Home sweet home

We have been in our new house for a couple of weeks now, and we are loving it. The major and best feeling I have isn’t so much a sense of ownership – knowing that the place is ours – but it’s a feeling of space and comfort, being able to spread out and feel truly at home. It’s a feeling of being settled and being able to use a space fully without feeling cramped or that I’m there only temporarily. I love having a lot of space now, room to spread out, having many rooms, each with its own purpose, as well as having all of my belongings together, every little comforting thing that I have and want, all together in one place (especially all of my favorite cooking “toys”).

I have yet to really spend a full weekend in the house. We did start officially living in the house two weekends ago, the second weekend that Sarah’s mother was visiting to help us make the move. But things were chaos inside with boxes coming from so many different places, and we were so busy the whole weekend moving in. Last weekend I went to Seattle to see my family again. This past weekend I was around nearly the whole time, until I left late Sunday afternoon for a business trip to Orlando.

But we are settling in nicely, and we are getting boxes unpacked and finding places for things. One thing that we are having to do is buy and install towel racks in the bathrooms (all 3 ½ of them) and shelving in most of the closets. When we get these necessities taken care of, then we will turn to more cosmetic improvements, such as painting. We are fortunate that the house, built in 1911, has been totally renovated inside and all walls are gleaming white, so the entire house is a blank canvas waiting for our personal touches. We love color, so we will have a lot of fun with our many rooms and walls. Then we can hang our pictures and display the many items we’ve collected on our travels around the world – our cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, my large ebony mask from Malawi, and our photos of the Matterhorn, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Pyramids at Giza, and the Great Wall of China, among many other souvenirs.

One of the greatest pleasures for me on weekends is having the time to cook (i.e., being able to take my time when cooking, unlike on weeknights when we just try to cook dinner as quickly as possible after work). Our house has a large kitchen, so it’s great to have space to cook in. However, we went out on Friday night and tried a pizza place in Columbia Heights, the lively neighborhood just south of ours, where there are lots of stores and shops and restaurants. But Saturday night we made dinner at home, and I was able to resume making a coffee cake for Sunday morning breakfast. With my stuff that was stored in my parents’ basement in the Seattle suburbs (that came in a moving van two weeks ago) was a new Kitchen Aid mixer, and I’m loving it. I’m also thrilled to have my automatic bread machine again. I can start baking a different kind of bread each week for the lunches I take to work. And I can cook as much as I want and have the dishwasher clean everything – I’m still thrilled to have a dishwasher, which my family did not have when I was growing up. We’ve got all new appliances in the kitchen, so they work well (although we’re still trying to figure out the personality of the oven – how it bakes best).

While outside cutting the lawn on Saturday, a new chore for us with a real, single-family home, a neighbor from a few doors down stopped and introduced himself. His name is Banks B. Banks. Seriously. He promptly pulled out one of his business cards and handed it to me, explaining that he does ironwork.

Banks B. Banks
“The Iron Man”

his card reads. I wonder if his middle name is also Banks. If so, I wonder why he didn’t put Banks Banks Banks on his business card. He told me, “Welcome to the neighborhood.” I should have responded with, “Thanks, Banks!”

We’ve met a few other neighbors over the past couple weeks, but none of them seem to have such colorful names (or nicknames).

So, we are settling in and doing quite well with our new digs. We hope you will come soon to visit us (okay, if you’d prefer to wait until spring when the weather will be nice again).