Category Archives: home sweet home

When we moved in two years ago, the house across the street was for sale. It had been on the market for a while, and even though it obviously needed updating, it had good bones and wasn’t so bad it was uninhabitable. Every week people came to look, but no one took the plunge.

One morning I noticed an under contract sign on the house, and a few weeks later, it had sold. Then, the joy began. The couple who bought the house began to fix things up. The peeling, dull yellow paint was replaced by a warm light brown. The scraggly bushes everywhere were ripped out and replaced by green grass. Two comfortable chairs with cute pillows appeared on the wrap-around porch, then more flowers and more greenery.

When I walk down the stairs and out the front door, that house is the first thing I see. Watching it being restored little-by-little, week-by-week has been a source of encouragement. So when we returned from vacation and I noticed the sign in the yard, I was so excited for my neighbors. It is one thing to pour your heart into making something what it was meant to be, it is another for the whole neighborhood to recognize it.

I wish every act of redemption came with an physical award, a greater and better prize that will not migrate to a new winner at the end of the month. But for now, I will smile at this small acknowledgement of the good and beautiful when I walk out my front door.

At least for the foreseeable future, this is our home in Memphis:

We live upstairs, in a large brick duplex on a tree-lined street filled with children. The kids on our block often have impromptu evening kickball or wiffleball games, and Kate and Lexi are pretty delighted about that. Midtown Memphis is full of neat places to explore and we’ve only scratched the surface. I am hopeful that this street will be a place we can learn and grow as neighbors and this city is one we will come to fight for and treasure. Right now we are still strangers in a strange land.

I am really looking forward to moving to the city, but there are aspects of our small town life I will miss. Lexi got a stomach bug* Sunday night that necessitated washing her car seat cover last night. Forgetting this fact, I went to put the girls in the car to run a very important envelope to the post office for a very important family. With the sudden realization that the carseat needed to be put back together, I quickly decided that it would be faster to just walk. That’s the joy of living four blocks from the post office. It was cool outside, but not completely unpleasant, and the girls were enjoying themselves a great deal. That’s when I conceived of writing this blog post, in praise of small town life.

We approached the old post office, a squat and utilitarian structure that looks like many small post offices built in the 50s and 60s: mid-century modern, sans chic. Carefully walking up the narrow and rather steep wheelchair ramp, I tried to make it in the door. A kind woman saw me struggling and came to my aid. My new-used double jogger was one-half inch too wide. (Note to the government – wheelchair ramps should have roomy doors.) So I went down the ramp and in the front double doors and parked the stroller at the bottom of the stairs. Two kind old ladies watched over the girls in the lobby while I walked into post office proper to conduct my business. (The girls were no more than 15 feet from me, and in full view, we kept eye contact and regular waving the entire time.) It was approximately 4:30p and as is often the case, there was no one in line, and I was able to buy the necessary postage in a minute flat. Our post office displays a “5 minutes or less” sign, and I’ve never waited longer. I can’t say that for any other post office I’ve regularly patronized!

And so, only slightly thwarted by the narrow door, we bid adieu to our new small town friends and walked the few blocks home, passing three neighbors who stopped to say hello.

* Lexi is well, but Kate fell prey tonight. Please pray that she stops vomiting and Michael and I are spared.

I uploaded some pictures of the playroom to flickr with lots of notes.

My favorite thing about the playroom is the vertical storage of a HUGE Ikea bookcase and Rubbermaid bins.  It helps all the toys stay organized and helps the kids play better.

Still a work in progress.

The nice description of my dining room at present, with one coat of red paint and no more until the roof leak that appeared in such a timely manner this afternoon (our first!) stops sending a small trail of water between the paint and sheetrock.

That room has been so disagreeable this whole painting process. I was quite thankful tonight that Alabama is Blue Bell country and for the first time in months, we had some in the freezer. I needed some therapy.

ETA: At least Kate likes it. She’s exclaimed multiple times, “Oh mommy! The dining room is BEAUTIFUL!”

Sanding, spackling, sanding again, cleaning, priming & painting multiple coats = a dining room that is no longer orangellow. Pictures after the painting is finished and better blogging then, too!