Existence

It turns out I'm completely OCD when things are in disarray.  I already knew that.  So all of this is making me slightly insane...

Nothing is where it belongs because I have no idea yet where most of it belongs.  

So here's what my days have looked like so far this week...

I wake up at 6:00am because even though we live in Central Time, the sun thinks we're in Eastern Time and it's up by 5:30am.  

I make the bed as soon as I get out of it because that's pretty much the only thing I can do that stays done in a day...until we get back in it at night.  

Usually on the way to or from the bathroom I find something to put away or reorganize or move to a different location, and then I get distracted for awhile in there until I remember that I should probably brush my teeth and change out of my jammies, although honestly, I could wander around this house unpacking for a really long time in jammies before that thought would occur to me.  I think I've gotten dressed most of the days this week, though.  

And now that McKay installed this shower thing...whatever it's called...I've showered more often, too.  For as big and beautiful as this house appears to be, it is frustratingly dysfunctional, for me anyway.  This massive shower has not a shelf or a ledge or any place to put anything.  The door opens the wrong way (not toward the towel rack) so you have to remember to take your towels off the rack ahead of time and throw them on the floor, or drip around to the other side of the bathroom if you forget.  It's mostly just a big, dark, tiled cave with a shower head.  The former owner's wife must have taken baths because this clearly is not a space made for a woman.  

The master closet connects to the laundry room which is convenient, but also distracting because I usually wander in there and start a load of laundry before I'm entirely finished getting ready for the day.  And that space is another source of frustration for me.  The ceilings are 8 or 9 feet high and there is just that one little wire shelf in there and a utility sink on the wall behind me, and no other storage!  How could anyone adequately function in a laundry room with only that little storage space?  Where did she put everything?  And guess what...I can't reach that shelf without a step ladder.  So it wouldn't do any good to add more shelving in there anyway because I would never be able to get to anything up there.  ugh...I'm probably a little bit shorter than average, but this house was obviously built for much taller than average people because every shelf and every cabinet in every room is too high for me to even SEE into let alone reach.  

After the laundry, I usually move to the kitchen which is where I most want to be finished, but I just can't make that space come together.  It is HUGE...like seriously HUGE, but I've realized it's mostly just the distance from one end of it to the other that's huge.  The storage space isn't that huge.  I have put things and then re-put them at least two or three times, and then I get frustrated and cry for awhile about it, and then I go back in there and try to tackle another box and realize there's no place for the stuff to go, and then I shift things around again...and three days later, it still just looks like an unorganized, dysfunctional mess.   

And then I spend the rest of the day wandering from room to room trying to find a place that I can find some sense of accomplishment with. So far, I haven't found one.  McKay opens boxes for me.  Megan unpacks them.  I put things in places where I think they should go.  And then Megan breaks down the boxes and drags them out to the porch.  I think all we've really accomplished this week is that we've multiplied the mess.  

I know that most of my problem with this house is that I'm trying to make things fit into the places they used to be in my old house.  And that I'm trying to use only what I have and not buy anything new, mostly because I don't want to leave the house or have to go shopping.  And that I'm trying to have it all finished in a week.  (I did actually think most of this would be done by now...)  I have no patience.  

People keep texting me and asking me how I'm doing and how things are going with the unpacking and the transition.  I really have no idea what to say to that.  Life is uninspiring lately and I feel like I'm just going through the motions.  It is truly beautiful here, but I feel like it's kind of lost on me.  I can see all the rolling hills and the green that covers every inch of space outside, and every now and then something will catch my eye and I think I should probably be more grateful for this place, but I don't really feel anything yet.  I don't love this place yet.  I feel totally guilty for not loving this beautiful house that Craig bought me, but I don't yet.  The kids have been awesome and they love everything.  Craig loves everything.  It's just me.  I just wander through the days and go through the motions of unpacking things and hope they fit into a space, and then get up and do it all over again the next day.  There's honestly not a lot of joy in it, which is weird because normally I love this stuff.   I'm sure I'll get there.   But for now, I'm sort of just existing.