A project for the drive

Every Thanksgiving for the past (!) five, I've ridden down to Maryland to have Thanksgiving with Patrick's family. It only took me one hectic, nerve-racking, slightly-more-speedy-than-I'm-used-to trip to know what I needed. Confined to the passenger side of my level-headed though lead-footed and left-lane-loving husband's car, I found myself biting my nails, bracing a little as we zoomed up on the bumper of one pokey unsuspecting car after another, in pursuit of our destination.

(Patrick is a good driver, really. I just grew up with a very conservative, careful, patient driver... and Patrick is, to put it mildly, more assertive.)

What I needed was to be stitching. I needed something to busy my hands and detach my mind, something to give me some purpose and delight. Thus began an annual series, of sorts.

As ALL of you surely know, I am a gift-maker. Ever since that first Thanksgiving ride, I've planned my Christmas making with one good, sink-your-teeth-into-it handwork project, to bring with me on the road to Maryland. Last year, it was my sister-in-law's quilt. The year before, a bag for my mom. This year, my friend Kat has purchased a house. By herself. This fact calls for celebration, and so, I am making her a table runner.

It was the first Christmas project I began, back here in this post. The first step was turning all those squares into patches, with fusible interfacing, and pressing them down. Then I spent the better part of a month blind-stitching all the edges. Now I'm ready to quilt it together, and ready for the ride to Maryland. It should keep my hands busy, and my mind elsewhere.

What Christmas preparations have you begun?

Raising our glasses

As predicted, our parents came this weekend to stand in our freezing, empty construction-zone of a house, and eat plum cake off of paper plates. Except instead of standing inside eating, November gifted us with an entire weekend of sunny, 60-degree weather. I'm not sure what we were celebrating more, the weather or the house.

Oh, it had to be the house.

Mom #1 brought crostini and salad with dried cranberries. Mom #2 brought a hearty Mushroom and Lentil Pot Pie. We sat on the lawn in folding chairs, eating and drinking. We built an impromptu table from one of my moving crates and a cookie sheet. We built another impromptu table from a kerosene heater and something Patrick hauled out of the garage.

We are family. This is what we do. Together we knew this was only the beginning.

The beginning of the work, yes, that, too. But mostly the beginning of our lives here, gathering in this place to celebrate. To raise our glasses.

It was the perfect start to a legacy of fun family times in this place. Thanks, Moms and Dads, for your good-naturedness and your improvisation, and for remembering all the things that needed to be remembered. Like wine glasses. We love you.

What I see when I close my eyes

This. White paint, white roller, white trim. We spent our Veterans' Day painting trim and priming walls in the entire upstairs. Two rooms are now ready for wall paint. One is close. That is the story.

Today my arms feel somewhat like jello. This weekend, our parents are coming to stand good-naturedly in our freezing, empty construction-zone shell of a house, and eat plum cake off of paper plates. That is what family is for.

Diesel has been accompanying us , of course. He's now completely blind, and getting used to the new house has been interesting. I'm pretty sure he thinks of Gilbertsville as "That House Where All the Walls are in the Wrong Places and I Keep Getting Paint on Me." He's a definite fan of the yard, though. So are we.

This is one of the views from my craft room. In a year's time, this view will contain a large and thoroughly fenced vegetable garden. We'll get to that, the fence-building and the garden-digging. Someday. After the painting.

Domesticity break

As I wrote on Facebook last night, the new house is consuming my every waking moment (and some sleeping ones, too) with careful, considered, affectionate thoughts.

Light fixtures. Wallpaper. Flooring. Paint in all thirteen rooms. Every place I look, I see dollar signs, and I'm starting to get a tight little feeling, just under my ribs. A feeling, I'm sure, that's familiar to many of you. The realization that this is, in fact, a journey, and my perfect vision of our house will take awhile to articulate. And that's okay, because we'll have awhile to live in it, love it, make it ours.

But in the meantime. In the meantime, I'm carefully unraveling Binghamton's hold on my heart, one fragile little strand at a time. Thinking about all the things I'll miss-- our fireplace, our huge porches, our friends nearby, and our second home just around the corner.

Mostly, I do this thinking in the kitchen. I do this while walking back from my little garden-up-the-street as fat November raindrops pelt my head. I do this while turning a pan of roasted veggies in the oven, and reminiscing about all the terrific meals I've had and hosted in this house. This is the beginning of the transition, this time right here.

As ferociously as I'm looking forward to making our home in Gilbertsville, as starved for open spaces as I've sometimes felt in Binghamton, there's a lot of attachment here, a lot of memories. I'm going to take my time with them, like putting the Christmas ornaments away after the holidays are done.

This is where I moved into, from Ithaca, when I was twenty-three. With my boyfriend. This is the house we came home to, together, with a bottle of wine and a brand-new sparkly ring on my finger, to drink and celebrate by the fire. I had a last long soak in our (now removed) clawfoot tub, the day before our wedding, and earlier in that week we'd rolled up the rugs and I'd given Patrick a waltzing lesson in our living room, to practice for our first dance. This is where we came home from our honeymoon to, where I asked Patrick to carry me over the threshold. It's been just four short years, but it's seen so much living. So many life events.

Our timeline for making the move is pretty soft-- so much depends on jobs, you know-- but we're thinking it'll be in about six months, after we've addressed some of the house's quirks and made cosmetic changes. It's going to be a busy winter, to say the least. One filled with paint buckets and spackle knives, work clothes and long drives and a whole lot of firsts. Gilbertsville is an hour from Binghamton, and I expect we'll be wearing the treads clean off my tires with the trip.

