I am so glad to be here. We really like the house and I still find myself surprised to find ourselves under this roof. Boo and I walked around our backyard counting trees together. There are 12. With all the headaches of the physical move fading into memory, I am finally able to enjoy the house, which has its quirks and its beauty.

This morning I noticed the sunlight streaming in the kitchen window, between the slats of the wide wooden blinds. The sunlight illuminated parts of the red brick fireplace in the next room in the pattern of the leaves it had to dodge. All the hard work, headaches, late nights, and exhaustion are a small price to pay. It is great to be at a stage in our unpacking when I can notice fluttering leaves on brick and not just the box of books that needs to be shoved out of the way in favor of the box of spatulas.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t formulate a list of things I learned from the moving experience…

1. The next time we move, say…..37 years from now when I am moved from this house to a plot at Crown Hill Cemetary, I will hire someone to carry my stuff.

2. The next time we move, I will carry the coffee grinder across the threshold first and install it in the kitchen after an elaborate, but short, ceremony. This will prevent the unthinkable from happening again. On our first morning here, I hobbled down the stairs thinking only of coffee, only to be told by hubby the coffee grinder was nowhere to be found. I put on my flip flops and drove to McDonald’s for coffee. That is desperation.

3. The next time we move, I will print off a map highlighting the locations (with cute little color-coded push pins) of Starbucks, Peaberry, Cinnabon, or any other retail establishment that brews coffee from coffee beans.

4. The next time we move, I hope we don’t have a 21 month old.

5. The next time we move, we won’t assume the US Postal Service will actually forward our mail, even though we requested it a month in advance. We won’t move too far, so that we can drive to the old house every day and check our old mailbox, which will inevitably contain mail (some of it important) for us. I will not wait five days to call and say “um, where’s our mail?” and be told a supervisor will call me within 2 business days. I will know the confirmation letter from the USPS means nothing.

6. Ditto #5, except with Earthlink and our DSL service (I am writing this on dial-up. The horrors).

7. The next time we move, I will pop Advil in advance. Sometimes, I forget I am not a Soviet “Women’s” Powerlifter. I forgot on moving day and hoisted things I shouldn’t have hoisted. Ouch.

8. The next time we move, we won’t. I want to go through all the seasons, the years of our lives here. I want to know what December 2019 sunlight looks like on red brick.