Being Unsettled

Regardless of how organized of a move you make there is a period of being unsettled.  Unfortunately there is no avoiding this adjustment period as you become accustomed to the new sounds and traffic flow of your new home.  We have a fair amount of adjusting to do because we have lived semi-rural and rural for almost the past ten years.  We have moved into an urban setting that will enable us to spend the three months of the year we want to spend at our vacation home.

I honestly think our adjustment period will be lessened in that neither one of us bonded to our previous house.  Don't get me wrong as it was a gorgeous house in a prime location just it wasn't for us.  We never put up any pictures or our original pieces of artwork.  We painted most of the rooms and did a small reno in the kitchen yet the house was not ours.  It was just the feeling both of us had so really it was our house, not our home.  The house was very isolating especially for me as we had to drive everywhere.  It cramped my cooking style somewhat because if I felt like making a dish and on the rare occasion I was out of an ingredient or wanted to make a dish with an ingredient I normally don't stock it involved pretty much a half hour drive one way either direction.  Friends that popped over for coffee didn't come out as much given the drive.  In short, as soon as we bought our vacation home I was itching to sell our permanent residence to buy something a bit more fitting with our lifestyle.

We moved from a fairly quiet house with the main external noise being boat and watercraft traffic mixed with an abundance of bird twittering especially in the early morning hours.  Our new house has little external noise coming in but it is a louder house because there is absolutely no carpeting!  Carpeting is sound absorbing though so despite the benefits of having no carpeting it means we need to take a few extra measures to tame the normal household noise.  Our last house was a bi-level as is this one but the traffic patterns are very different so that will take a bit of getting used to.  Our last house by design was a very dark house with heavy summer shading and little natural light especially on the lower main living level.  As a result I was accustomed to turning a fair number of 'daylight' CFL on each and every day - 4 in the kitchen and six in the family room and office area.  This house is naturally light and bright with good natural light so there is no need to turn on lights during the daytime. Our last house backed onto a beautiful natural waterway that we used for entertaining and sitting by but not swimming.  This house has a large pool with two decks, so we essentially traded the view for usable water.  It backs onto farmland but the view out of our front windows is that of neat, tidy homes something that is rather comforting after being so isolated where we were.  Unlike the bathrooms at our old house that were ancient and badly in need of updating, the bathrooms here are spacious, sleek, and modern with beautiful cabinetry and ceramic tile floors.  Neither have a window so even during the day a light is needed.  We are installing a solar tube in the main bath to eliminate using electrical daytime lighting.

So we are unsettled but quickly settling, a bit more each day.  My husband hooked up the main tv with surround sound last night.  My new gas range won't be installed until the weekend.  It's just sitting in the kitchen taunting me.  A friend is coming over tonight to help install the new dishwasher and change all the locks.  They are hoping to change out the guts in the toilets as well.  I've been working on unpacking and getting things organized.  By this weekend it will be hard to tell that we just moved in!

Garden Gnome
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