What I've Learned, with Gifs

When asked how things were going as we prepped for our move, I found I was finishing many anecdotes by saying, "I'm learning a lot."  Sometimes this was my nice way of saying, "Big changes are hard and this really really really sucks."  But sometimes I meant it a little more literally; an author I follow posted this at one point during the process, and it felt like God had shoved important words in front of my face, trying to get me to pay attention:

I can be more than a little myopic and have asked God repeatedly not to be subtle in His messages to me.  This can be a dangerous request.

Nonetheless, "Don't waste the pain" became my go-to phrase when things were painful whilst saying farewell to Iowa.  The pain was going to be there no matter what I did, so I figured I may as well learn from it, try to glean whatever it is God was trying to teach me.

For starters, I've learned that I like my comfort.  I don't mean a plush easy chair, feet kicked up, eating kettle corn- although, hmm, that too- I mean that while I say I enjoy new experiences, I apparently only enjoy those when I get to take a few steps, brush up against some kind of pleasant novelty or other, then retreat back to my comfort zone, where I can mentally process that experience at my leisure.  Being plucked out of my comfort zone and plopped miles and miles away?  Not so much.

I've learned I get overwhelmed when I have 47 tasks in front of me, but can manage so much when I chunk a list up into sections.  I look at all I accomplished in the months before we moved and I am astounded.  From getting a house ready to sell, to running herd on three kids on my own for two months- in APRIL AND MAY, no less, when each day has a concert or a field day or a history project due- to seeing as many beloved Iowans as possible in that span of time as possible?  I may not have done it all, but I did a lot.

I learned that asking others for help doesn't kill you dead.  I still don't like it, and only feel comfortable asking for that help from a handful of people and within a very narrow set of parameters.  Your mower has died but you still have two weeks' worth of mowing to do before you move?  You can ask a friend if you can borrow their mower, but YOU MUST do the actual mowing yourself and you WILL NOT ask that same friend two weeks in a row; gotta switch to someone else.  One of your kids has truly gone off the rails over this move and you're so worried you're on the verge of vomiting for 10 straight days?  You can contact people very strategically asking for prayer, intel, or a shoulder to cry on/ lose your ever-loving mind to.  None of this will kill you, which is hard to believe when it feels like there's an elephant sitting on your chest as you stare at your phone, willing yourself to ask someone for help.  Asking people for help is second only to asking people if they'll be your reference for a job application.  That is when I fervently start praying that Jesus would come back STAT. 

Since arriving back in CT, I've learned that I'm different at 36 than I was at 21 when I first moved here.  It's like I'm kinder, but also less willing to let anyone walk all over me.  More compassionate, but somehow also less tolerant of what I would consider unacceptable behavior.  I guess I'm just... older.  I'm also trying to be retrospectively gracious toward my past self who lived here before:  she was young, and and both worked and lived in areas that showed some of the worst sides of this area (retail and a rather ugly town, respectively).  She also hadn't yet realized that being outgoing as a personality trait doesn't have to be inborn- it can be learned.  This realization served her well in Iowa; we'll see how things go here this time around.

I'm sure I learned loads of other things, but this has gone on for a while.  Too much introspection invariably begins to feel like wallowing to me, and I don't wallow well.  I am spectacular at avoidance, however, which might be why I have so many hobbies to reach for when the thinkin' gets too deep.  Anyone up for a run?  How about a book?  Hiking?  Baking?  Walking?  Board game?  Gardening?  Writing?  Puzzles?  If it's an old-person activity, I probably like it.

I also enjoy sudoku.

IA to IL to IN to OH to PA to NJ to CT

When we were planning how to transport our family from Iowa to Connecticut, we discussed a number of options.  Thankfully our stuff was chug-a-lugging its way eastward on a moving truck, so the only things we had to get from point A to point B were the five of us and the various and sundry items I had overpacked for the trip.

