I'm Famous! (locally)(sort of)(well no, not really)

A month or so ago, Josh and I attended a city council meeting that was going to discuss rezoning the street behind our house to allow for general office buildings rather than its current status of single-family residential homes. There are four or five plots of land that are vacant where old houses had been removed so long ago that no trace of them still stands. A developer wanted to buy up the properties but only if he could then build office buildings, which would reduce the size of our neighborhood and increase traffic along one of the only exit routes out of our neighborhood.

I hadn't planned to speak at the meeting but there seemed to be so few people there to protest the rezoning decision, so I volunteered to speak. There's a three-minute time limit on individual citizens' comments, so I was very brief. I explained that we purchased our home because we love the neighborhood and inviting more traffic into our neighborhood reduces the safety and beauty of the area we are so in love with. Despite my and a handful of others' pleas against the development, the city council members voted to move forward with the rezoning and I was pretty devastated. So our beautiful little neighborhood just got reduced by one full street.

While it's not the end of the world, it does add a new safety concern to my life. My children can't play in their backyard with public buildings just on the other side of it. (Technically the office buildings would be built on the far side of the street behind our house, so our backyard would still share a fence with another house, but for how long?) I deem it an inevitability that the houses up and down that street will all eventually fold to commercial construction and I'll be forced to live against a backdrop of businesses and strangers. Boo...

Anyway, this doom and gloom is certainly a bit hyperbolic and will dissipate somewhat over time. Josh and I got some frozen yogurt after the disappointing meeting to temper the bad news (why is ice cream so effective?!) and then we moved on with our lives.

But then Josh found this little nugget in our local paper:

Sorry for the sideways picture. For some reason, I can't make it rotate.

If you squint at the tiny print, you can see that one Camille Bowman is mentioned and slightly misquoted. I'm famous! I'm also totally saving the paper...because we're using newspapers to clean windows in our neighborhood as a Young Women's activity this summer. Can't wait to show my girls that their church leader happens to be a total celebrity before we crinkle the paper up and use it to smear Windex across dirty glass. Those fifteen minutes of fame go by quick, my friends!

Josh's Sacrifice

Josh makes me laugh so much. Last week I went to dinner with some friends and while I was gone, Josh took our kids to a neighbor's birthday party at Jungle Jim's. Jungle Jim's, for those who don't know, is sort of indoor pizza place with a bunch of child-size rides. It's very cheap and super fun and dirtier than I like to think about and we love it. While I was out, I didn't check my phone because manners. But when I was getting into my car around 10:00, I thought to check my messages before heading home.

Josh had sent me four texts back-to-back between 7:09 and 7:30. They read as follows:

"Rode some spinny ride. Sweating all over now, still trying not to throw up a few minutes later now."

"Still sweating, stomach hasn't calmed yet."

"Oh gosh. Almost just threw up. Why of why did I think I'd be the fun dad? I'm not the fun dad."

"Still fighting to keep from throwing up. Did I mention I only went on the ride once?"

I tried calling him to make sure he was all right, but he didn't answer, so I drove home and let myself into the house. The kids were asleep in their beds, fully-dressed and with bobby pins still in Scarlet's hair. It looked like Josh had unceremoniously dumped them into their beds upon arriving home.

I checked on Josh, who was fast asleep in our bed, a bowl on his nightstand just in case he actually made good on that threat to throw up. I had to smile.

The next day, Josh was still pretty dizzy. It took him most of the day to recover from that one spinny ride with his little girl. For what it's worth, I think he's a pretty fun dad.

The ride in question

Moved In

So we've been living in our new house for eight whole months. (We purchased the house nine months ago.) Within the course of that first month we refinished the floors, bought kitchen appliances and demolished the former kitchen, installed a living room ceiling fan, bought and installed a dozen window blinds, sprayed the entire house for bugs, and cleaned and dusted and washed and vacuumed every inch of the house. Then we rented a moving truck and moved our apartment belongings into our house over the course of six hours. Within a week or two, the house was unpacked and we had moved comfortably in. Almost.

Since we were renovating the kitchen and we didn't have the cabinets yet, all of our kitchen supplies remained in boxes in our bedroom so they'd be out of the way of our kids (through October). When the cabinets were installed, we still couldn't move the kitchen supplies because we didn't have a countertop (through November). When the countertop was installed, we still couldn't move the kitchen supplies because we didn't have a kitchen sink or faucet installed (through December). When the kitchen sink and faucet were installed, we unpacked our dishes and pans and washed everything and found places to put it in our new kitchen. Then we discovered that those weren't the only items left hiding in our bedroom for all those months.

There were five final boxes that contained any number of odds and ends that we didn't know what to do with. They contained such things as antibacterial hand soap, extra razors, nail polish, two surge protectors, an extra length of coil for the dryer, baby shampoo, Reynold's Wrap, skewers, tape, a baby-proofing kit, an extra pair of glasses, stamps, the box of CenturyLink cables left over from our internet installation, and numerous other similar miscellany. I hadn't even realized we'd had this junk. We'd been living for half a year without needing them, but I also couldn't just throw the stuff away without at least sorting through it all to see what we needed to keep. And then there was the dizzying concept of having to find a place to store those things somewhere in our new house. I'm not the most organized person, so I combat that weakness by minimizing the amount of stuff I keep in my house. That way, organized or not, there isn't too much clutter around me, stifling and oppressing me with its mass.

Since I was overwhelmed by the concept of clearing out those final boxes, I just pretended they didn't exist. Our room was significantly clearer without the kitchen items in it, so it was already improved even with the remaining moving boxes. And I knew Josh wouldn't touch the boxes without strong encouragement from me, so it'd be up to me to sort through them and I just didn't want to.

Cue the music while months and months roll by. A rainy April rolls around and just as it's about to turn into a sunnier May, I decide I've finally had enough. We spent last Friday night cleaning the house after the kids were asleep so we wouldn't have to waste any of our Saturday on chores. After I'd done my housework, I entered my bedroom with determination. Those boxes were going to die that night.

I did end up throwing away a lot of the stuff from those boxes. Another portion went to D.I., and a tiny amount went to various places around the house where we would eventually use them. After the boxes were stomped down and shoved into the recycling bin, I felt an incredible lightness. I walked back into my bedroom and saw just how big and beautiful it looked with a few select pieces of furniture and nothing else to mar the even pattern of the light wood floors. I loved it immensely.

That night I slept soundly. I couldn't believe what an effect that clear room was having on me. I mean, I'd been living with those boxes for most of a year and had slept like normal (that is to say, a little fitfully thanks to my insomnia). I hadn't realized that they were a source of oppression for me. Those boxes were a dark little cloud on my soul and I'd been unconsciously avoiding my bedroom except for sleep to avoid that cloud.

Now I welcome time spent in my bedroom. I no longer keep the door closed to keep the kids out, because there's no longer a pile of things they could get into. I raised the blinds today and opened the window to let in the beautiful spring air for literally the first time. The kids like to come in now to sit on the bed or the computer chair. They play in the open space while I fold laundry. They revel in the newness of the room the same way I do.

Now we have officially moved in, and I love this house more than ever.