New house doesn’t quite feel like home yet. An internet connection would help. So would window shades:) But aside from the material organization, I’ve yet to make an emotional connection to this new place. Maybe because I’m not unpacked and remain undecorated. Maybe because my shoulders ache, my back hurts, and there’s a weird pain in my foot that is shooting upward toward the knee.
Which reminds me that I am close to a lovely yoga studio. I need to get back to class. After I rest the various overworked muscles. And finish unpacking. Then start writing again; I am counting today’s blog as a first step. Had to come out to a bookstore to post an entry. And I’m not the coffee shop type of writer.
I lived in one place for 25 years and didn’t give the move much thought. Well, other than “I can’t wait and I know I will love it!” But 25 years brings another sort of problem to moving house. It’s like packing for vacation. But instead of hunting through a few suitcases, I’m hunting through a bunch of rooms that equal 100 suitcases. Add to that short term memory loss (no big deal, it happens to most people as they get older) and unpacking becomes a challenge.
Then there’s the part about remembering to be fully clothed at all times (windows!) and to shut doors where applicable (windows!) Yes, the new place has lots of windows and I love that about it. I will love it even more when the window shop calls to say my order’s come in and when will they be able to install?
Meanwhile, I had to drive by the old place today. We’d forgotten to give the new owner one of the garage door openers, so I popped it in his mailbox. I felt nothing for the house I had loved for so long. I was actually happy that I did not own the mailbox bombed by bird shit.
I don’t love my old place anymore. I don’t love my new place yet. But I still have my internet home, and that feels just right:)
Cynthia Harrison 
Really! You “felt nothing for the house [you] had loved for so long!” Then again, it is good to let go and move on as opposed to holding on to the old.
LikeLike
Yes, it’s odd. A few years ago, I felt ready for a change. And this year, my husband got the same urge to move forward with our “life plan” and so we did. It wasn’t what we’d envisioned, at least not for me, but was even better. Now I just need some shades to cover the windows:)
LikeLike
Cindy, I know exactly what you’re going through! Its very strange to move to a new place and not know where to put everything! When I left my Harper Woods house and I had to go back one more time to clean out the freezer, I was very glad to move out and into my new home in Macomb. Then I left Macomb (that house I still miss sometimes) and moved to Utah! The house we bought in Utah I have to say (but don’t ever tell Jerry) that the first night we spent there, I was wondering if I did the right thing, but fortunately as the days went on, I grew to love the house! I think once the pictures are up and the unpacking is done, you will feel at home again. Congratulations once again! Oh and please send me your new address!
LikeLike
Hi Sue, finally got cable and will send out new address! I thought about you in Utah. On that mountain sipping your coffee in that gorgeous setting. Glad you are settling in. It’s a lovely spot. But such a drastic change for you. And many changes all at once: retirement, live-in partner, and new state! You have handled it all with grace and a smile. We here in Michigan are so appreciative of your get-togethers with us when you come “home.”
LikeLike
YOU’LL LOVE THE MEMORIES IT HELD GOOD AND BAD BUT THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A NEW HOME TO START NEW MEMORIES,NEW FRIENDS,NEW STORES,NEW ROADS NEW BEGINING. I LOVE IT FOR YOU AND AL,YOU WILL LOVE IT TO XO
LikeLike
Aunt Wese your philosophy is great. It is a new moon in just a few days, and this is our new start. Exciting!
LikeLike
So glad to hear you’re settling in, in record time if you ask me. If you’re not missing your old house, then you were ready to move. It took me years to get over missing the house we lived in for 29 years. If I had known that beforehand, I would not have moved. After six years, it’s okay now….
LikeLike
Sharon every time we looked at a place, we came home and said “we like it here better” until we walked into this builders’ model in a five year old community. I immediately sensed that “this was it” and it is. Taking me time to unpack and set things to rights, but I finally got internet service again:)
LikeLike
You are lucky not to have feelings for the place you lived in. I was an emotional wreck when we moved. I loved our new place, but there were so many memories in the old one, especially of the kids growing up. I would look out my kitchen window back then and see them walking home from school or riding their bikes with their friends. Plus all of our Mt. Clemens family and friends dropping by or being invited on a regular basis. We still had work to do on the old house after we moved and every time we’d go to the old place I would weep. I am not good with change … I’m so glad it’s not like that for you. But yeah, unpacking and reorganizing is a b — bummer.
LikeLike
Kris, so many people I talk to miss you and your home as being social central. And because you love to entertain, and are such a gracious hostess, of course your new place, beautiful and bountiful as it is, had to be a jolt. You’re settled in now, and I hope to get that unpacking done soon!
LikeLike
I moved to a house in Sydney when I was studying for university. It was only for a couple of years. But the contrast between my old life and the new Sydney-centric existence was profound, and disturbing. It was a concrete jungle. I wasn’t far from the airport and there were planes going over head seemingly all of the time. I hated it at first. I remember being so confused by everything that I barely ate for the first month I was there.
But over time you find your feet and you find a new rhythm. I was only a short walk from Mascot Memorial Park, and this was a beautiful refuge from the sheer concrete of everything else around it. It gave me a lot of peace at that time. It was a place to think and breathe and rest.
And of course being a pretty hapless uni student, I befriended a whole heap of people who worked in shops, restaurants and takeaways along Botany Road. I would drop in to get bread from one of the Vietnamese bakeries in the afternoons sometimes and the woman kindly gave me extra things for free. (She lamented that her daughter wanted to be an engineer — work she thought was unsuitable for a woman. Interestingly the son of the woman at the Fish & Chips shop was also studying to be an engineer. I was actually there, in part, to learn audio engineering/sound mixing, which was something very few people really understood and something I had long given up trying to explain to most people.)
There was of course too the men at the Chinese take away who barked at my roommates and I invariably as “BOY!” It always amused me.
Eventually I left that area and that house, and I was quite relieved to leave it truth be told. But now I am quite fond of the place. And it is a different thing to return there was a tourist. Something about brushing the cobwebs from your mind and seeing what has changed and what has remained the same.
LikeLike
Wow, John. That was quite an experience. When I was a young woman, still in my teens, I traveled the country via hitchhiking. That’s the only thing I can think of that even would equate to what you went through. When I finally landed in Key West, I found a community of sorts and stayed there longer than any other place I visited. It felt right. That was then, this is now. I recently went back there and was saddened that the shabby two-story house I lived in that looked out on the gulf with only a small motel with a pool between me and the sea, had now become a gated renovated beauty. Nothing wrong with that. But across the street, a row of tourist shops and t-shirt vendors. Time marches on indeed.
LikeLike