Is my permit??
You may be wondering where the exciting first big moves updates are. Weeeellll, we haven’t quite started yet. We’re ready… boy are we ready! Apparently the permitting process takes at least 2 weeks and up to 4. Go Figure. Anyway, we’re about half way thru the allowed time, and getting more anxious by the day (well, maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so) I took some solace in the fact that there were torrential rain storms much of the past two weeks and we wouldn’t have really begun anyway (and luckily enough it was great for growing grass in the mud patch that was created by the trailer’s septic hookup) This week, however, looks to be beautiful for taking off a roof…
So, in lieu of an update on the house I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why we’re renovating and not moving. I’ve been walking on my own a few times a week lately, sometimes with my iphone, sometimes not. Sometimes in the evening, sometimes early in the morning. It’s the first time I’ve been out and around the neighborhood on such a regular basis since maternity leaves (and before that, our running days). I always see at least a half dozen other folks out for a stroll, often mom-looking women like myself, but not exclusively. Without exception, they smile and greet me – something common in my homeland, but not so in my adopted home state. I see that lady with the two little dogs who walks by in the morning. I see any number of the elderly men from around the corner who can’t walk as far as he used to.
In the evenings, there are usually more people about. I see Morgan and Allie, two kids I know only from the beach, but who moved from one house to another, on the water, nearby. Morgan, who took a shine to Norah her first summer at the beach, tells me she is heading to highschool this year. I guess she’s old enough for babysitting now…how’d that happen? I also saw a graduation party at the house with all the little boys, apparently not so little any more. Gone is the trampoline and the bikes, replaced by cars, though the hockey net still remains behind the new sets of wheels. I saw a yard full of kids, and their makeshift “band’ on a set random things from around their houses. I see a Mom pushing a newborn, I wonder where she lives? I see a block full of kids, playing in the street – I guess we’ll know a lot of them by the time we get thru the first few years of school.
I smell the honeysuckle that blooms each spring at that yellow house near the beach, and the hedge of forsythia near the Leary’s. The really deep purple lilacs are out at that other house, and the renovation on that house near the dirt road is almost done. I wonder of the people in the house with the perennially immaculate yard are alright, as the yard doesn’t quite look like itself. I smile when I see the schoolbus mailbox at the owners of the bus service. I run into our friends from church, or around the corner, or yet to be made. I wave to the McCuskers, the Cadieux’s, the Billingtons, the Thayers, The Tardi’s, the Klostermans, I usually stop at the Dowd’s, “Nancy”, “Fran”, “Finn’s Mom and Dad”, John and Nadia, Laurie and Rob, Brian and what’s her name (Jill), Jim from Quebec, that guy who waits for the school bus to come, the older couple at the corner whose name I don’t know, the lady with the boy with Aspergers… the list goes on.
I guess, at the end of the day, we’re staying put because where we live feels like home.
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