Sense and Sensitivity

Kids have an almost inhuman way of tugging at the proverbial heartstrings.  Even the hardest of souls can be softened by a baby's coos, or a toddler's kind word.  I'd like to believe that we run a tight ship around here, but every once in a while we, too, just go all to mush.  Today was was my once in a while.  Calvin and I went to the library today to enjoy a presentation given by "the local farm lady," who brought a chicken and a duck for the kids to ogle.  Calvin was absolutely enthralled by both the woman and her birds.  He spent the entire forty minutes sitting in one spot on the floor listening to her with rapt attention, and when her talk was over he waited patiently in line for his turn to get close to the two farm fowl.  Wally, the enormous white duck, really drew his attention, and when it came time for the feathered friends to go home, my sweet, sensitive son was absolutely beside himself.  I was not at all prepared for the torrent of tears or the soft, sorrowful whispering - "Wally, Wally, go home, Wally."  It wasn't at all a temper tantrum - he was being quiet and obedient - it was just pure and utter sorrow.  We sat outside and talked for a few minutes about how hard it is to say goodbye, and that it was okay to cry quietly (which he was doing), and about how Wally was probably quite happy to be going home where he could play outside, and would Calvin like to go play outside?  "Nooooooo, Waaaaallllllllyyyyyy." And that's when the heartstrings finally broke, my inner reserve went completely to mush, and I lost all touch with my common sense and we walked from the library to a downtown giftshop where Calvin, still tearfully, picked out a duck of his own to take home and care for.  Wally joined us for lunch, he joined us for quiet time, he joined Calvin for naptime, and even now both Wally and Calvin are safely snuggled, along with blanket and froggy, of course, in bed for the night.

Lightning will strike twice.

And if not lightning, then most assuredly water.  This also falls under the category of "if it can go wrong, it will."  After a long day of unpacking we (thankfully) decided to move a few more boxes out of our garage and into our basement only to find water seeping in from every available edge (that being all of them since, again thankfully, we hadn't put much down there yet).  It was eerily reminiscent of August in our old house, only on a quicker timeline - four years after moving into the old house the sump died, four days after moving into the new house the sump died.  Thankfully there are actually people out there who see it as their life's mission to replace your sump pump at 11:30pm on a Saturday night if that is when it should happen to break.  The man who came to our rescue was not only uniformed, courteous, and professional, but also strangely cheerful at a time when all we could think of was going to bed.  If anyone out there (in our general area) happens to find themselves in a similar situation, we highly recommend Michigan Power Rodding.  That being said, we hope none of you ever need that advice.

You know you live in a small town when...

This move has taken us into a whole new world, really.  We both have always lived in a city big enough to have "household mail delivery," or mail delivered directly to your home, and that is why we failed to ask about how we might be getting our mail in our new house, and that is why we spent an entire week trying to figure out where our mail was going.  There are no boxes on the houses here, not even curbside boxes, and the banks of boxes the entryways to the subdivision didn't have house numbers on them (and we had no box key).  We finally gave over to the embarrassment of not knowing such a thing and called our local post office where the nice postman replied "oh yeah, the first owners left their key here at the desk in an envelope marked with a C."  And if that isn't small town enough for you, then how about this:  when we went to the post office to pick up the key there was only one person working, not because the others were on break, but because there's only room for one person to work behind the desk (or in the whole building for that matter), AND... there was no line.  That quick visit left us with not only a key to our box but also with a hand drawn map complete with instructions, and a coloring book for Calvin.  So after naptime we embarked on a journey, hand drawn map in hand, to locate our box.  It has a nice location nestled between a neighborhood pond and the grocery store, and after a little additional exploring we stopped in to pick up fresh ingredients for dinner.  How very European of us.  This could become a habit.

And how about one more small town anecdote?  Before our actual move we called what we thought was the listed number to put the waterbill in our name and were gently told that in order to take care of such a thing she would need to "call Brenda, down at the town hall" or some such a thing.  And when she did call "down to some such a thing," Brenda turned out to be a real person with no automated answering system and didn't' even put us on hold.  And she also turned out to be a wealth of friendly, if unsolicited, additional information.  Before hanging up the phone (five minutes later), not only was the water bill put in our name, but we also knew when and how our garbage would be picked up, when and how to do recycling (although they are out of containers and don't know when they'll get more in), and the best route to get to several choice parks in the village.  Thank you Brenda, for reminding us what real personal customer service is all about.  We love it here already.

The house does not make the home

A good friend warned us that moving is rated as one of the most stressful moments in life, ranking right up there with getting married or having a baby, but we have to disagree.  We think that's a deplorable understatement - moving seems way more stressful than marriage and childbirth combined.  It could be the monetary strain, or the physical one, or maybe it's the act of condensing one's whole life into boxes and hoping it makes the transition in tact, but we think it goes even beyond that.  We think it's less the act of moving and more the process of being between homes that elevates the stress level so greatly.  With our old house, once familiar and comfortable as an old shoe, now stripped bare and left for the taking, the new house has become our family base. But we are not yet familiar with the sights, sounds, or smells of the new house, and in some ways our first week here has felt a little displacing, like being on vacation and expecting go home any day now.  Glimpsing our possessions settled into their new arrangements has been unsettling as well - familiar but in the wrong context, like seeing a face at church that you had previously known only at work.  We truly love our new house - we love the layout, the colors, the deck, the neighborhood, the location - but it will take some time for it to fully become our home.  In the meanwhile we find ourselves marveling at and enjoying the new (the open kitchen, the larger bedrooms, the wood floors), but clinging to the old (the dogs and cats in the same old sunshine, our usual coffee in our usual mugs, Calvin's same toys on the same shelves, and hey - we painted his new bedroom to match the old) while we go through the seemingly unending process of unpacking our familiars.  We'll know we've come to an end point when Calvin no longer exclaims "new house" whenever we pull into the driveway.

More pictures in the New House Process alubm. 

We could use an extra day

We fill our days to the absolute brim with work, eating, sleeping, and yes, even a little playing.  We stretch our days to the very last possible minute, falling into bed when we can no longer keep our eyes open, then drag ourselves into consciousness as early as we can possibly stand to do so (or maybe as late as Calvin will let us) the following day.  Our lives are bursting at the seams, and we absolutely love it, but there is just not enough time in the day to work in everything we want and need to do.  That is why we strongly advocate the use of Leap Day, February 29, as an official national "extra day" holiday.  Think about it - no one will miss it!  We base nearly everything on a 365 day year, and when leap year rolls around we have to put into effect special circumstances to make up for it.  What better way to celebrate life than to just take it off.  It could be a national day of ecological and economical awareness - no stores would be open to entice unsuspecting citizens into spending money they are hoping to get from stimulus packages, and the TV wouldn't be on to broadcast mind-numbing programs into our supposedly peaceful homes - everyone would just have to go outside and enjoy the trees (since the grass in this area is under several inches of snow).  We think it's a great idea, and we celebrated this hopeful new holiday in the same way we celebrate all other holidays - by taking lots and lots of pictures.  Enjoy them, because this holiday won't come around for another four years!
You can see more Leap Day pictures in the Feb 08 album.