Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig...

We are back in the "cozy, little grey house." Thanks so much to our friends Cathy and Steve. They both worked a full day yesterday, then came to our house to help us move our furniture back to the house (since I am, at this point, nearly completely useless). Did I mention that the temperature was in the teens? They stayed until roughly 9:30 p.m. or 10:00 p.m. I don't know how we deserve such great friends, but I was thinking last night that there is really no way to repay them for all the wonderful things they've done for us. And they probably still like us. Thanks so much.

Angie is incredibly happy to be home. For most of this week, I have talked to her about coming back to the house to stay to prepare her and she was enthusiastic. Thursday night, she was talking about how we would go to the cozy little grey house the next day. She doesn't have her t.v. shows (the cable is still hooked up at the apartment) but she has been bouncing around here happily since yesterday afternoon.

I can still smell soot/smoke in Angie's room (which was never re-painted and the area around the vent looks disgusting--grrrr) and in our old bedroom (which is now the computer room/walk-in closet). Chas thinks it's in my head. I think it's just in my nose. I don't smell it in the other rooms. Maybe a little bit on the front porch too.

Of course the smell was disguised by the leaking natural gas odor. Darling husband tried to say that I was hallucinating that too. Mercifully, Cathy detected it too when she came in and by the time Chas returned with the food, the odor was so pervasive that even he could smell it. Somehow, the gas stove has been damaged and we can't find, let alone fix, the leak. We do like to eat so in addition to the new washer and dryer we need to purchase, we will also be adding a new oven/stove. Everything will be electric this time. In this area, electric has become more affordable and with (hopefully) two kids in the house, it would be better to have electric rather than gas.

We're now sleeping across the hall from Angie's room (the old computer room/study). She was thrilled with the arrangement when I showed her where we would be sleeping (more excited bouncing), but by bedtime, she really wanted me to sleep in her room. She eventually slept in our room in "the family bed." The fire definitely caused some regression in her behavior. I like the new arrangement. The only down side is that the room really only fits our bed and two small end tables. It was nice to have the bed up on the frame rather than just on the floor. I don't know why I need the elevation (other than it is easier to climb out of bed in the morning), but I do.

So on the agenda today: shopping for appliances and shopping for curtains. I do not know where our living room curtains are, or if they even survived the post-fire purge. If they did, they need to be cleaned and I don't know when the new washer and dryer will be delivered. I am not going to walk around our living room without curtains at night. No thank you. And we didn't put up curtains in our old bedroom because it was in the back of the house, where no lights shone in and no neighbors could actually peek. We probably should have had curtains to help keep out the cold, but in five years, we just didn't bother. Now that our room is in front, we need to block the light and cold.

I can honestly say that as much as we've outgrown the place, as much as it still (and likely always will) smells of soot/smoke to me, as much unpacking as we still need to do, I'm glad to be home. I had the first good night's sleep in three months.