Pretending Makes Everything Better

I've always loved pretending. Whether it was playing orphans with my cousins, pretending to be the girlfriends of The Beetles involved in murder mysteries with my other cousin, or make believing my bike was a horse, pretending has always been one of my finest skills. Never has it come in so handy than this week.

On Saturday we moved into our new (to us) house, thanks to some of the gentlemen of the clawfoot bathtub move. Early that morning, Jordan and our strong and helpful friends ventured to the barn where horses and alpacas have been guarding our stuff for the past year and a half. Yes, it was a real barn, and it was only after we were long out of the country that I realized my great-grandmother's couch would likely become home to a family of mice, but do you know how expensive storage units are??

When the moving truck arrived at our new house, three dirty men tumbled out of the front, and began unloading our very dusty boxes. Dusty, and smelly boxes. Specifically, they smelled like cows. (As did Jordan and Ben and Andy.) Our lamps had dirt in every crevice, our mirror had been pooped on, and the barn cats had used one of our formerly sealed space bags full of linens as a scratching post. (Time for new sheets!) But as I wiped down each and every item before it crossed our threshold, I reminded myself that I was basically getting paid $2000 to clean my stuff. As in, we saved that much money by opting for the barn storage alternative, thanks to our generous barn-owning friends. And plus, as I cleaned, I could pretend I was a weary traveler who'd just made my way out of the Oklahoma dust bowl.

This little guy crawled into our box of mugs, and never came out...

The dirt did not diminish my thrill upon rediscovering all my stuff I loved and had totally forgotten about. My red lamp! The kitchen island! My pie dish! It felt like Christmas, I exclaimed to the weary movers. "Dirty Christmas," Mary clarified. Yes, dirty Christmas, but Christmas none the less. Pretending it was Christmas certainly made moving more fun.

So grateful for these guys!

While the boys were at the barn, Mary and I were trying to turn on the oven, to no avail. Apparently it doesn't work. Thankfully, the Little Caesar's hot and ready pizzas the boys requested lived up to their name, and we didn't need to heat them. But the oven wasn't the only large, important thing in our life that wasn't functioning. We had learned during the house inspection that the furnace was limping along, but after experiencing a full day and night in the house, during which we were unable to remove our coats and scarves, it seemed that the furnace stopped limping, and decided to give up on life, taking gaspy little breaths that put out only enough heat to warm an animal with a fur coat. Not only that, but our newly acquired truck also got the memo that this weekend was a great time to break down. Two hours before guests were coming to see our house, the truck refused to start. We were delayed an hour in the church parking lot awaiting a jump start from our AAA angel.

But what's the big deal about heat, stoves, and vehicles, anyway? Isn't that what blankets and crock pots and bikes are for? I've recently learned to make scrambled eggs in the crockpot. ("Good morning, honey, breakfast will beeady in 3 hours!") And aren't life's frustrating moments the perfect opportunity to pretend? I've been playing a pioneer woman this week, pretending I live in a cozy log cabin. I've recently learned to make scrambled eggs in the crockpot. ("Good morning, honey, breakfast will be ready in 3 hours!") A blazing fire completely redeems the fact that I can see my breath in the laundry room. We slurp warm soup for supper while huddled by the fire, wrapped in bear skins (read: my faux fur blanket from pottery barn) just like the pioneers before us did. And this morning, after dropping the truck off at the mechanic, Jordan got to pretend his bike was a horse, as he rode it home through the snow.

Stay tuned for "before" pictures of the house...coming soon!

Sunset our first night in the house