Homecoming

We have finally arrived!!! After 24 torturous hours of driving, Anacortes welcomed us home with it's gloomy skies and friendly rain. We were ecstatic to be free from the cramped cab of the moving van but the feeling was brief... we still have a TON of unpacking to do. But we tried to enjoy the moment with some heart-shaped pizza and a "Welcome Home" cake ordered especially for us.

We arrived yesterday (to be exact) on Valentines Day. February 14th holds so much weight when you're a couple especially a new couple. You expect gestures of grandeur and you hold each other to a higher standard. Even if you're one who claims you don't care about red roses and shiney jewelry, you're a liar and you would be dissapointed if your lover let the day pass without a word. I am no exception... though I expect only a thoughtful heart and a gesture that says "this is what you want, right?" since most guys are only aiming to please. Valentines day this year was not the special, romantic shinding in the literal sense... we woke up at 4am, drove all day, exchanged small gifts at a gas station (purchased elsewhere) and unloaded a packed U-Haul 12 hours later. But exhausted as he was, he never made me drive a single minute of our gruesome trip he let me sleep without complaint and he insisted that I relax while he and his dad shoveled dirt out of the driveway and made room for all our things in the garage. Best. Present. Ever. We have a thousand years (or so) to have a standardized and typical Valentines Day, but this one will go down in the books as one of those, rare, true acts of love that probably would have occurred had it not been Valentines Day, but holds so much more meaning simply because it was simple. And real.

Anyway... we are already a whole day into our 365! It seems that our first week or so will consist of redecorating, re-organizing and purging!! Fresh starts call for fresh paint, freshly cleaned sheets and a whole lot of vacumming. Today we spent the majority of our time trying to repaint our "sitting room", as Jolyn like to call it, from a lime green color back to a normal color. Yes... LIME GREEN people. It took about 2 GALLONS of paint just to get it white again... and still there are patches of a murkey, sneaky green trying to poke through. But I am determined to hide it for all eternity! Tomorrow we will finish painting our accent wall (a normal, sage green) and then proceed to move in all our furniture. The problem we are running into here, though, is that nothing fits like we hoped :( the room is much smaller than we imagined it to be. Even though we had seen the room many times before and even stood inside it, we still had high hopes for our furniture... all unrealistic we have discovered.

The pace at which we are setteling in might run us srtaight into the ground but I refuse to call this place my home untill it feels like my home. I need my books and my pictures, my throw pillows and my colors. It needs to be mine. Otherwise I'm just floating. I am visiting. I get anxious when I feel out of place and I can't afford to be uncomfortable when there is so much I need to accomplish is such a short amount of time.

I decided that I am going to treat Anacortes as a "New Year" of sorts. like this is my chance to reinvent myself. I can do anything here. I can learn to play tennis, golf on sundays, be a true baseball fan (the kind who knows, at the very least, who plays on her team) and take an art class. I can be in a folk rock band, brew my own beer and buy a pair of sturdy hiking boots and actually use them. This is why I must pay particular attention to how I start off here... I must lay down the right foundation to prepare for our epic journey. I am setting up my house (which is really just 2 bedrooms) but in actuality I am setting up the stepping stones for something bigger and more exciting. You watch, one week from now a whole new me will be brewing. Just wait. A whole new us is in the making.