One of my new favorite words is “hurkel-durkel” – it’s a Scottish word that means “to lie in bed, or to lounge after it is time to get up or go to work.” I am a bigtime fan of a good hurkel-durkel, and that’s how I started my day today. Honestly, it’s how I start most days, but recently it’s taken on a new flavor. I used to just scroll on my phone mindlessly, looking at things I didn’t care about because I wasn’t ready to get out of bed, but now I look at this amazing view from my bed and marvel at how utterly content I am.
My partner and I bought 4.25 acres last year, and we’ve been building a house for the last 9 months. We finally closed on the 2nd and moved in that weekend. Life has mostly been the chaos of moving and trying to work fulltime and parent parttime, but I try to take some time out of my day to really appreciate the blessings in my life – this amazing house, my partner and his girls, my friends, a well-paying job, having and being enough. I usually do this in the morning, during a good old-fashioned hurkel-durkel.
I finally wrestled myself out of bed around 930, went downstairs to take out the boys, make coffee, and feed the beasts. Taking the boys out is more complicated than before – I don’t trust CM to not take off after a smell or animal that pops up on the property, and B is so oblivious to the world these days (doggy dementia) and has developed a tendency to wander off, so we have to put on their harnesses, and I walk them around the property in my pajamas. I haven’t actually met the neighbors yet, but I’m sure they’ve seen me in my PJs. Meh. It’s fine. I am who I am. Ha!
With a new house, there are always little things that need to be addressed as you get settled in. Right now, it’s that our garbage disposal doesn’t work and the kitchen sink is backing up. Fun!! I texted the builder about it, and he’s said he’d stop by today … which he does, right in the middle of me getting ready. I’m dressed, at least, and have my makeup on, but my hair is downright wild. It’s fine. It takes him about 10 minutes to figure out what’s wrong (the breaker was off because the dishwasher isn’t in yet – it’s coming tomorrow), but he stays and talks for an hour. I’ve come to expect this from him at this point – he’s a chatty man – but I also have a full day, so I can only shoot the shit for so long. He finally leaves around 10, and I hurry to finishing doing something with my hair and then leave to run some errands.
First stop: the dry cleaners. I had just put on the down mattress pad and comforter that has been sitting in storage for a year when CM pissed all over the bed, and not just a little bit. It was a huge puddle, right in the middle of the bed. I was furious. He didn’t even indicate that he needed to go out, AND he had a diaper on, but it was apparently incorrectly positioned. He seems so much younger than B that I sometimes forget that he’s also old – almost 14 – and needs some grace for that too. I washed all the other bedding last night, but the down-filled items need to be dry cleaned.
After the dry cleaners, I head to the grocery store to get M some peanut butter cookies for Valentine’s Day. We went to a concert this weekend for our big gift but are still getting small things for each other. Once I get home, around 11, I have time to finally eat something (left over gyoza and Grapenuts, not together) and do some work before an epic meeting at 12.
Four hours. My meeting is four hours long. Most of the participants are in person, but I didn’t want to travel all the way to Iowa City for a four-hour meeting, but that does mean I have to join via zoom, and that’s just painful. It’s hard to hear everyone, and I tried to contribute a couple of times, but it’s too easy to overlook the person on the camera, so it’s not really worth the effort. Eventually I just turned off my camera and listened to the meeting while I worked on unpacking the house. Actually, I worked to make the main room livable. There are so many boxes and so much shit just lying around. I know this is part of the process, but it really starts to bother me after a while, so I just organized it all a bit, cleared off surfaces, etc. Worth it. I feel like I can breathe in there now!
It’s really hard to be interested in working when I have so much unpacking and organizing to do at the house, but I force myself to keep going until M calls around 6. He’s dropping his car off at the mechanic for an oil change tomorrow, so I go pick him up. It’s amazingly still light out when we get home – I love this time of year with the lengthening days! – so I take CM for a short walk. We go past the goat farm, a favorite of both of ours, and then head home. Even short walks take a long time these days with all the new smells in the area. Both of the dogs are so happy here – we have SO many windows in the new house, and CM just lays and watches out all day in the sunshine. B can’t see well enough to enjoy that, but he does love laying in the sun on the couch. *sigh* I love everything about this house.
When we get back, M and I have a beer and relax for a while. We’ve been so busy lately that we haven’t gotten to spend much time just relaxing together. We talked about trying to get some unpacking done around the house, but that’s not going to happen tonight. We need a night off. So, we make dinner – chorizo tacos, Spanish rice, and black beans – and watch an episode of the Great British Baking Show while CM looks on and drools over food he’s not going to get to eat. After we eat, we look at Joybird (we need to buy a new couch), but we like different ones and neither of us are in the mood to make a decision right now, so we just decide to watch another episode and put off all responsibilities for the night. I won’t go into details.
Before bed, while M is in the shower, I take out the card I got M for Valentine’s Day – two cats cuddling that says “Let’s spend all nine lives together,” and write a message on the inside. I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to write all day. What I settle on is an inside joke (a friend of mine was really pissed off when I moved in with M after only 2 months, which was kinda fair, but he was kinda horrible about it. Anyway, at some point he said he’d talked to at least half-a-dozen single women, and they all agreed I was being an idiot):
(To the cadence of ‘roses are red’)
We’re finally home,
Where we belong,
I sure am glad
Half-a-dozen single women were wrong.