landmark

As of today, we have owned this house for six months. I think I expected to be a lot further along by now; but when I sat down and thought about it today, I realized that I'm not disappointed with where we are. We have this great big visible reminder, you see, that we have in fact Gotten Something Done: there is a big hole in our house.

The dining room and office are bare, practically a hard-hat construction zone (and definitely a wear-shoes zone -- I still keep stepping on staples because I'm a barefoot kind of girl). Most of our wordly goods are in boxes on the screen porch, or shoved haphazardly into the smallest of the upstairs bedrooms to be used in everyday work, as that's our temporary office. Our furniture is all in the living room. Literally. The dining room furniture is backed up against the treadmill which is tucked in next to the loveseat which is blocked by the coffee table which you can't reach without shoving aside a filing cabinet which is in front of two bookshelves which are huddling over several chairs. It's kind of hard to watch TV in there. The only furniture in the entire house which is not in the living room is in fact our bed and dressers, and our makeshift desks. To be fair, though, we don't have that much furniture. Definitely not enough to fill all of the rooms in this big house. Yet another thing to look forward to when the renovations are done: furniture shopping!

So we have this reminder of what we've done, in the form of a big empty hole in our house and crowded living spaces. There are other reminders, too; a second glance at the pool will reveal that it's just a shell -- drained, emptied, and liner-free, just waiting for us to rip it apart and recycle its aluminum walls. The ceilings upstairs are empty grids; we took out the drop ceiling tiles everywhere but the bedroom while the dumpster was still here, allowing us to glory in our all-over nine-foot ceilings.

Most of my baking pans and kitchen supplies are still in boxes, like my books and craft supplies. But the stacks of boxes don't seem like stagnant reminders of a lack of progress. They look like they're waiting. Expecting. Dreaming.

Just like me.