When deciding what I wanted to travel in the van with us, I evidently thought that bringing every cleaning product we owned would be crucial, along with most of the blankets we own, this despite the fact that it's a warm time of year and we only had two nights to camp in our old house without our belongings.  I did restrain myself from digging up most of my flowers, but only because I didn't believe they'd survive the trip.  In the end the only plant that came with was six or so iris rhizomes I got from my grandparents' Kansas farm.  The potted rain lily that came from my great-aunt and great-uncle in Texas-by way of my grandparents, again- also happily survived the move.

So Friday morning our van-full of cleaning items, blankets, plants, and humans set out toward Connecticut.  We made good time, arriving at Lagomarcino's Confectionery right at lunchtime.

That place was so dang charming.  Quaint little wooden booths, plus a counter by the soda fountain, plus a long case filled with handmade chocolates- it was wonderful.  The food was pretty simple, with the shakes definitely stealing the show.

After lunch we stretched our legs, walking around quiet downtown Moline, IL, and then stretched our legs some more as Derek went into a branch of our bank and tried to put out fires that were threatening to ignite surrounding our two house closings.  Because we closed on our Iowa house Thursday night and then planned on closing on our CT house the following Monday morning, everything had to line up and occur on a pretty tight timeline.  There are lots of moving pieces when it comes to real estate and banks, however, and not everyone was playing nice, so Derek was monitoring it all and shifting and switching and overall being his uber-responsible self.  For my part, I made the kids walk laps around the bank.  This was apparently evidence of my innate cruelty; never mind that they had already been sitting and would continue to sit on their tuchuses for hours.  

What is the plural for tuchus, anyway? 

Derek's parents completed their application for sainthood by presenting to Adelaide the complete series of Mork and Mindy on DVD shortly before we left Iowa.  This being her current favorite show, she ended up watching hours of it over the miles and states of this trip.  She even got the boys hooked.  Posthumous credit goes to Robin Williams for generating giggles from the backseat of our van when we expected to hear pitiful weeping.  

Day two's stop was Marblehead Lighthouse on the shore of Lake Erie.  The boys and I loved how incredibly windy it was there that day, but it freaked Adelaide out.  Well, that and all the water.  Not caring for wind and water together is problematic when you're on one of the Great Lakes.  Still, she climbed the winding wrought iron stairs inside the lighthouse with no problem, while I was finding myself shorter and shorter of breath due to some height-induced panic.  Yet again I forgot how much I don't care for heights until we were well off the ground.  

It all seems like a good idea when my feet are planted on the firmament, but then we begin climbing and I remember just how little I trust my fellow man and the things he has built.  Never mind that the lighthouse has stood without incident (well, without a lot of incidents) for close to 200 years; my weight will be the straw the breaks the camel's back- or the flesh that crumbles the limestone, I guess.  Once at the top, my back was firmly glued to the outside wall of the structure while small children capered about the balcony.  I did allow myself small shuffles from side to side, but did not get a picture of this because I was trying not to die.  

We also enjoyed hopping around on the boulders that line the shore, because, well, boulder hopping is fun. 

Our final day on the road we elected not to stop at any of the Pennsylvania rocks the kids were decidedly not excited about seeing- the timing just wasn't right- and instead stopped at High Point State Park in New Jersey.  I believe I forgot to mention New Jersey as one of the states we were traversing.  We were at the state park for all of 30 minutes; a few hikers emerged from the forest just as we were preparing to set out and told us that any grass higher than ankle-height would end in legs covered in ticks.  This was problematic as we were all clueless Iowans wearing shorts.  We followed a well-cleared trail for all of a quarter mile before it grew more overgrown and we decided that it was not a good day to become five walking, talking hosts for opportunistic families of ticks.  So we turned around.  Then I read two pamphlets aloud I'd picked up at the ranger station; I was determined we'd all get something out of this stop, and if wasn't going to be exercise, it would have to be more facts about black bears than we'll likely ever need. 

Other fun facts about the trip:  

Adelaide got uneasy when we entered Jersey and the roads turned close, hilly, and windy.  We told her this boded ill for one year from now when she'll be learning how to drive on Connecticut roads. 

