home

 A home is more than a house, but when the house is home, it's treasured.  Home.  It's the people who make the house a home, and I am compelled to make my home a good place to be.  I'm not a super cleaner, or a good organizer, or even a good cook.  But I want people to feel welcome here.  My kids grow up and leave home, one by one, and make their own homes, as it should be of course, but...they can always come here for a visit.

Growing up in the same house from the time I was a toddler to when I got married and moved out, I still have dreams of home.  Going there through the years to visit my parents, it was a safe place, a good place, but it's someone else's house now, as my parents have both passed away.  Sometimes I dream that we move from this house, and I wonder with longing why?  What happened to the house with the blue countertops?  I loved that place!

It's no mansion.  We (when I say we, I mean Paul and my brothers...I was busy taking care of five small children in our mobile home, raised them mostly by myself that year, while picking out carpeting and sinks and light fixtures and paint colors...but SO exciting!)  built it ourselves, and there are things we never even finished, and we built it to be big and functional. 

We have two and a half acres on a country road, extremely thankful we could raise our kids out here.  I'm thankful for our house.  Sometimes driving by other houses, I wonder if I'd actually like to live there, and so far, no.  Yes, I'd like new countertops and a built in pool and a fantastic new hot tub that works and isn't directly under the metal roof snow fall area, and a new vanity in the bathroom and a new water system to totally eliminate the iron water, and and and.  But.  When does it end?  There will always be something else, and while it's nice to have a nice place to live, there has to be contentment with what we have, too.

We have the plastic sheeting hung now, and all the kitchen stuff here in the living room and the laundry room, and Paul is out there pounding and scraping and hammering up that tile.  Jonathan is helping today too, but he's out procuring a tool to help.  Hopefully it all gets done today, and we can get the new flooring down tomorrow.  

Anyway, my childhood home:  green carpeting, paneled walls, a garage with wood metal runner sleds hanging in there, real Indian snowshoes and lacrosse sticks, metal trash cans with metal lids that could also be used as shields in pine-cone throwing games or hose wars, a tiny kitchen with gorgeous cherry cabinets, brown plaid furniture with hexagonal end tables complete with metal eagles, shag carpet in my room, beautiful hardwood flooring upstairs, a good closet for hide and seek, a warm heat register in the bathroom to sit in front of after playing outside, plenty of bread bags to line our boots with, jars of Tang in the cupboard (orange juice?  what's that?), margarine in reusable plastic cups or bowls in green, orange, golden yellow, ABC soup, Spam, Zagnut bars, Marathon Bars, Malo cups, Jujyfruits, chocolate babies, Sugar Daddies, Freakies cereal, canned fruit cocktail, the Sear's Christmas Wish book, the 25 inch colored tv with the wood frame, the black rotary phone with the short cord, Earth shoes, mood rings...

Ah well...

We have the room taped off with plastic sheets, but the dogs think that means to go in and out, leaving the plastic gaping open behind them, non stop, like little two year olds.  There are concrete dust footprints all over the living room, but this floor is coming up too.  They just don't know what their humans are up to.  

Have a good day, and maybe next time I post, there will be better pictures!