Move Along Now

Today the wind blew in gusts and bursts, filling the pool with little bunches of oak leaves and making my hair perform in wild swirls about my face as I tried to see. Winds of change?

We're sitting on the edge of a major move, waiting for the final bits to click into place before life as we know it undergoes a primal shift and suddenly everything is different. A new (old) house, a new city, new neighbors, new spaces both indoors and out, a new kitchen to learn the patterns and rhythms of, and finally, a new blog. A new blog because the beginning of this big adventure feels as though it needs its own space for documentation so that one day when it all seems less overwhelming we can look back on our very first scary days and (hopefully) laugh.

So without further ado, Penguins in the Fridge bids you farewell and hopes you'll join us at Little City Living, which will be written from several family points of view, depending on how many people I can convince to participate. I may even try to get my mother-in-law in on this one (she thinks we're crazy, for the record). If you just want to keep up with the family I invite you to check out Today Is A New Day, where I still occasionally write about our daily lives and the antics of the Little Ones.

It Might Happen

It's been raining for days. The sky is dark, not ominous but determined-looking, as if it could continue to rain for weeks and still have more to pour out of itself. I feel so alive on spring days when the sky has this certain look to it and the air has that steamy, earthy smell that only comes in the spring. Of all the seasons, spring and fall will always remain my favorite because they are seasons of motion: spring is a surge, with the momentum of all life behind it; fall is a slowing down and a letting go. So much of life falls into these two motions, doesn't it? Winter and summer have their glory and magic, too, but for me they seem to be more about standing still and I have never been good at standing still.

So I am sitting here on this rainy, steamy, earthy day and I can almost see the leaves on the oak trees unfurl, waving in the wind like so many tiny flags. These oak trees, once hidden in a forest of spindly white pines, were the deciding factor for me when we bought this house. The one on the back corner has branches that curve and arc in such a fashion as to suggest that the tree is dancing, the one straight out back has a hole where a branch used to be and where chipmunks hide, and the leaning one has enchanting mossy green bark that makes me think of fairies and gnomes. These same leaves that unfurl today will fall in six months time, leaving the yard covered in a blanket of brown, acidic leaves that will no doubt be covered with snow before we can get them cleaned up. But in all likelihood that will not be my problem anymore.

We accepted an offer on our house today, after a brief period of negotiation in which I had to give up my brand-new-but-nothing-special microwave that I just got, and in which we came down just slightly more than we wanted to in price and the buyers came up just slightly more than they wanted to in price. The offer has a 48 hour contigency because the buyers have a house to sell, and their buyers have a house to sell (and on and on it goes) so really nothing is set in stone yet. But today this move, this big surge forward, feels like a very real possibility for the first time. How do I feel about it? Calm, mostly. Nervouse about the upheaval for our kids. A bit scared around the edges, not of the adventure but of the work that adventure will require, and a little hesitant to leave this block of land that we have borrowed for a few years. Funny, after everything is taken into consideration it is the land I will miss: the wild cherry trees that bloom here and there in our woods and offer the first real glimpse of spring's promise, the mossy old stump in the front yard, the wild blueberry bushes that cover the ground, and of course those oak tress that beckoned me here in the first place. I will miss this house, but those memories that I am afraid of leaving behind will travel with me and we have so many new memories to create in that great big old house that we hope to call home. And the pocket doors (swoon) will surely ease any remorse I have over leaving this house, right?

And BTW, the biopsy never happened, didn't need to, thank you thank you thank you.