three weeks and in between

it's been 26 days since we moved in. and i think that perhaps it should take longer than three weeks to fully form a habit or to feel like home or to get your smell into the paint of things. but i felt at home here days after we got here. the kinks are still there. and i know that in a year, we will move furniture and the floor will exhale because we had everything wrong in the beginning. we had dash's first birthday party here and it was the first time that bryan and i have ever hosted a party together and we stood in the kitchen and looked out the window at our families and friends and a gaggle of kids playing in the backyard and we shredded the pulled pork for the sandwiches and smiled at each other because it might have taken six years, but we're finally where we want to be. we water the lawn at night and we talk to the neighbors and we worry about how in the hell we are going to afford this rent every month but then we remember that we used to worry about the rent every other month at every other place we ever lived and it makes us feel a bit better. there are trees outside the window where i have placed my desk to write and the idea that i can look up and see blue skies and trees does something to the inside of my stomach lining. something that makes me sleep better at night.

there is other stuff, too. friends that are getting divorced, or moving, or both. my ridiculously self-righteous impulse to give unsolicited advice to a friend at a party and the realization that (as bryan lovingly pointed out to me the next morning - you totally dr. phil'd her.) my inner dr. phil is an asshole who thinks she knows what is best and can't help but say it. she is also fueled by alcohol and it astonishes me to think that i used to drink wine on a regular basis. 

my parents and remaining grandparents are getting old. and i think about how we are all going to die. and that there is something that is supposed to be done between now and then and i wonder if perhaps my to do list written on our chalkboard fridge is any more or less important than the fact that i need to see a dentist. these daily chores that we do don't seem to make sense in the grand scheme of things and i think that the sheer determination it takes sometimes to sweep the floors (because, while i love a clean house, i hate doing floors) this determination to sweep the floors is somehow a ridiculous notion that will keep me from getting phone calls about grandfathers in the hospital or emergency room visits from afar. and then i take the baby on a walk (as in a real, live wearing-workout-shoes kind of walk) and i pass by an open door on the side of the bike path with papers and moist boxes crammed into every crevice, the grand canyon of detritus. a shirtless man with a dangling cigarette is shuffling a pile of stuff to the side so that he can get out the front door. his door will only open a foot and he squeezes out and sits on the porch with a murky plastic soda bottle. his hair sticks to his head down to his neck and flares out, almost in defiance. it seems yellow at the ends, like old men's fingers after smoking for 50 years. he pulls out his phone and calls someone and i keep walking, willing myself not to stare inside the house. to stare at the trash can positioned right outside his front door. a metaphor for something. i'm listening to 'the american life' on my headphones and listening to a story about crime scenes and i think about how we end. 

and what we do in between. 

and i wonder where he started. and what he did in between.

i ended up with a blister because i hadn't been on a real walk in so long.

it must take longer than three weeks to fully form a habit.

oh, yes, i also have a post up at the expressing motherhood blog discussing creativity and motherhood.

i guess this is what i've been doing in between.