We were given a number of thoughtful gifts for the road trip, but the kids' favorite was from one of my yoga ladies, who gave us a generously-sized bag of snack food:  single-serving Cheez-Its, pretzels, cans of Pringles, and homemade monster cookies and Kringla.  From now on this will be our standard gift to families embarking on cross-country moves.

A couple times Atticus said, "I keep almost asking when we're going to turn around and go home- but then I remember we're not."

Even with all the stops, the kids' favorite part may have been the hotel pools.

Atticus is still talking about "the mosquitoes with tails."  They were some kind of bug we kept seeing on the shore of Lake Erie.  I repeatedly told the kids they were not mosquitoes.  They will not be convinced.

Adelaide's favorite was the chocolate malt at Lagomarcino's.  And Mork and Mindy.

And yes, I can confirm that Caedmon's favorite part of the trip was "probably the hotel pools."  Does this mean you should save your pennies, not take that trip, and instead head to the nearest hotel that will let you swim and get family ear infections for an afternoon fee?  Not necessarily.  But this definitely doesn't make me want to spend all our dollars on certain children's admittance to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Unexpected Perks

When trying to sell Adelaide on the idea of moving across the country, we brought up a number of points:

We'll be close to New York!

Close to the ocean!

They have a lot more ice cream shops!

There's a massive used bookstore in CT with a number of live-in cats!

Free tickets to Disney World, which, okay, maybe doesn't excite you, but it greatly increases your chances of visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!


Some of these she seemed to take in and ponder, and some she lobbed right back at us.  One pro I never even considered, however, was the cemeteries.

That's right:  Connecticut has loads more dead people than Iowa!  Yaaa...ay?

Daughter and I both appreciate a good graveyard.  It doesn't take much to make it "good" in our estimation, either; really just a few headstones that are legible.  There's something about getting only a few tantalizing details to a greater story that sets your feet to walking to read the next one, and the next one, and the next, forever and ever until both Atticus and Caedmon are slumped on the ground moaning and wondering aloud, "Whhhyyyy do you like dead things so much?" 

What's not to like?  I mean, just look at the winged cherub (or is it a death's head?) on this one!

AND look at the dates on this one!  We'd explored a number of Iowa cemeteries, and I apparently had that kind of timeline in my head; when we walked to our first cemetery here in town I thought maybe we'd get lucky and see a few Civil War-ear headstones.  Imagine my delight at so many pre-Revolutionary War inscriptions!  I am admittedly a down-to-the-bone Midwesterner who is impressed with this kind of antiquity.  Don't get me wrong; I still appreciate a good Iowa pioneer cemetery, and you'll find an entirely different kind of history in the cemeteries of the Midwest that's just as fascinating. 

But look at these names!

You just don't see a lot of "Hephzibah, Relict of Hosea Goodrich"-type markings in the middle of our massive country.  And yes, I have a lot more pictures like these clogging up the camera roll of my phone. 

And these were just the local cemeteries- we haven't even begun to search out some of the older or well-known within CT, of which there are so many!  Please take my word for this, unless you knowingly want to trip down that internet hole, in which case might I suggest you start here or here or maybe here.


I do have more than just pictures of tombstones on my phone, I'll have you know.  I can't get too up in arms, though, because it's mostly just screenshots of books I want to read,

ideas relating to house projects,

recipes,

and pictures of our kids working.  Because nothing gives me greater joy.

I didn't choose the boring life, the boring life chose- oh, wait, yes I did!

Good Plant, Evil Plant

I'd like to begin by giving thanks for the God-given, science-driven, ANTIBIOTIC.  I'd also like to thank Him for stretching out His mighty right hand and blessing us with steroids in their many forms.  Fear not, friends, this is not about to become a fire and brimstone post fueled by 'roid rage; I'm talking about the steroids that help those of us with immune systems that insist on acting like a stereotypical teenager (Daughter excluded, of course):  either too lazy to do much of anything or losing it in a fit of pique when something barely brushes its arm.

