Four Year Anniversary

It just dawned on me that we have been living in our new home for four years this month. We lived in the Midwest for thirty years, then we moved to Capitol Hill for thirteen years, and now we live in northern Virginia. Capitol Hill was great when I worked at the Library of Congress and our family lived just down the street. But when I retired, and our family moved to central Virginia, the hassles of the city were getting old. The sad thing about living here is that it’s the pandemic house. We only lived here ten months when my mom died, and then the Covid plague struck - and we were stuck in here for the next three years. We never got to do what I thought we were going to do. It’s still not as cozy as I would like. We always made our homes more to our liking. This is the first place we haven’t for a variety of reasons, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. We thought 1000 square feet would be plenty given as how we basically lived in 500 square feet before - but it’s not configured like I would like it to be. But we haven’t traveled like we thought either. I really miss our Midwest home with the dog and the comfortable place we created, with friends and colleagues nearby. But the winters were brutal. I really can’t and shouldn’t complain about where we live now, but I wouldn’t call it my dream home. I suppose there are issues wherever you live. I need to focus on all of the positive reasons we came here. Our family is just three hours away, my brother and SIL still live in DC and we are finally starting to get together again after a long hiatus, and we drive in to town almost every week for a change of scenery. Everything we need is close by and most within walking distance. I think we just need to resume living life like we did before. Hopefully we will plan a visit to the Midwest soon. It will be nice to see all of those familiar faces. 

We Miss Our Midwest Home - But Not the Winter

It’s been almost fifteen years since we moved to the DC area from the Midwest. We bought a tiny condo as a “second” home on Capitol Hill that was located just down the street from our son and his family. A few months later I found a job at the Library of Congress - of all places - and was able to walk to wok for 10 years. We decided we could actually move in to the tiny 500 square foot space and we sold our home - in a day. We gave up a lot to move to DC after living in the Midwest for thirty years where all of our friends and colleagues still live. We spent a lot of time creating a living space that was almost perfect for our needs, had a beautiful borzoi, and lived our adult lives. And we never looked back. Since then our family moved four hours away to the middle of Virginia a few years back and we moved to northern Virginia two years ago shortly after I retired. Having been cooped up for the last year, I really started to miss our old home, and dog, and friends, and colleagues, and yard. So I looked back at the photos that were used on the real estate advertisement. Yes, some things look dated and the house has been changed to the new occupants liking. We’ve seen it several times when we went back to visit our next door neighbors. It’s a weird feeling to see your house from the neighbors yard. I painted a picture of all the houses we have lived in over the years and that home was the one we spent the most time in. We have a lot of memories and sometimes I wish we still lived there. But if we didn’t take the opportunity to move to DC when we did who knows what would have happened? The one thing I do know is that the winter was never my favorite time of year and it lasts much too long there. And it looks so much better since the pandemic. So hopefully as things begin to open up again and we can move about more again I won’t feel so nostalgic. I wonder how long that is going to take? 

Property Brothers Surprise

I love home television shows. We essentially renovated our entire Midwest home room by room. A lot of my ideas came from these shows. When we moved to DC we had to make due with a 500 square foot apartment and we used every square inch of it. One of the many shows we watch is Property Brothers. I am much more of a fan of it than my husband. He even has a particular dislike of the main characters on the show - Drew and Jonathan Scott. So when I woke up the other morning I trudged from our bedroom toward the living room couch and plopped in to my usual spot. I didn’t even notice what was different about the house until my husband pointed it out. Right next to me he had cut out a picture of the property brothers and scotch taped it to the lamp post for me to behold. I never laughed so hard. My husband rarely does things like this which makes them so much more endearing. I hadn’t even noticed the junk mail we got that contained whatever photo advertisement this was used for. He secretly saved it and made good use out of it. It was a cute way to start the morning.