A Fresh Start

Thank you so much for all the crossing of the crossables and good thoughts sent our way during the very interesting process of waiting to see if a house offer is accepted...it's been a really hectic and exhausting time! And yes, we got it...whew! So far so good. BUT, I can tell you, I would have NEVER actively chosen to do this whole process in September. RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF SCHOOL.

We are super excited, and all the things are falling into place, but we weren't really expecting to find something so quickly and now we are scrambling to get our house ready to sell as quickly as possible.

This could be a lot more catastrophic if we weren't neat, clean people who keep a decent house that looks cozy and might I say adorable 99% of the time. (It wasn't so adorable when all my binders and books and boxes of stuff that had to go back to my classroom were cluttering up the front door area, but that's over and now I just have stuff in my office to go back to school. School pretty much takes over the house.)

But still, we've lived here a long time. We have 15 years of living from Bryce, and 11 years of living from me, and that adds up to a lot of things that need going through.

As Bryce said, "We do NOT want to move crap!"

And so the seemingly gargantuan process of going through the cabinets and bins and boxes in the basement, in the closets, and in the storage crawlspaces upstairs in the "attic" has to happen, and quickly.

Some boxes are fun to go through.

I found box with my pins from high school for National Honor Society and track. I found an inexplicable trophy labeled "Coach's Award." That one HAS to be for participation, or maybe a good attitude despite limited ability. I was decent by the end of my running days, but I was never trophy-worthy.

I found a boatload of letters and cards from college. I found hand-folded looseleaf notes from high school, signed LYLAFS (love ya like a favorite sister), and once I un-folded them I couldn't for the life me figure out the naughty origami we used to create these compact notes that could be passed behind a teacher's back. Now kids just text, abbreviating everything unnecessarily and leaving no proof.

It made me feel sorry for the kids today, who won't have any of these unexpected treasures. Like finding the original Paula Abdul Concert Quiz and Answer Key that my best friend made for me and my other best friend to do in the car on the way to Jones Beach for our first ever concert -- she was going separately, and she was a FREAK for Paula -- and so we had to bone up on things like what kind of dog she had and what kind of house she lived in and what her first choreography job was on the way. You can't put a value on things like that!

But then again, the kids today will probably have a lot less physical STUFF to sort through when they move from place to place. So that's a positive. For them.

I found a bag filled with cards from my first wedding. I started reading them all again, and then wondered what the fuck I was doing when time is of the essence and I recycled them.

I bit the bullet and recycled all of my notes and materials from grad school -- I hadn't gone back to reference anything in 12 years and honestly, so much has changed in terms of standards and research that I really didn't need to keep it. I kept a few papers, and my Master's thesis, but that was it.

I kept all my photos. I kept letters. I kept the Paula quiz. I kept notebooks of my writing as a child -- one was from 8th grade and included a hilarious and classic tale that I'm pretty sure was written after we read "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury involving ESP, the sun supernova-ing, and a luxury space shuttle. AND LOTS OF CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!

But we also came across errant stuff saved for our possible children. My tooth fairy pillow. Mementos from my childhood that no one is going to feel connected to after I'm gone.

And, my vision board.

Oh man, Bryce came up with it covered with another piece of plain paperboard, and was like, "What do I do with this? I don't even want to show it to you, I don't want to make you upset."

But I did want to see it, all dusty and busted.

And I was okay with throwing it out. Part of me wanted to save all the pretty pushpins that were holding all of those defunct hopes and dreams to the handmade tackboard...but then I realized that to take each individual tack out would be like stabbing me with a tiny knife over and over as I removed each fragment of a dream that wasn't, and so I made the executive decision to just chuck the whole thing. Losing the pushpins was worth not having all those tiny needles stab me in my most tender parts.

And so it's gone. Which is okay, and appropriate.

This move feels like an incredible cleansing, a move away from a home where we'd hoped things would work out one way and instead they went in a totally different direction. The new house has no history, for us. It is a place to start all new memories. It's sad to leave this house behind, with all its coziness and all the things that we did to make it ours.

But it's also leaving behind rooms where I stabbed myself with needles, where Bryce stabbed me with bigger needles, rooms where I miscarried, rooms where we got bad news, and rooms where the contents of our nursery lay piled up and waiting to be picked up from the donation agency. Bryce has more feelings for our current house than I do, as he chose it and did a lot of work before I got there, even though I arrived a scant four years after he did. But for me, I didn't pick this house. I love this house, but it wasn't ours from the beginning--it was Bryce's and his ex-wife's to start. And while I've lived here for far longer and we've made it ours over the decade+ that we've lived here together, it still to me feels a bit like HIS house that I moved into. Ours now, but with that history of not starting out mine.

The new house is OURS. Totally, unequivocally ours, with no sadness, no rooms that bring us back to moments that are heartwrenching. And that is a glorious thing.

We need to finish up all our cleaning and clearing within the next two weeks, so we can get this warm, cozy home up for sale and get things moving. I'm sure there will be a lot of things that trip us up on the way -- I can think of a tub in the attic space that is filled with books and onesies we didn't want to part with -- but I am so, so excited for this fresh start.