What I mean is this:  I went to the doctor.  I think we're going to be getting along just fine, given that she ordered up a couple kinds of steroids and an antibiotic because infection had set in a patch or two.  She also more or less said, "HEY, DUMMY- you are severely allergic to these plants.  Do not go near them.  Do not try to burn them off lest you inhale the smoke and do some real damage.  Get someone else to clear your yard of it."  The line, "I already know all that, Mom," did run through my head, but then reality snapped back into focus:  I was, in point of fact, sitting in her office covered in what my sister is calling "boils" because I was dumb enough to work up a good poison oak lather, this despite spending multiple childhood summers sidelined due to poison ivy.

So.  Yes.  My boils are improving.  I am still waking up throughout the night having already scratched myself half to death, but my days have significantly improved, where I'm able to move through the hours in relatively good humor, without falling asleep in public spaces because of Benadryl fog.

When not obsessing over "the devil's touch" (online poison oak sufferers are a hilarious but scary- and scaly- bunch), I've been working on making our house habitable!  For many this might mean unpacking or something equally practical, but unfortunately for my family, for me this means staining wood and planting flowers.

What I eventually want is a profusion of coneflowers all along the front of our white picket fence.  Coneflowers because:  they spread, they're pollinators, they come in a bunch of colors now, and they'll give me that cottage garden look I think a picket fence calls for.  For now, however, we'll just have to use our imaginations that the 10 clumps I've planted so far will be fruitful and multiply.  For you coneflower people, I've got Cheyenne Spirit Mix, PowWow Wild Berry, Virgin, and the original purple.  For you non-flower types, I've got, well, the usual purple, plus red, orange, yellow, pink, and white.  We'll see how many of them make it; I've had mixed luck getting anything but traditional purple to come back after a couple years.  I'll get a whole mess of bulbs in there this fall for spring color, and then I'll need to think of something for fall color. 

Cheyenne Spirit Mix

The wood staining has been done in our scary basement WHERE I BELONG (sorry, like I said, the poison oak is still able to seize control from time to time).  The layout of our kitchen is more than a little confounding, but my sister suggested tearing down the upper cabinets in the middle of the room so I asked Derek to do whatever she said (well, I omitted tearing out the back wall and putting in a sliding glass door because Budgets), and as soon as he got them down the room felt markedly improved.  The wood- ha, you'd forgotten the point of this story, hadn't you?  Me, too!- is for some open shelving we're putting up, because although the square footage of this house is similar to that of our previous, it's laid out quite differently with a notable lack of storage space, excepting the basement.  For this reason we've found ourselves at IKEA (because Budgets) three times in the last week looking at shelves!  And wardrobes!  And sideboards!  And other ways to hide our crap!

 
Tomorrow I can almost promise not to mention poison oak again, but there will be plenty of cemeteries!  Old cemeteries!

Reunification

This poison oak reaction of mine has accelerated to the point that I'm being forced into a seated position for an extended period of time.  This means I have time for blogging!  Oh, but I'm also all hopped up on Benadryl, so prepare yourself for a format that looks more like a maze than a story arc.

We're coming up on two whole weeks lived in Connecticut, which also means our family has been reunited for just over two weeks.  One of the things that we tried to keep a bit under the radar was the fact that Derek arrived here in CT in early April, while the kids and I remained behind in Iowa.  I'm trying to find the right word that would illustrate what it was like to be apart for so long; "excruciating" feels like overkill, but "hard" is too milquetoast.  Whatever word lives halfway between those two extremes is the right one, so your homework for today is to fill in the blank:  "It was                          for the Crislers to be separated by 1,000 miles for two months."  

Part of what made that time apart so difficult was the enormous amount of stress we were under.  There were huge amounts of things to be done, and while I tackled my share of those tasks in Iowa and he his in CT, after 15 years of marriage we're not really divide and conquer-type people anymore, but Unite and Conquer.  That is hard to do when there are 1200 miles between you.  The kids suffered, Derek suffered, I suffered.  Military families:  how do you do it?  We went two months and it felt like it was close to killing us off; I cannot fathom months on end.