All for the new place, for where our memories will be made for many years to come.

Operation Primer!

It was a really good weekend.

I mean, a really good weekend. How could it not be? We closed. We'd been dreaming that particular event since May, and it was so good to finally live it.

The idea of what we're doing, and the desire, has been with us since the start of our relationship. This long, deep, sustaining dream-- a place in the country, land for a garden, just us, making it our own-- that has been something we've looked towards together pretty much since the day we met. And now, we are here. And wow.

We've been dreaming this for so long, and this weekend we finally got to begin living it.

Writing it that way sounds so nice and idyllic. The reality was, the previous renters had a rather obnoxious sense of color, and we were charged with the heady task of priming four orange-green-mustard-yellow rooms.

The crazy colors were only in the upstairs, fortunately. The story is, the upstairs was converted into a separate apartment, (and we're converting it back just as soon as we can!), the tenants adopted a child from Asia and wanted to make it feel welcome, hence the tropical color scheme.

And, I'm sorry, it's really none of my business, but what part of this seemed like a good idea to those people?! They nailed bamboo to the walls. They used army green and pumpkin orange in the same room! They painted windows and doors to simulate bamboo, committing some pretty blatant crimes against the character of this old farmhouse.

It was wonderful to spread snowy white primer over the walls and ceilings, erasing all traces of the colorful Jungle Book exorcism.

We primed four rooms. That's sixteen walls, three ceilings, seven windows, five doors, and twenty-seven yards of baseboard molding.

Applying the first creamy dollop. Inaugurating the long road of house projects, the journey, the process.

This room, incidentally, is my future craft room/office. It gets terrific afternoon sunlight. Especially in November, with the leaves off the trees and the frosty fields slanting away in the distance.

We drove to Morris (eight miles away) for pizza. It's important, you know, to test out local pizzas. This one got points for fresh mushrooms, but the crust was a little on the rubbery side. Not bad, though, for a podunk upstate NY town.

This was our eating-and-relaxing room upstairs, the one that was already painted when we bought the house. Apparently, the same tenants who'd painted the greens and oranges in the other bedrooms had painted a mural in here so offensive the seller had it covered up before we even saw the place. Sheesh.

Then it was back to painting. We spent Saturday evening at the local bar, drinking Butternuts beer and getting to know our neighbors. It's a friendly town.

We slept on an air mattress with three sleeping bags and a space heater for warmth. Sunday morning, back to painting.

We took our first thrilling steps, and made a dent in the work. Heading back to Binghamton Sunday evening, my head was swimming with projects and ideas, already scheming up the next job to tackle. I'm sore everywhere, and there's paint under all ten fingernails, but I can't wait for what's next. It's begun, it's finally finally begun!

A quiet evening

Twas the night before closing, and all through the house...

Kristina sat and savored the tranquility of an un-chaotic, put-together living room. She sat and drank tea and read Bon Appetit and watched the fire. She talked to Pete, curled sublimely on his afghan. And she thought about the encroaching closing. The ready-set-go of all the work and repairs and putting-together that's all still ahead. It's exciting, oh is it ever.

It's also a little like teetering on the brink of unspeakable chaos. Well, it is teetering on the brink of unspeakable chaos, I think.

I'm going to do my best to savor the calm, relaxed moments of the coming months. I'm pretty sure they will be rare.

I can't wait to show you all some progress on the new house. I can't wait to make some progress on the new house! We have been waiting so long! I have some colors picked out in my mind, some idyllic visions of how things will be that are probably a long way off, still.

Someone, tell me a good story of moving-day chaos. A good tale of home improvement gone awry. Soon, I think, I'll have good stories of my own to keep them company.

Halloween, and happy news

This was my costume: vintage dress, vintage apron, high heels and pantyhose. I had a rolling pin, too, but that didn't make it into the picture. I was the Ideal 1950s Housewife.

Truth be told, I think I would've loved being a 1950s housewife. Okay, the whole "oppressed woman" thing would have to go, the whole "be obedient to your husband" thing would have to go, but, you know, the cookie baking could stay.

I did the Happy Housewife thing for a few years, before I started working, and it was quite lovely, really. I was more the Sweatpants Housewife, though, than the Pantyhose Housewife. And that may have made the difference. Thank goodness hardly anyone wears pantyhose anymore, the stuff is vile.

And hey, check out the bathroom taking shape behind me! Look at that nice new (WORKING!) bathtub! Check out the awesome, temporary, jerry-rigged shower curtain rod my father-in-law rigged out of plastic tubing and drywall screws! I love these people.

This week involves: a lot more tiling in the new bathroom, and the hopeful re-installation of some key appliances (TOILET!); the season's first pot of lentil soup; the making of Thanksgiving pie filling (to be frozen); the closing on our Gilbertsville house.

Let me just say that again. It is too impossibly good to say just once. The closing on our Gilbertsville house.

Next Saturday night (post-closing) will involve two very relieved people, one of whom writes this blog, a dog, an air mattress, a space heater, a bucket of paint, and a very nice bottle of wine.

I'll give you all just a minute for that visual to sink in.

This is a week of rallying, of summoning. Calling up and focusing all energies for the long months of banging, scraping, yelling, discovering, enjoying, celebrating, painting, tearing, coughing, creating ahead. We have waited so long.

Bring it on.