As of yesterday, I am living in a real house for the first time since I was eighteen.  A little math: from the time I left college until now (a twelve-year period), I have moved nine times, in three cities.  Apartments in Birmingham, New York, and Atlanta, and now…home.

Home needs a little work, y’all.

Two Men and their Truck arrived yesterday morning at 9:30 am, as scheduled.  (These days, with our lives at the mercy of a contractor, I appreciate and notice timeliness even more than before.  And that’s saying something.)  After a couple of days of Life Amidst Boxes, I was more relieved with every load they removed from the apartment.  As previously (and tediously) noted, I do not do well with transitional living.  Boxes and dust send my shoulders to my ears, and anxiety keeps them there until the mess disappears.  I also respond poorly to environments with whose cleanliness history I am not well-acquainted: you will almost never catch me sitting on anyone’s toilet seat but my own or that of a blood relative.  Even in fine hotels (I stayed at one once) I don’t let the comforter touch my face: all I can see when I get into bed are those UV lights that emphasize other people’s bodily fluids.

I’m a little rigid.

So when we rolled up to our new house yesterday, movers carrying boxes and contractors still working, the unsettledness remained in my body: adrenaline coursing through my veins, shoulder muscles rock-hard (and not from weightlifting), cuticles ragged.  The arrival of the cleaning service afforded me some peace and joy appropriate to the holiday season, and a five-mile-run exhausted the energy reserves also used to fuel anxiousness.  Then came the news that due to a miscommunication between our contractor and his plumber, we would not in fact have those ever-popular services of plumbing in the master bath or water in the kitchen sink.  Cue our temporary use of the small upstairs bathroom and a diet of McDonald’s breakfasts and takeout dinners.  (Not that I’m complaining–except for the cost.  Think the contractor will reimburse us?)

So life right now looks like fragments of granite serving as coasters (I will NOT sacrifice our tabletops for convenience–that would be letting the terrorists win), garbage bags instead of trash cans, a fine white dust coating the furniture and floors , strange men showing up at our door to deliver/fix things, and searching multiple boxes to find a pair of shoes for a McDonald’s run.  Unsettled as all hell.  BUT…

While I was picking up his sausage McMuffins this morning, The Husband dealt with the cable guy and set up our router.  And when I sat down in our new oversized chair, he delivered to me, with great fanfare (an arm flourish and a hug), my beloved Mac Air.  I now have enough internet to ignore him, and with the state I’m in, trust me–that’s an early Christmas gift from me to him.  He has a way, shown in this example and a thousand others, of creating a space where I can rest and lick my self-inflicted wounds born of inflexibility and impatience–and without condemning either quality, makes me want to rise above both.  Only with this man, in this life, can I be okay with clutter and non-shining surfaces.  Relatively speaking.  Now if only our nice big new house didn’t have so many places where he can hide from me…

It is well with my soul…or is it?  I’ve always excelled at the “peace attendeth my way” part, but the sea billows rolling in render me shut-down and incapable of anything more than one-word responses and sporadic, inexplicable tears.  Last night TH and I headed toward midtown to meet the old Roommate and her new man-piece.  Stuck in never-ending traffic and working against time, we had to bail on them for the third night in a row.  Had I the energy or hydration, I would have wailed like a baby.  Instead, TH turned around, headed back north, and took me to P.F. Chang’s, where I was promptly served with hard liquor and lettuce wraps.  Thank God for marriage.  Thank God for him.

And thank God for growth and grace, and a truth that permeates all forms of dust and the futility of the plans we make when we think we’ve got a handle on everything.  Thank God for nourishment that will be transformed from grease into home-cooked meals, from empty holes in the floor to bubble baths…eventually.  And until then, thank him for Good News, so necessary and appropriate this time of year, that can be repeated over and over and only become more meaningful and relevant.

Oh, and thanks also for tickets to the symphony with The Sis and Brother-in-Law tonight (eight for the four of us, due to my faulty memory), and a new sequined skirt and patent-leather high heels.  For both escapes from the dust and the ability to remain sane and hopeful within it.