The New House

I suppose, when moving, that there are bound to be oddities and juxtapositions. Change is always weird.

Moving 450 feet down the street is a little more weird, though, because we pass by the old house every time we go anywhere, we still go to the same stores, we still see the same friends, etc. But when we get home, all the light switches are in the wrong place, the doors don't lock the same way, and so on.

The cat has taken it the worst. For the first week, Sparkles stayed up at the old house. I'd walk him down the street to the new house, and he'd spend a few skittish hours inside only to clamor at the door to be let out. Once he was out he made a bee line for his old perch up on the hill; it's his hill, wiped clean of all minor mammal and avian life, where he is king. Now he sits and sleeps on the chair in the living room and spends the night under our bed.

Jonah and Sam cried the first day, "I want to go home," etc. By the second day (the day we unpacked all the toys and books), they were both fine. They've taken to their rooms with abandon and play well most of the time up there.

Timothy wasn't affected by the move or the house itself, but the loss of TV has hit him hard. He is his father's son. We promised them videos of their favorite shows when we moved, and I think we'll need to get Timothy a Fairly Oddparents DVD soon. Other than that, he's fine. He loves his new room and practices karate in the (flat!) driveway.

Stephen is completely unaffected.

My wife, after initial despair over the amount of boxes and other work, has taken to the task with relish. The books are now "away" (i.e., in my office on the floor) and she has been working on other household items. Every hanging picture, sconce, and wall-attaching whatnot that is on our dining room table should be off by tonight, so that we can enjoy our mac & cheese on the big table (the 4 seater breakfast table has been doing yeoman's work for the past week).

And me? My kids are safe, my wife is happy, and so I'm doing just fine. I've enjoyed observing the polar opposites, the yin-yang aspects of the old house vs. the new one.

There are no trees on the South side of the house (or Southeastern, or Southwestern). So we've gone from full shade to full sun. I wonder how much a 200-year-old water oak would cost to have installed?

In the old house, my office was the hottest room in the house. Now it's the coolest. I like my office.

The TV room in the old house was the farthest away from my office. As such, it was the "loud room", the only room in the house where the boys could be boys. In the new house, ironically, the TV room is at the bottom of the stairs to my office, and is now the "quiet room," the only room in the house where the boys can't be boys. Thankfully, if they're anywhere else in the house they can be as loud as they want and I literally can't hear them at all.

Well, sometimes I can. The other day I had the back window of my office open. I open it in the mornings to let out the smells from the rugs I have in there. I was sitting at my desk and faintly heard the sounds of children playing. "Those are some happy kids," I thought, and then I realized it was Jonah and Sam, screaming and yelling in their room, playing some boy game of jumping, running, crashing, whatever. Their window is closest to my office window, and that's the only way I could hear them.

It's a good house.