Trusting the Process

Wading through the funk

A spider belayed from my office ceiling one morning this week right next to my shoulder. I waved my pen under it like, “Look, buddy, this is not an ideal landing spot for you.” It jazz-leg climbed back up its invisible line, dangling at ceiling level for an hour or so, probably waiting for me to leave my desk so it could rifle through my headphones / blanket / sticky notes. I’m not gonna lie: I did worry about it plopping into a hot mug of coffee the next dark morning. Was that that was an extra swirl of coffee or a long skinny leg? Oh well!

Please allow me to give you an update on how moving houses has gone. (lol, girl, in what world do you think you can tell us anything we don’t already know? Your back hurts and you own too much stuff. We get it!) I thought about skipping this post but the child in me is like, “But how will we share our completely useless & fun pics?!” To which I say, you’re right, let us share our joy and regrets.

Costco cranes

the drug room at a house Tim toured (for a friend looking to buy a house, too!)

hydration - that jar looks suspicious but is just homemade lemonade

the deer’s new home

new ship room

travelers

painting

draft one (a “galaxy wall” that looks suspiciously like wild camo)

World Cup break

We moved into a house everyone in town, it seems, has been inside of and has (nice) opinions about, which is weird for two writers used to being big outsiders. It’s a little like dating someone a whole town helped raise: bewildering but not without its cheerful influences.

Construction workers tore up the concrete in front of our new house. Big slabs laid on the pavement - or what was left of the pavement - like disheveled glacial shelves. Part of me likes constant, low-grade company like this: people buzzing by all day (in Richard Scarry construction vehicles, no less), not needing anything from me but waving when I see them, and getting out of my way when I need to scoot past. This isn’t real community, per se, but adjacent: the same folks saying hi everyday, trying to coexist in spite of all our ambitious projects.

In terms of my ambitious projects, it feels like we passed a marker this week that is alternately making my heart crumple and making me proud. When we first moved - furniture, beds, a few dishes and sheets - the new house was open and airy, still clean from its real estate close up. Now we’ve moved every stitch of crap from the old house: taco seasoning, hand-held brooms, myriad step-stools as if we run a school for gnomes. For a hot second, we were moving dirty laundry across town. What I’m saying is real life is starting to creep in. I was hoping I could become a new person just by leaving behind the infernal eternal expanse of carpet, but as I peer at the lamps and pictures and curtains we ported I think: how will we ever make this space cute again and why do we have fifty-five pillows for every bed? There are decisions to make, in other words, rooms to properly design. It is all stuff I like doing, and yet . . . it’s a bit overwhelming at this point.

final decision

tree in a pancake!!!!

packing books

moving help

this alligator always makes me think of the beginning of Under a Spell - taking it down felt ceremonial and I hung it in my new office for now. There are a million pieces of dashed off art like this that will not “belong” in the new house because we will make more of them but . . . I dunno. I love these wisps of colorful time

I mean obviously the boats are coming with but they will get a new person’s room. maybe mine!

wisps of time / innards of my brain right now

One night I carted pots of lavender up the old sledding hill to my car and sailed across the streets to our new home, unloading trellises in the dark, wondering what critters had hitched a ride. (Answer: unknown but I did rinse out something in my after-gardening de-gritifying shower and think, I don’t know what that was, but it is bigger than something I’d normally like on my head.) I woke the next morning, thinking of the fuzzy vole that hid behind one of our metal pieces: a small gelatinous body that ran away as if rolling along a grassy track.

We broke down the garden. It was, at first, a complete and total heartbreak, then like swallowing spinach we plugged our nose and did it. My daughter cleaned out the fridge in a way I’ve never seen anyone do - it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building now. Tim cleaned the entire garage, a space I gave up on at least a year ago. My son cooed at the fat mouse scurrying along the now-empty garage, still believing in its little mind that it was safe from view - stick to the perimeter! stick to the perimeter! - even though we could clearly see it tracing the concrete edge.

It is wild that we lived with so much stuff, yet when I found a single unused bandaid cleaning out a cabinet one day - the kind printed with cats that my daughter loves - I saved it. I think it’s in my purse right now.

debating what to do with these bunnies

lady of the house in her crocs

bye bye strawberries that totally took over our garden box

I’d like to never step foot in a thrift store again. I’d like to cook a single meal with pots I can find. I’d like to sleep through the night and get twelve massages.

the point of writing . . . I found this sticky note when packing up my bedroom. what IS the point of writing?? if anyone can say, please tell me

important items crossing town

I know I’m at my photo quota. I also know it’s a privilege beyond words to own a house in North America, where the process of buying a home - a home! everyone deserves a safe roof even that fat brown mouse - is riddled with barriers. Bringing me solace right now is the patient humor of trees as they watch us schlepp our laundry baskets full of god knows what again and again. And the hope that soon, I will have time to unpack some of our books, and find the right spot for the TV and get back to movie nights, and maybe maybe one day care about cooking again. Who knows, maybe I’ll shed that part of me like a cicada skin at the old house and start writing bestselling bodice rippers at this one.

I’m sending you cute salt and pepper shakers, four rugs for snow slush, lots of construction beeping, and the tickling memory of voles on the lawn.

this seemed like a good idea at the time - Tim had more success getting our homemade bunny decoration evidence off the door

Here’s a video from our old freezer that refused to work its magic on the ice-pops most of the time. After two weeks of not hardening, this last pop mysteriously froze, as if the machine knew we were serious about leaving and finally got its sh*t together. One of the kids enjoyed this last pop between riding their bike up and down the old street and absolutely not helping anyone.

old bookmark

Yesterday I was carting toilet paper and nail polish around in my front seat. I hope your days are full of such necessary riches!

Xoxo & kraken strength,

Kara