I am still alive

Lots to unpack, I will start with the state of Denmark.

Given that my current reader pool is people I know and see on a regular basis, most of you know that in March, we bought a new house, sold my long time backup house, and moved into the new house completing a nine part move spread out over 11 months. It was unpleasant by almost any metric. This last push is complicated by a number of factors. The first and hardest is learning to live with each other after so long apart.

My mother passed along a bit of wisdom that was shared with her on my father's return from Vietnam. Paraphrased: you were apart for over a year, it will take twice that long to learn to live together again. That is rather daunting. And despite semi-accepting it as likely real, it is hard to use to your advantage when you are faced with new friction points as you adjust to living together again. It is not like you can just turn off the friction. Or at least I cannot.

The second is that this house is not an ideal fit. It is actually larger than the last main house, but that size is configured deceptively differently. We gained larger bedrooms, a second kitchen, a real laundry room, and a third full bath, but lost a dog room and over half the dad space. This last has been the hardest for me. Whereas in the old house, I had the full basement, including a room for my office, a storage room, and a big mixed use space, now I have about a third of that space for all of my stuff (i.e., hobbies and office). So, on top of the usual friction, there is the added friction of my disappointment in realizing that this house is either a 3-5 year house with another move in the future or there will need to be a large addition/renovation to make it work better.

The upsides are also harder to find. While we have a lot more land, and we don't have leaf blowers in our ears every weekend, we do have a dirt bike that goes up and down the road all afternoon and are out in the middle of nowhere. It is every bit of 45-50 minutes to get into the familiar spaces in Raleigh. While we have been focused on the move, this isolation has really only been felt as an impact in how long it takes to get the kids to school or how long a load from storage takes. As we shift from moving to living, that isolation begins to look different. It is the isolation of the farm with closer neighbors and without the familiarity. That is going to take some getting used to so that the familiarity makes the isolation is less oppressive.

But, these things can be addressed. It will take time and there will be friction. We will figure out if we can buy a neighbor's lot to have extra space makes sense or if an addition makes more sense. Or, worst case, we look to move in 5 years. Such a move may be needed anyway if traffic to Selma gets worse and we end up outside the 30 minute radius from Spoon's work.