Our House In the Middle of Our Street

My darling isn't quite sure what to make of it and neither am I. This evening when I came home from work I was swirling, singing, smiling... oh fuck it... I'm on top of the world since I got my new job.

I'm not used to being this happy.

The only drawback to my new job so far is that I have less time for blogging and today I noticed that someone other than me has been using up my sugar free hazelnut flavored coffee creamer that I put in the fridge at work. I wrote my name on it in big bold letters with a purple Sharpie and put it in the fridge last Thursday and I swear that half of it is gone already. Next time I'm going to pull off the wrapper so that it's not readily apparent what it actually is and write "breast milk" on it. Or maybe "goats milk" -

Hmmm, I wonder, what's more repulsive to an office grocery thief?

It would be pretty funny for someone to come into the break room and see me pour liquid from a container that says "breast milk" into my coffee now wouldn't it?

Yes.

Breast milk it is.

If the pinched faced mousy lady who always wears a beret and has admonished me for forgetting to wear my ID badge happens to walk in to witness this I may just have to ham it up for her and start chugging it from the bottle until it's running down my chin and I have a fake breast milk mustache.

Anyhoo... my husband and I were talking about my sudden, and well deserved, mood upswing tonight and I officially decreed that this is the happiest that I have been in 4 years. Basically until a month ago I've been a miserable wretch since we moved to Michigan.

Less so since I quit my job and made some friends here locally and now suddenly since I've found a normal, non-traveling, work with people job I'm so happy that I come home in the evening singing and doing soft shoe numbers? How weird is that?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I still loathe it here and want nothing more than to go back in time and somehow change things around so that my husband wasn't transferred and that we never had to leave our beautiful home, in our fantastic neighborhood that was so close to all of our old friends.

The longer were are here the less I mind being here, but there are some things that I still miss so much that it is painful.

Now that I have found some happiness in this place I have for the first time begun to think that possibly we could be happy if we stayed here awhile longer. Possibly.

Also, although it needs some work and I bitch about that stupid, useless, broken hot tub, I really do like our house. It's big and pretty and has a lot charming features like built in bookcases, crown molding and pocket doors.

On the other hand this house needs some serious work:

The foundation is fucked up

The windows need re-glazed

We need a new furnace before next winter

The roof has some kind of bizarre algae growing all over it

Thinking about being happy here made think about what made me happy there and I thought that maybe you would like to see some pictures of what I miss - so I've interspersed this post with pictures from our old house and some people I love who were in it with us for my 36th birthday party.

Missing the last 4 years of watching my best friend Amy's daughter grow up is a big part of why I miss home. My girl just turned 12. I can hardly believe it! She gets taller and more grown up every time I see her. The kid has got legs for days.

I miss my blindingly bright yellow kitchen that always seemed to be filled with friends happily eating my food.

I miss the tall ceilings and general quirkiness of our old crazy house. We called it "charm", but it really amounted to several generations of bad remodeling jobs.

So the old house that I was so nostalgic about needed a lot of work too. We were planning to gut the kitchen (which was why I painted it such a whacky fun color), and blow out the entire back of the house and build an addition and build a garage with a one bedroom apartment on top.

I also miss The Drexel movie theater. It's where I saw well... everything -

If I were going to start a business in this community (I am not) it would be a great independent movie theater, modeled after the Drexel from back home.