The New House

It's around midnight.
Doug is snoring next to me, and as usual, I'm still awake.
Outside, the cacophony of a pack of coyotes possibly murdering a neighbor dog somewhere in my cul-de-sac, makes me realize I need to write some stuff down about my new home.

My new home is very different from my old home.

Although our new home is only a 7 minute drive away and a 2.8 mile walk away from our last home, (I just google-mapped it.) it feels like a whole different world. For starters, we are in a different city now. And within that city, we are living in an area with a veeeeery different feel and esthetic. There are no sidewalks in my new neighborhood, only horse trails.

There are horses in my new neighborhood.

There are low-density housing laws so we're not living blocks away from apartments any more. (And our friends in those apartments.) There are lots of big yards with neighbors who don't need to hang out at the community pool for recreation. (95% of our neighbors have backyard pools.)

In my particular little subdivision, most of the homes were built in the late 80's. (Ours in 88.) Some of our neighbors are original owners and many are empty-nesters and grandparents. That means this neighborhood, coyotes not withstanding, is veeeeeeery quiet. Eerily so.  Once my kids are asleep, there is no more noise on this block. (There are some teenagers, but evidently they don't hang with boys driving cars with super loud mufflers like I did in High School.)

For the longest time, pulling into the neighborhood, and then into our driveway, just felt weird. We are three houses down from my sister Laura. It always felt normal like we were going to her house. Until we had to make the mental adjustment to it being our house. Not normal. Weird. We kept having to remind ourselves: "Hey, we're home. This is OUR home. We're not going home from here!"

And for quite awhile I just had this overwhelming sense of sadness. I feel like it's not super normal to mourn when moving out of a rental. But maybe I should have had a good cry and gotten it over with. Because for the longest time, I had (and still occasionally have) these pangs of sadness over what we left behind. (Which, now that I think of it, has been the case after each and every move.)

We really, really miss our old neighbors. There were a lot of kids in the old 'hood. And lots of great families. We were able to make great friends just by hanging out at the community pool. Of course, we're still friends with those friends, and they're only 7 minutes away. But I won't see them nearly as much. Now meetings will have to be scheduled and planned for and driven to. And they'll be fewer and farther between.

Now don't get me wrong, we'll be just fine. There are a million positives to this move, obviously. I just wanted our first impressions recorded somewhere. And I want to always remember that the last three years in "Ann's House" were good years. That we loved our home and loved our neighbors and that they will be sorely missed.

And now it is 1 a.m.  The coyotes have moved on, and I need to go to sleep.

Goodnight!