Some Assembly Required

It seems we can no longer make a move without a marathon trip to IKEA. Whatever would we do if we moved to a city without one? This time around, our purchases included big shelves with doors for our master bedroom, a dining table (since our other one, which belonged to Rob’s grandmother, won’t fit in our smallish dining room), desks for the computer and the sewing machines, a piece of furniture for the TV and associated electronics, a dresser, and a big-girl bed for Grace. We told her what it was while Rob was putting it together and unprompted by us, she decided to try it out. Well, sort of.

By the way, check out Grace’s awesome purple room. I love how that paint turned out, as well as the robin’s egg blue in the living room and the lime/grass green in our bedroom. I am so addicted to bright paint colors... My only fear is that my house will come off as some kind of clown residence, but really, that possibility isn’t enough to dissuade me from picking all those lovely vibrant colors. Hopefully more pictures of the house will appear as it gets put together.

We’ve been spending a lot of energy putting things together lately. In the literal sense, there was the huge pile of IKEA furniture. Rob and I have become wise in the ways of IKEA since our first purchases there when both still single and in school. I remember how mysterious the almost-text-free instructions seemed at first, but now we expertly tell each other, “Find 6 of those tall turn-y things.” I still feel for the little confused man in the directions, though. I’ve been there, little cartoon man; I’ve been there.

In a slightly less literal sense, it seems like lots of labor is going into “putting together” our home in general-- organizing cabinets, finding places for the mish-mash of belongings floating untethered around the house, connecting up the TV/entertainment set-up, setting up my sewing workspace. I haven’t even begun to hang anything on the walls, although I hope to begin that this week. We do have most of the boxes unpacked. The only room with boxes still in it is the room that will belong to the new baby, and that includes boxes of things to be craigslisted/freecycled (yes, we somehow managed to move things halfway across the country and then decide we don’t want them) and the huge mountain of Grace’s outgrown clothes. I am considering not even addressing that particular task until we find out the sex of this new baby. What will I do with all of them if baby #2 is a boy?!

Unfortunately, things in our house have not just needed putting together but also repairing. Last weekend our air conditioning broke. In 95+ degree weather, that is something you really notice! Fortunately, it was fixed pretty quickly; we were only without AC for 18 hours or so. We had one miserable night but then they popped a new capacitor in and it is back to making our home livable. Then this past weekend, our garbage disposal and dishwasher both stopped working. It’s somewhat ironic because the lack of disposal and dishwasher was one of the things I was most bemoaning about our subleased apartment in New Haven, and here I am back to washing all the dishes by hand. Anyway, we are really glad we had our sellers pay for one of those home warranty thingies and Grace and I are sitting around today waiting for a plumber and an appliance repair person to come. In my more melodramatic moments, I am tempted to rend my garments, gnash my teeth, and demand to know why things keep breaking around here.

In the most metaphorical sense, we are working on putting together what will be our new life here in Dallas. As we find our way around our new area of town and locate the grocery store, the park, the place to buy dog food, I keep thinking about what our years here will be like, who our close friends will turn out to be, what will be our favorite places to go and favorite things to do. It feels good to be taking these steps toward being settled; I think we are well on our way to being home.