{{{{msbelle}}}}

Yup, that`s the great thing about `ffistas. We`re the support group that goes with you.
 
In trivial news, I`m watching tivo of the Blackhawks game, but it`s the Minnesota Wild station feed. So far there`s been an ad for how well Toyota AWD cars drive in snow, one for ice fishing clothing, and one where the hotel rate is the previous day`s temperature. I think it might be cold up there.

Random: I've been going through boxes of shelves, candleholders and such and been reluctant to hang them. They're nice, my style, etc. But I'm leaving them alone. Why?

And I thought a bit and it because they were in some sense a means of making temporary home. For 12 yrs. But the thing is, my home, my house? Isn't temporary any longer. Even with bare walls, it suits me perfectly. I look back at what I posted upon seeing it, emails, and oh lord, I was so gone. So I'm giving more thought. Sure, it's mine, I can change it. But this is a part of the new life that's been crafted in the past year and I'm disinclined to clutter it from old just because I have it available. I may even part with stuff that made my old home home. Because with this home, it is HOME, all caps, without most of the stuff. There's new to be done. I don't need to carve my mark into white walls. These walls are mine, and the years before.

It's odd.

Oh, dude I seriously relate. There`s barely anything on the walls because...okay I don`t know the because. Because I don`t have to. Because it`s already home, under the trappings of home. But I have a special shelf for my grandmother`s teapot. And it`s in daily use too because it can be. Love.

Wishing you easier times ahead, msbelle.

Yeah, the critical stuff got up. It's just the stuff that wasn't emotional, just me, that didn't. Emotional:I've got my artwork from friends, batiks from Africa, stones from Prague. And I want the images from Bhutan and Nepal and the quilt in the rubbermaid hanging in the stairwell...but the latter are recent. The other stuff? I dunno. Maybe it'll find a home. Maybe not. Most of the stuff emotionally important to me got unpacked, placed and quick.

That's really part of the miracle for us, that we get new. Despite having spent even longer in a place that was never really ours, this felt like home the minute we walke in.

We dragged far more with us than we ever should have, for sure. But we've taken time to live with bare walls, and paged through the art we brought, stuff that hung on the old walls so long it sort of disappeared. I'm glad we brought as much with us as we did, because everything's different. We see things in new ways, and new combinations.

We're waiting for the print we had for years and never had a place to hang--now it's going with a huge oil that used to hang in our bedroom, another oil from my Father-in-law's den H's mom gave us after he died. The colors complement each other and the furniture as though everything was designed together. And the pictures hung in sequence are a progression from the fantasy of childhood through the blending of fantasy with reality, ending in reality with more than a few fantasy elements.

All our walls will probably have something on them--they will just be in new juxtaposition and have taken on new meanings.

We haven't put up everything in this house, and we moved in about 5 years ago. And it is exactly that, sarameg. This is our home, not the place we are making our home. Eventually the important stuff will find a place , but it might ahile. and some be never

oh, msbelle, I am sorry. What a terrifying and exhausting experience for you.

My niece sent me 8 essays for a scholarship (after I offered) and I'm revising and sending comments back. It is so much easier for me just to completely rewrite them than it is to offer feedback.