Happy Easter

Since we moved to this town, M and I have sort of become less interesting people. We still had the same hobbies, but we lacked the will to actually work on them. We sat in our beige little townhouse and read blogs (me) and the mandolin board (M). We rarely mustered the energy to go out and do things, or to work on the stuff that we liked to do. M, for instance, spent the whole time complaining about not having a shop to build instruments in, but pointed out just last week that he built his first mandolin in my dad's unheated shop in the middle of both winter and summer.. he could have at least sat out on the back porch and sanded some stuff. But he didn't, because he didn't have the energy to bother with it. I did what I had to do with Mosaic Minds but did almost nothing else webby, because it seemed like such effort.

But now, things are so, so much better. Since we've been in the house, life has been so much more enthusiastic. I have volunteered for things that I know will take up quite a bit of time, and that is in addition to the work we're doing around the house. Don't get me wrong, we, as usual, spend plenty of time lounging around, not doing much. Right now, we're very busy replaying Diablo II, because we're big dorks. But we have so much more energy than we did before. After spending a couple hours relaxing, we'll get up, amble through the house and then we'll end up doing yet something else that needs done. Tonight, I had dinner and them walked outside to check on M's progress with the lawn mower in the back yard. Next thing you know, I've put my gloves on (still having a hard time reconciling myself to be one of those people who own gardening apparatus) and grabbed a rake to just pull the worst of the leaves out of the lilies of the valley. They pretty much are all along the right side of the house, but the weeds and sticks and leaves are worse there than anywhere. An hour or two later, I am sweating like mad, but had made quite a dent in the weeds and leaves--and all I meant to do was go outside and talk to M.

I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. It's just that before we bought the house, we were in a holding period--waiting for things to get better so we could get ourselves back on track. It really feels like everything was on pause during that period, and now we're moving forward at full speed again. It's so much FUN! Also, hard work. But it's so rewarding, both the things we're doing around the house and the things that we're doing for fun. I wondered if I would feel buyers remorse for buying something as expensive as a house, and I'm glad to report that two and a half months in: it was the best thing we could have done.

And also, I really would like to hire a full-time gardener.