the busy heart

Due to moving, health trouble, and a picky computer, it's been over a month since I posted.  Which is a real shame since I have a lot to say, and a lot of pictures. I finally figured out how to get those pictures onto a computer that doesn't take an hour to upload, so I'm going to try to post some of them.  (Incidentally, how do you folks handle your pictures?  How do you organize them; what program do you use to edit and keep them, etc?  Do tell.  I'm sooo annoyed with Picasa and with everything else I've been trying.) I might as well begin with the most recent pictures, which I took last night.  Here's Sam reading a book to Ms. Sprouty the Cat.  She had come up for her nightly snuggle, and seemed to be quite interested in his book, so he pulled her up close and read her Coetzee in his best reading voice.  His reading voice is pretty good.  Is it weird that it made me look forward to him reading to our someday-children?

Well, we didn't move last week.  At the last minute on Friday, I called our realtor and he said it was looking less "100%."  And so we decided to stay for another week.  Our cats hadn't finished destroying the furniture anyway. And now, we're finally, really moving in.  We have the keys.  Some of our stuff is even inside.  And I have to say, I've been worried that when we got inside I wouldn't still love it, but oh I do.  I walked from room to room, turning on lights, reminding myself, and it was seriously one of the most beautiful experiences to know we were buying it, that it was ours.  It felt, well, like home.  And thennnnn we bickered.  We are moving, after all.  Deciding where to put the cat litter will take a good two months of intense negociation. But the reason why I gathered you all here wasn't really to tell you that.  I wanted to record my three part method of emotionally/mentally processing this moving mes...

Today marks three weeks we've been living in a hotel room.  While we've been here, the weather has turned to a delicious Autumn theme, which would be so much more charming if we had packed our sweaters and coats and rainboots.  Three weeks was not the plan, but it's how it turned out.  Tomorrow, hopefully, maybe, possibly, we'll actually move into our new place.  Maybe.  Possibly.  I feel like the girl who cried house.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up about it, but this morning my brain woke me up at four and immediately commenced imagining every room of that house, everything I'm excited to unpack and put somewhere, the shopping trips we'll need to take to get a few rugs and pieces of furniture.  Can you blame me for being excited?  It's been a long haul with a fair amount of hopelessness and the most absurd collection of absurd happenings I've ever experienced in a three week stretch.  Observe ...

                                                          [present house, fireplace guys] We move tomorrow afternoon, and this morning I took one last run through our little neighborhood.  I saw a family of wild turkeys (?), a mama and two baby turkeys, on the side of the road as if waiting for a bus.  We've loved our neighborhood, and not for the wildlife, since that's rare, but because it's just beautiful here.  And on my run I was thinking about all that's happened here in the last year.  A lot, that's what.  So much that it doesn't feel like there's time to go into detail before I go to work, but work is part of it.  Sam and I weathered the bad job situation here....

Sam and I spent much of Saturday night and Sunday in the hospital for what turned out to be a pinched nerve in Sam's neck.  There was some concern, since his left arm was numb (heart stuff, you know), but it turned out to be just fine.  Or relatively fine.  He's still in quite a bit of pain, the poor dear. Anyway, to help with the pinched nerve, the doctor gave Sam a neck brace--the sort you see people wear in movies when they're pretending to be injured.  And then he insisted I draw a bowtie on it.  He knelt in front of me, wearing the brace, lifting his chin while I sketched it out with a sharpie.  He said, "This.  Now this is true love."

A snippet of conversation from our anniversary dinner out at Oleana : (Which, if you ever find yourself in Cambridge, MA in need of a meal, holy mother of deliciousness; that place is good.  Maybe my favorite meal in Mass, yet.  They were not, however, exceptionally speedy.) Deja: Is this not taking just a wee bit long? Sam: Yep. My theory is this: they're killing the duck by sleep deprivation. Somehow, that killed me.  Oh, that still kills me.  Sleep deprivation.  Let us be together for a million more years, and let me always remember that: sleep deprivation.  We have fun, Sam and I.  It's been a rocky two years in some categories of our lives, but we have a real good time.  And since we had already exchanged gifts the Saturday before (we couldn't wait!), Sam set up a sort of card scavenger hunt for Tuesday morning.  He handed me a card, which was sweet and silly and funny, and then it pointed me to a particular spot on the bookshel...

Dear Sam; Thanks for marrying me so I can laugh all of the time. Love, Deja P.S. (Two Whole Years!)