If These Walls Could Talk

So, I moved my life back home yesterday. As Kevin and I were locking up our house without a word or a moment of silence or even a goodbye, my mind was racing with nostalgia.

[Excerpt of my inner dialogue with the old house...]
"...and after pouring my life into you and scrutinizing this crack on the floor and that hole in your wall and spending half my life painting your walls butter cream, I am leaving you now. Sorry that we're leaving you so filthy- with cat hair balls the size of footballs on the floor. I couldn't see them hiding when the furniture was there...and now it's not, and we're kinda in a hurry, but anyway....hope you like your new family. I'll cherish the memories, ol' house."

Before Kevin's house was turned into a Home. I knew there was potential!

Florida heat engulfed Kevin and I like an all-encompassing inferno as we stood outside of our green front door for the last time. The same shoddily-painted, forest green door of which I had so painstakingly brushed with glossy green love mere months before. And beside the hideous door, the electric pink and white carnations (of which we so lovingly adored) that practically struck a pose every time one of us stepped up to the door, exuberantly welcoming us to our home.

The crushing thought of never -never- being inside those walls again made my stomach ache with sadness. Kevin and I had built a peaceful, happy routine in that house- grilling summer corn on the back deck, watching our shows on the couch in the middle of the day, my lighting of 17 candles during cold, winter nights and his retiring to his upstairs man cave to...do whatever peaceful, happy thing he did up there. (Unsolved mystery.) Never mind the teeth-gnashing nights spent on the couch fuming over this and that, or the months of my wearing Kevin down to remove his God-awful, fishing-camp, wood-plank monstrosity from a prominent place in our house or our bare concrete floors that relentlessly sprouted dirt, twigs, bobby pins and trash like a fertile, spring garden.

Goodbye, house. It's Moving Day.

The one thing I regret from not doing on Moving Day was snapping a picture of my loaded down SUV. I was standing in front of my car about to climb in, sweating like a sopping wet sponge, when I actually acknowledged just how much stuff Kevin had managed to cram into my car. It was a white storage-box-on-wheels. Looking into my car was like looking into one of those optical illusion pictures where if you stare at the geometric shapes long enough, your vision will cross and suddenly a dolphin comes bursting from the blue page.

Optical Illusion alert! To see three dolphins: stare at picture up close. Try to look "through" the picture while you have your eyes crossed. Make sure no one is around because there is a possibility that you'll look like an idiot :)

Except all that came bursting forth from my junk was...more junk. To unpack. So much junk. Too much junk. It took me 4 years to accumulate it and I'm sure it will take me another 4 years to unpack it.

***Update! It's been 3 weeks and I'm STILL unpacking. Boxes galore. Swimming in boxes. Help!