June 6th became a much-anticipated date, as Derek flew into Des Moines that evening.  It was such a relief for us all to be back together, even though it was our last night in Iowa.  Our belongings had been packed and loaded by a moving company on the 5th and 6th, so the five of us spent a final night sleeping on the floor of our beloved Iowa house.  Emotionally speaking, each of our kids have gone through rough patches when it comes to this move, and that night it was Caedmon's turn.  He was bereft at the idea of leaving the only house he has ever known.

Thankfully none of our kids have been emotionally drowning at the same time; when one's face starts to slip beneath the surface, the other two are treading water.  So you go and you haul that kid up, assessing and reassuring and loving and praying over them.  That kid stabilizes, so you turn around and another kid starts to go under.  This is parenting, and it is exhausting, but it's also much easier to keep them all afloat when there are two of you life guarding.  

Amongst all that were the good-byes we had to say to so many friends.  At some point I will write about how taken care of I felt as we prepared to leave, but that's just not something I feel up to right now.  Blame the poison oak, not my penchant to avoid any and all negative feelings.  That's right... poison oak.  No feeling of any feelings allowed.  Quick, look at this weird but captivating gif instead!

We signed the last of our paperwork for the sale of our house Thursday night, got up bright and early Friday morning and chatted with the new owners who, you might remember, were also our neighbors.  We walked through the house, pointing a few things out to them we thought might be helpful.  We had a few stops to make around town, returning camping pads to friends (so we didn't have to sleep on the bare floors), honoring Adelaide's request for that last trip to Casey's, etc. 

And then we were on our way!  We had three days worth of road tripping ahead of us since we'd elected to turn the voyage east into a mini-vacation.  I'll expound upon that soon, but for now I'll just say:  I was so thankful for those three days.  They were a real gift, an in-between time where reality was suspended.  I wasn't killing myself trying to get everything done to wrap things up in Iowa, but we hadn't yet closed on our house in Connecticut.  All we had to do was drive, visit lighthouses, watch Mork and Mindy, and be together.  Well, plus a few other things.  But still together.

All I Need Is a Bridge To Live Under

It's been quite a week.  We took the kids on their virgin trip to IKEA, which Adelaide loved and the boys tolerated.  Derek and I basically looked at ten different ways to put shelves in ten different places; this new house has very little in the way of storage space, so as we continue to try and unpack it consists of us unwrapping an item, looking around for a place to store it, finding nothing, and putting it on whatever horizontal surface is within arm's reach.  Repeat x1000.

We got a new couch, which is exciting, because the one that has faithfully served us for the last 11 years only fits three people, and last I counted there are five of us.  It's nice and plump, although I haven't really allowed myself to recline on it yet; I currently look like a cross between a burn victim and a leper due to the increasingly widespread poison oak rash covering my body, and I don't want to get blister ooze on the new cushions.  Each day also brings with it a heightened sense of self consciousness in terms of bringing this open flesh wound out into public, although the real problem there is that I don't like for any fabric to be touching the rash, which hurts on contact but really starts barking when I later try to peel the fabric off that has inevitably fused to my weeping skin.  Clearly the answer is to go around topless, but something tells me this would attract the wrong kind of friends.

I started taking Benadryl a couple days ago to try and combat the incessant itching and pain, but did so with reluctance:  I'm pretty sensitive to the stuff.  I know this due to past experience, which consisted of me taking some Benadryl at Derek's parents' house years ago and then waking up an hour later, face-down in the middle of the living room.  I don't know why I didn't choose one of the beds, couches, or really any kind of furniture and instead chose to stretch out where there was a regular pattern of foot traffic.

But itchy and oozy am I, so Benadryl it is.  I've been keeping the operation of heavy machinery to a minimum, but yesterday I felt like it was safe to walk a block up the hill to the small and sweet Berlin Free Library (not to be confused with the town's public library).  I remember sitting down in a chair to read while the kids made their book selections, and then I remember waking up to my phone buzzing in my lap.  I'm pretty sure I only fell asleep for a few minutes.  I really really hope no one stumbled upon me in my (legal) drug-induced coma.

