ready.

The entire month of December is like a vapor to me.

We spent it here and there.  In-between one house and another.

Packing up.  Unpacking.

One box down, twelve hundred more to go.

For a month I have felt  . . . unsettled.  Out of sorts.  A mess at the new house.  A mess at the old house.  Stepping over stacks and wading through piles.

Internet working.  Internet down.

Today was a little light at the end of the tunnel.

A little peace.  A little hope.

Every box has been moved.  The floors in the main part of the house are clear and there are no makeshift passageways that wreck you up at night when you’re trying to check on sleeping beauties.

Our bedroom is still harboring a few fugitives – boxes of books when all the shelves are already filled and suitcases of clothing when the small number of closets are already bursting.

I still cannot find the white spatula, the beaters to attach to the electric mixer, my favorite blue long-sleeved layering shirt or my cozy pajama pants.  No student has solved a math problem in weeks and we have yet to establish our compost pile in the woods.

But the school room was organized today.  Laundry was almost conquered.  All boxes that remain to be unpacked are stashed in the barn.  And Mosely mashed the potatoes by hand, so who needs that mixer anyway?

I am ready to feel at home.

Ready to find routine.

Ready to get back to the tasks of copywork and novel reading and art teaching and bird watching and hot cocoa drinking.

Ready to focus on the living of the life instead of the unpacking to get ready for the living.

How perfect to move homes at the start of new year.

How apropos.

Ah – new year.

Hello.