they say. 

I should end this with a nice resolution for the new year, but that could be a dangerous path for a variety junkie.  I might overdose and suddenly it will be 5pm, my fingers sore and color-stained.  Instead I’m going to breathe. That’s my resolution for 2016.  Breathe and accept. Breath and accept.

Who am I kidding?  I'm going to go make a color-coded chart of my goals for 2016.  The dishes will wait.

 

 

If I could get everything done on my day off that I want to get done on my day off

If I could get everything done on my day off that I want to get done on my day off I would clean my house and decorate from the random bins and then tidy the bins away and set up my wrapping station and sort the Amazon and Eddie Bauer boxes that have been delivered in recent weeks and use tissue paper to cozy each item into a box and organize the hats and scarves and glove bins and finish moving my half empty under construction pantry contents into my pantry and do all the dishes and find Christmas cards and write them with hot cider by my side.  I would unpack from my recent trip and find sparkly sweaters wherever they are hidden and I would finally get that de-shedding brush for dear Molly and fix her up and clip her toenails and put a new collar on her and take her for a walk.  I would pay the bills (ok, no I WOULD NOT PAY BILLS), I'd haltingly plunk out Christmas hymns on my silent piano, once unburdened from its piles of mail, while the house was empty.  I would decorate the dining room table using the gingerbread house the girls made that has been languishing behind the sheets of plastic hanging everywhere while my kitchen ceiling has been open and under repair this last month or so.  My real tree is already a bit dryish with 18 days until Christmas, so I would google out how to rejuvenate it.  I would play a Christmas movie (probably Little Women with Wynona Ryder) while wrapping gifts slowly, (with no back pain) and a candle already purchased in advance for this purpose burning, visible from the corner of my eye and smelling of cinnamon and sugar.  I would empty the back coat closet and re-organize it so we can actually find our cold-weather items we already own and probably get a bag for Goodwill of coats that no one has worn for six years.  I would read a really bad Christmas novel with my slippers on and my favorite chocolate brown and baby blue afghan on my lap.  I would write for a few hours looking out the window at the fog and enjoying my old/new writing desk.  I would read my bible and an advent devotional and spend some time in prayer and then mediation.  I would take a walk (I already did<3 Thanks Sue!) and feel awake even before my third cup of coffee.  I would wash my sheets and try to find some flannel ones to put on and add extra blankets to the bed which I never seem to find time to do until about February.  I would listen to Bing crooning White Christmas while I put out the chipped nativity I gave my parents when I was in junior high.  I would bake some cut-out cookies, cool them and decorate them with Julia when she came in from the school bus at 3:10.  (I would like this part much more than she would). I would meet a friend for lunch and talk about how hard it is to find gifts for men in general and how much easier it would be if all our shopping was for 50-something-aged women.  I would write a thank you note to my hostess from this past weekend and it would come out sounding as perfect as it does in my head, but never does once keyed onto the paper.  I would drive slowly through the neighborhoods oohing and ahhing at Christmas lights with my husband and daughter without them rolling their eyes.  I would hang our seven stockings (yes the dog has always had one, I'm that mom), the only decoration I personally need up besides the tree, imagining my stocking from my childhood that was always hung at the corners of our pinch-pleated draperies due to a lack of fireplace mantles, and how it looked lumpy and jammed with delights.  I would imagine the most beautiful hair barrettes from that stocking one year, that were too pretty to wear, but then later broke when put in an actual head of hair.  I would imagine the Chrissy doll, as it looked on Christmas morning, so perfect, and as it looked a few months later when my baby sister had taken the scissors to its head of hair.  Would I even remember that doll if it hadn't been close-shaven? And then I would imagine the stack of Christmas albums in our what seemed to me, enormous dark maple television and stereo console, dropping down one at a time to the turntable, and the mystery of wondering which song, which song would be next?    When Perry's “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” came on I would recall caroling with my girl scout troop, and the fun of riding bundled into the back of a pick-up truck before it was illegal, going from one house in town to another singing my lungs out on a starry night and feeling, that there is surely nothing better in this world, than Christmas-time.

 

Mother’s day is not my favorite holiday…

I believe Hallmark and such make too big a deal out of Mother’s Day (and several other holidays).  I daydream of my own mother often (she died 16 years ago now), and don’t need a holiday to remember her.  I think of my own children daily if not hourly, and I always celebrate their birth (literally) and reminisce about my part in it on their birthdays. Now that I think of it I’m not very big on most holidays other than Christmas. Confession: I’m often glad when they are over.  But I love birthdays. I love vacations.  I love celebrating for no reason and I love celebrating my children’s important moments. I love the day after Thanksgiving when we are all in our pj’s playing Scrabble and watching reruns of Parks and Rec together. 

Mother’s Day is a holiday of exclusion for any woman who doesn’t happen to be a mom.   I know women who lead happy and full lives without children. I know people who have yearned for children and it has never happened for them.  I know people who have lost children, or lost parents certainly, and this holiday only brings them pain.  Why do we need to go there?

Being an introvert, I also dislike any occasion that makes me the center of attention.  Too much pressure.  Gosh a whole day I have to be happy!  My kids and husband usually do a fine job of marking the occasion too, you would be jealous.  I’m ungrateful, that is the root of it.

Now, you’re thinking, Toni isn’t usually so negative.  She is being a drag, it’s just a little holiday.  And you are right.  I’m being  nudged with thoughts of Dicken's Scrooge here so I’m trying to remember what he learns from all those ghosts.  Oh yeah, life is good, enjoy it.  Relationships are important so build into them while you can.  So I will.  I will enjoy myself and sincerely appreciate whatever pleasantries come my way.  I hope all of you will too, but I still secretly wish holidays were about an hour long and wanted to speak up for any others of you out there who do too.  Someone work on that.