I am going to the doctor Monday morning.  I am hoping for more powerful, but still legal drugs.  That or they can just skin me and I'll start anew.  Whatever it takes.

We Have Arrived

We're here!  We made it!

One week ago yesterday we arrived in CT, and one week ago today we closed on our house in the morning and spent the rest of the day moving into it.

There's so much to say, so much to document, that I don't even really know where to start.  I'm in another library, except it's 1200 miles from the one I was writing in last week.  It's a nice library, but I find I'm struggling to accept it as it is and not zero in on all the things I'd change if I could get my hands on it.  (What would I change, you ask?  More new middle readers.  Less staff just milling around, looking bored.  Library stuff.)  I feel gross as I sit here, not because I'm actually dirty- we have a functioning shower now, hurray!- but because my skin is covered in light pink patches of dried calamine lotion.  It turns out we have quite the crop of poison oak in our new yard, and although I have spent a large portion of the last week helping to clear it out, I don't really remember rolling around in it like a pig in mud.  Or a dog in mud.

Given that I did not make any crowns of poison oak to rest charmingly upon my brow, I'm wondering just how I ended up with a rash behind my ears, of all places.  And my back.  And my shoulders.  The rash on my hands and forearms, I understand.

Oh, wait, I know!  See, if you're allergic to urushiol oil, as I am, then you know that after exposure to poison ivy, poison oak, etc, you have to wash aaaallll the fabrics you even thought about touching.  Clothing, sheets, towels, etc, or you'll keep re-exposing yourself.  But our washer is still broken.  Something in my possession has that oil on it, so it just keeps spreading.  Awesome.

The possibly-good news is that the repairman is scheduled to pay us a visit tomorrow; the washer needed a new pump.  But we really really need that pump to arrive today, or he'd just be coming over to have tea and cookies.  Except that I'm not a big tea drinker, so I guess we'd just be having cookies.  Cookies and calamine lotion.  Sounds like the name of a scented candle.

Many other things have happened, too, both good and bad.  Derek and his dad hooked up the dryer, which included cutting through the side of the house to vent it, as we chose a new location for the washer and dryer.  Well, I'll put "new" in quotation marks, because it was likely the original location, before the Flippers From Hell got their hands on this house and did nearly everything wrong, including moving the washer and dryer to the second floor and kitting out a laundry room around it the size of a bedroom.  We wanted that fourth bedroom, so back down the washer and dryer needed to go.  I'll finish this riveting paragraph by saying that they had to cut 8.5" through that exterior wall for the dryer vent, and 7.5 of those inches were solid wood.  So... maybe the house is well-insulated?

When we haven't been working on the house (which is almost never), we've been exploring this new-to-us area.  There are plenty of things here to recommend our location, but one of my favorites is the abundance of trails- at least compared to where we were- in this section of New England.  I picked one of the closest ones and packed the kids up two days ago while Derek was at work in the evening.  Now, hiking isn't one of their favorite things, but I can usually get them to go along at least half-cheerfully for a solid mile or two, so when we studied the map at the trail head I chose the blue trail.  1.5 miles is very doable for our kids!  No problem!  Piece of cake!

Except, whoopsy daisy, we instead set out on the blue/red trail, and while my suspicions were mounting about my mistake almost from the beginning, I didn't say anything until we were over 1 1/2 miles in.  Then I looked it up on my AllTrails app, and sure enough, we were on the 5.5 mile loop.  To their credit, the kids took the news with relative aplomb (or maybe it was just exhaustion?), and we turned around to hike back.  It was very hilly, especially for newly-arrived flatlanders, and extremely rocky.  

Of course, we knew that was coming, given that one of the trail runners we saw at the trail head held up a shredded shoe and told her companion, "This is what Ragged Mountain does to shoes."  But it was beautiful, and I was so pleased with how the kids handled the challenge.  

Tomorrow (or whenever I get to it):  Reunions!  Flowers!  A weeping house!