runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

UPS

I love my new home.  I love it.  L.O.V.E.  It is beautiful to me.  I feel like I won the housing lottery and this home is the home that I got with my winning ticket.  It isn't exactly huge and it isn't tiny, it is just the right size.  And it fits all the stuff we brought with us and some new things.  And everything has its right place and everything works just right.  I even found a place for every picture and every mirror and even a few new things that we picked up at the best little antique/consignment place that I found with my mother-in-law. 

But as most things in life, it isn't perfect.  It is far far far away from my friends and family.  And it is in a place that is so totally foreign to me that I struggle to make sense of this new place we call home.  It is even so strange that our dog and cat are a little freaked out by going outside because it is not the outside they are used to.   

When I was a kid my Mom had an old story book that included a story of the City Mouse visiting the Country Mouse and what a debacle it was to take the City Mouse out of the city and the Country Mouse out of the country.  I now totally understand what this story was about. 

For example tonight I heard 2 planes flying overhead and they were the most assuring and refreshing sounds I had heard in 2 weeks.  Here is a list of things I haven't heard in 2 weeks:

Sirens
Car doors slamming
Neighbors talking/laughing/screaming/crying
Trash cans being dragged to the curb and back up the drive
Garbage trucks coming by and picking up your trash
School bus coming by in the morning
Dogs barking

It is really amazing and while it sounds somewhat idyllic it is going to take me a while to get used to it.  The quiet.  I need to adjust to the quiet and learn to embrace it.  But today a car pulled into the driveway and Sally and I jumped a mile high when the doorbell rang.  It was the UPS guy with my new living room chair.  I had to take that off the list - I have heard the UPS guy pulling in and out of the drive.  Thank God for UPS.

1 comment:

C said...

Hi Joy! Great comments on the things you haven't heard, that you were used to hearing. Are you really rural or just in a really quiet neighborhood?

Funny thing is, I'm still trying to get used to all the sounds despite being here for so many years now. Living in Canada we of course have double-pane windows so we were isolated from a lot of the sounds that I hear constantly here. Just as I was trying to put Lucas to nap, I thought, it's amazing how I can hear a conversation happening on the street one floor down and how noisy the trucks are. UPS among them!

Hugs
Cindy