You guys, I'm moving on from this blog. I started writing this blog when I got married, and it carried me through honeymooning, deployment, the beginning of my motherhood, homeowning, and the combustion and dissolution of that same marriage. As much as I love writing here, and the support you have given me, I don't think I have any more stories left to tell here.
However....
I am moving on to an exciting new adventure with my friend Amelia. Together we are launching At Home Wherever, a blog about how many times we have had to set up homes in places we've loved and hated, and exactly how we have done that. Amelia went from owning to moving and renting, and I am going from renting to building and owning. We have so much good stuff rumbling around in us about the thing we are each most passionate about: home.
At this point, it looks better in watercolor.
Speaking of, I will gleefully inform you that the finishing touches are being put on Lot 22 and we are expecting to close the first week in September. When I stood in the house this week looking at my almost-finished, designed-and-built-just-for-me kitchen, I was happier than the day I got married. Because marriages are hard. And marriage to someone who has always had trouble staying put turns out to be impossible. Marriages end one of two ways. People have limited potential. Houses have endless potential, depending on your financial situation.
When we bought our first house, we were in the middle of deployment and the boys' mom had recently passed away. We moved into that house hoping to create sunshine in the middle of a storm that would continue for a few years and break up a family on those once-hopeful floors. My cozy chalet cottage was a shelter. Standing in the living room I designed, looking at the kitchen I designed, in the home I have built for my boys and me, I was happy for all the life that will happen there.
We're going home.
Home is people and smells and sofas; the handprints of little boys on flat-paint rental walls; the gray sludge that gets on furniture when dogs have bones; cans of paint and accidental pumpkin patches; floor plans and landscaping; outgrowing what you loved two years ago; and packing up to say hello to something else.
So just move over to At Home Wherever. The site is being designed as we speak, and you will want to sign up to get an email when we launch our very first post, and every one after. You can go ahead and do that now. The content will be less personal than here, but you will get to see how the boys fit into my idea of "home." And if you want to see us in our new house and watch us set it up, you have to go over there to AHW. Please come on my new adventure. One that I am really, truly, deeply happy about.
Thanks for the memories. They were almost always swell.
