Home Sweet Home

I'm home. And this time I came home to no sedentary roommate, no cat piss all over the floor, no other people's garbage. It was coming home to my home, and the only thing missing was my love, he's still stuck in Florida. I even made a run by Phil's to retrieve Venus (he's been doing me the incredible favor of making sure she's happy while I'm gone... THANK YOU FOREVER FOR THAT!) so that home would feel all the way like home. And boy does it. It's awful outside, like negative degrees, but inside, it's warm and cozy and full of good smells (courtesy of the candles) and fond memories and familiar places. It was dark when I got home, so the For Sale sign out front didn't have a full impact yet.

I love this house. If I could put it on wheels and take it everywhere with me for the rest of my life, I'd be happy here. Even when the crickets take over in July and the floor freezes in the winter and the front porch light bulb burns out, I love it. It just oozes home to me, which makes sense since it's my first house, but I think this house is full of special memories and fondness beyond mine. Here's why.

I wanted to take some photos of my beloved before she finds someone else, and I started in my bedroom, which was originally Shannon's bedroom, then Shannon and Charles' bedroom, then Niki's bedroom, and finally became my bedroom. I took a photo with all these blobs on it and went and cleaned my camera lens. But the blobs showed up again. So I figured, I won't touch the lens, and let's see if the blobs have moved. Well, they did. Check it.
I went around the house, taking a tour of it and trying to remember how much time I've spent in each room. This was my bedroom until a month ago.
I fell in love here. I retreated to here for the last three years. In the winter I'd crack the window to keep from getting too hot, and when Mack and I first started dating, he'd leave for work early in the morning, only to come back 30 minutes later, knock on the window and want back in. He must've felt how magnetic the house was, too.

This was the living room/Nougat headquarters.
I have let more cats and mosquitos in and out of that window than you could imagine. When I was in the midst of a Sex in the City addiciton, I would put my laptop in the window and smoke cigarettes while I wrote. Then I started getting headaches and realized I couldn't type with cigarette smelly fingers no matter how much I wanted to. Nougat is almost over, but the time I spent in that room building something bigger than myself was precious. Who knew you could learn so much by sitting in the corner?

The dining room was project headquarters. The table has been my sewing table, Shannon's map stand, Niki's storage unit, Miss Kitty's bed, and Thanksgiving 2004's support. I bought that table at Meijer a couple years ago for $200. I loved how dark it was, and my table before was benches from a guy my mom worked with at an insurance agency that also used to work at Toys R Us (Tom West, maybe?). This table is way better, even if I've only actually eaten at it like once.
This room is also where the piano goes... I tried to move it into my old bedroom, only to realize a hernia and a narrow hallway turn. The piano coaxed me into cooking and doing dishes more times than I felt like. One of my favorite things to do in nice weather was open the front door and the front windows and open the back door and the back windows and trick Mack into sitting at the piano while I did yard work and let the wind blow through the house and bring the sound out to me. I always envied my neighbors on those days, for getting to have such a cool neighbor. What?
Here's the kitchen. I love this kitchen. I love how it's laid out and how it's not really a room but a portal, a thoroughfare to other rooms. Cooking in here was fun and communal. My favorite kitchen memories were when Liz brought over cabbage and other garden goodies and we made a homemade feast to die for and when me, Leiah and Betsy spent Thanksgiving Eve making pies and prepping the best, most good for you Thanksgiving ever. I want to cry just thinking about this kitchen.
This is the den. Leiah and I officially named it the den over Christmas when we repainted it. It used to be the color of the kitchen, but Leiah gave me the courage to try these colors and I really like them. The den is freezing until you turn on the fire. After that, it's a knitting, snuggling, marathon television watching oasis. It's also close enough to the kitchen that you can be denning it up with someone whose totally kitchening it up. Now that is perfect harmony.
The bathroom even oozes charm. The tub is rigged so I can take deep baths that no other tub in my life could accommodate. Shannon decorated it with hidden art visible only to those experiencing all the bathroom has to offer. And the pets have stayed hydrated courtesy of that toilet. Functional and fun.
I'm sad to see it go, my Picadome Palace. But it's been a happy home, a place of possibilities and love. Shannon found love here, I found love here, Venus found love here, Hera found love here. What more could you ask for from a house? I guess it's time for this modest dwelling to brighten someone else's life, but I will never forget it. And if it doesn't sell, anybody need a place to rent????