Change of Address

Bonfire of the dressers.

In the span of a month, I lost a job, I found a job, I lost a computer, I bought a computer, I sold a house, I bought a house, a new cat, and several rooms full of furniture to replace bedroom sets I simply didn’t feel like moving. And then we almost moved them accidentally, anyway.

It seems true that everyone who has ever moved houses eventually gets to a point where they realize it would have been easier to toss everything on the front lawn and light it on fire than it would have been to move it. And yet, like childbirth, we keep doing it because it seems like the right thing to do — move forward, get more space, a new washer and dryer and a new set of problems, like a bathtub that mostly washes the ceiling of the living room and not the kids.

As a bonus, that ceiling is now really clean.

This is, I imagine, my last house for a while. My next step, once my kids have moved out and back and out again, is to hold an estate sale, take the winnings from my lifetime’s mission of collecting ceramic cats and novelty wall art and buy a condo in one of those Florida party spots, like the Margaritaville retirement community, and spend my days spying on the neighbors and writing anonymous letters about violations of the HOA agreement.

Until then, though, here we are. Not quite suburbia — that’s about a mile further East — but not quite downtown, in an established Southern neighborhood that was never intended for introverts. We now have a 101-year-old neighbor named Meemaw, a porch swing that was here when the previous neighbors moved in in 1960, a blackberry bramble full of chiggers (but not necessarily blackberries), and a street that insists on holding parties you’ll be punished for not attending.

I am to understand there are parades.

So, this is just a note to say that the stories will continue, as will the photos and recipes and behind-the-scenes look at reviving a 100-year-old farmhouse in Nashville, stuffing it with antiques purchased all too cheaply on Facebook, and slowly adapting to a place where I have to be social under, apparently, penalty of ostracization — which I may prefer but also fear.

Onward, friends. Speak soon!