Putting the pieces back together again

This is a post I meant to write much earlier. Oh, well, better late than never. And, maybe, I'll have more to say now.


There's something a bit disturbing about seeing all your things boxed up, your home looking a bit forlorn (as if it knows it's about to be abandoned). It's a bit like seeing your life boxed up to be neatly delivered somewhere else and hoping everything will be intact on the other end.


Seeing all of our worldly goods lined up in the driveway, waiting to be loaded onto the moving truck is always a bit strange, too. Until this last move, I always thought to myself, "Stretch doesn't know what he's talking about. We hardly have any stuff." This move was different. This time, I looked at all that "stuff" on our front yard and thought, "Good lord! I thought I'd purged but clearly not nearly enough. Where did all that come from?!"



Now, we're in the latest house. It's a good deal larger than the last one (which was pretty big by our standards -- it had been the largest one we'd ever lived in until now). But I'm still having the same old problem of trying find a home for all our things. I've heard more than one mil-spouse refer to it as a giant jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes, the homes are too small to comfortably fit all our things. Other times, especially when we were newlyweds, we didn't have much and tried to spread things out so the place didn't appear quite so empty (this failed miserably, by the way).


In some ways, it's fun because you never quite know where things will end up. While this house is big, it's a bit short on wall space. Which is why a painting that used to be in our living room is now in the master bedroom. Another painting that used to be in our living room and a framed papyrus that had been displayed in the dining room now share space in our entryway. This home is coming together, but slowly. I'm still trying to figure out where all the pieces will go this time.