Homeowner Pride.

I love my new home. I love everything about it. I love it so much that it's difficult for me to write about it in proper paragraph form. So, bullet points it is.

 

• I love that the sun shines in through the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard in the morning. My medication plus my general apathy tends to make it difficult for me to get out of bed in the morning. It is so much easier when I think "I just have to make it to the kitchen table, where I can drink coffee and write or read or stare off into space while the sun shines in my eyes." It's fabulous. I'm doing it right now, in fact. Mornings are spectacular here. My neighbors have a huge willow tree that we can see from that back door and right now it is yellow and odd-looking with new growth. It's been a windy past few days (or weeks..) and the willow tree makes it bearable, because it's just so lovely in the breeze.
• I love that I have a yard. The other day I took out an old sheet and some pillows and a book (Cold Mountain, if you must know, it's beautiful) and read out in the sun for hours. I moved here from an upstairs apartment, so having grass at my toes is new and exciting for me. I love laying down in the lawn and inhaling deeply, smelling the lovely scent of fresh baby grass and the earthy musk of dead winter grass together.
• I love how bright my home is. Large windows in every room, glass doors, and an airy, open floorplan make for a cheerful home indeed. It is very rarely dull and dark in my home as it so often was in the apartment.
• I love, love, LOVE, not having downstairs "neighbors," in fact, I love not having neighbors just on the other side of the wall at all. Our neighbors are now at lawn's length away with a fence between. This means I can crank up the volume to any music I damned well please without worrying about being judged poorly on my music taste by at least three households. It means I can vacuum at midnight if I feel the need. It means that I (and the kids I babysit) can run and jump and make noise all we want. It means I can be as loud as I want when having sex with my husband without imagining the creepy guy next door listening. I finally feel like I live in a place that is "mine" and I can honestly and truly do as I please there.
• I love that I'm allowed to decorate my home. Which isn't to say that I've gotten around to any decorating yet, but it makes me happy to know that I can. I can put as many nails in the walls as I want and can also paint those walls any color that suits my fancy. I can get crazy carpet installed if I want. It's MY house, after all.
• I love that I can do my own laundry now. In the apartment there was a laundry room down by the office, but we never used it. Instead we wore all of our clothes until we literally had NO clean clothes left, then we'd haul all of our dirty laundry to my mother in law's house and sit there all day doing nothing but laundry. Now washing clothes fits pretty much seamlessly into a normal day. It's so great. You have no idea.
• Most of all I just love that my home is really my own. I don't have to share it with intrusive neighbors or a landlord, only my husband and my cats. I can do just as I please to and in and around the house. I can be myself and change my surroundings to reflect my personality. I can be proud when inviting people over. I have privacy and freedom.

 

So for anyone who's wondering "How's life in the new house?"

 

It's fantastic.