Welp, here we are.
I'm sitting in our new house, in a large chair in our family room, laptop on top of my lap. Sunlight is cutting sharply through the autumn leaves (of which there are still many clinging stubbornly to the trees) and splashing all over the floor. Oh, wait. Cloud. AH! Cloud moved. Sun's back.
Betsy is gone for the weekend. Scrapbooking retreat. Macy is prancing around town with Grandma. Jack is lost in some drawings he's doing. Zoe is marching around the house with a bowl full of Cheerios making improbable demands from inanimate objects.
This is very nice.
Our new home is pretty awesome. It's very large and very full of personality. Like me. We have a separate area for the daycare so at the end of the day we don't feel like we're still at the office, we have an immense backyard full of trees that is perfect for exploring and playing (complete with our own creek), a full basement ("full" meaning "full of bigscreens and couches"), and a garage stacked high with cardboard boxes that we haven't bothered to empty yet (on the one hand, it's only been two weeks, but on the other hand, we've had two whole weeks... look at it however you choose).
The thing about houses with personality... they usually have quirks, too. Sometimes quirks can be fun, like the old carriage-style light hanging over the breakfast nook or the decades-old textured wallpaper in the basement stairwell or the laundry chute that provided Jack and Macy with hours of thrilling enjoyment when they first discovered it. But, quirks can also be not-so-fun, like the gutters that are trying to jump off of my roof or the fruit flies that have apparently made our house National Fruit Fly Headquarters. But we're prepared to deal with quirks. For example, we had an issue with our front door. Well, issue might not be... Betsy couldn't open it. One phone call and one signed check later and our front door opens smoothly and all of the door to our house are re-keyed and we have a half-dozen shiny new keys to put in a drawer somewhere and never, ever use.
The biggest hiccup by far has been the gutters. Having so many trees, our gutters fill up pretty quickly with leaves and then get clogged and then overflow. At one particular point, the overflow was flooding a small section of our landscaping, but water being what it is and finding ways to drain and whatnot, the overflow seeped into our basement, right into Betsy's craft room.
We called some people. We're getting quotes. It's all good.
Two weeks. I've got my books shelved, but my clothes are still in a pile in the bedroom. The TVs are all set up in the basement, but we still can't get the van in the garage. We're slowly but surely getting things in order. But my wife will be coming home in a few hours and my immediate concern is getting the house "Betsy-ready," so I must go.
Thank you.
Matt Beers
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