Today was the one month anniversary of our owning Catty-Corner Cottage. Exactly a month ago today, we had our closing, received our keys, and started moving into our new home. Part of me is absolutely shocked that it has already been a month, and part of me is thrilled to have gotten so much done toward making it feel like a home to me in so short a time.
To celebrate our one month anniversary, we went with the traditional candlelit romance. Er...wait...that would actually be necessary candles because of a black out.
Yes, I woke up this morning, as Tom was leaving for work, to our first black out in the new house. An extremely severe straight-line wind came through as part of a torrential thunderstorm at 5:50 am, knocking out power to about 7,000 people in our city. I'm sure many of you remember our drama with our entry door-less garage. The power outage happened JUST as Tom had finished opening up the garage door to take his car out for work. Had he been a little slower getting ready, he would have been trapped at home and so would I. Had he been a little earlier, the door would have closed behind him and *I* would have been unable to get my car out for work. As it was, the garage door was wide open and un-closeable for part of the day until I returned home to check to see if power was restored during my lunch, but at least our cars were accessible.
Thankfully by the time I ran home during my lunch, the power had been restored to the house. So we survived our first black out. But we now have even more motivation to price the addition of an entry door on the garage. (There is an emergency pull to detach the garage door to open it manually, but if we can't even get in there to pull the rope...well...it does us no good)
It has definitely been a month of ups and downs, high and low points. There was our initial stressful experience of locking our cars into the garage and needing to break in, our bed frame not fitting up the stairs and having to sleep on our mattress on the living room floor for our first week, Tom's car breaking down, the bathroom drain dripping steadily, and trying to understand new household bills while wrapping up final payments on the old ones.... But there was also the warm joys of hanging pictures on the walls in just the right places and seeing them transform the space, driving to Columbus to pick up the perfect entryway bench, meeting the neighbors after baking a pie for each of them in my new kitchen with my mother's help, the triumphant victory of finally getting the bed into the actual bedroom thanks to my dad, Tom learning how to fix the drain with help from our friend Dave, and gaining a true affection for the character and quirks of this place we now call home.
Although we have had to face so many obstacles during our first month my boss started to tease me that the place should be called "Cursy-Corner Cottage," the truth is that our setbacks have all been relatively minor, and all of them have had relatively simple and inexpensive solutions. "Disasters" like dealing with a black out may be temporarily inconvenient, but when I look on our local newspaper website at pictures of a local house that was entirely destroyed by the same storm, I realize that I have no room to complain at for a few hours of flashlights and cold.
Catty-Corner Cottage is a beautiful lady. But like any new relationship, there is a "getting to know you" period that has its ups and downs. I have no doubt that this dame will show us mood swings in the future, but over time as we polish and scrub, adorn her and treat her with love, I have faith that she will return our affection with growing enthusiasm.
Here is to many more months, years, and decades in our little fairy tale.
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