The dinner was a good time, but it was only a small segment of what turned out to be a relatively full weekend, much of which had the cumulative effect of driving home the sense our roots on our new patch of land are growing deeper every day. A sampling, then, of what we got up to over Saturday and Sunday:
1. Thought seriously about attending a local event. Our hometown threw a Saint Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday, which was heavily advertised as “rain or shine!” and we really, really wanted to make a family outing of it. Waggis loves all things with engines and wheels, and fire trucks especially, so we figured he’d get a kick out of that, at least. And it would be a good opportunity for the whole fam to get out of the house and sample the community offerings. Unfortunately, the rain combined with the perfectly seasonable early-March coolness made it seem much less appealing when it was time for the go/no-go decision. Still, just the fact that we were aware of it and talking about it up through Saturday morning was encouraging.
2. Bought some gardening gear. So instead of going to the parade, we went to Costco, with the intention of restocking on our big grocery staples but also with an open eye toward … miscellany? (Really, with Costco, you never know what they’re going to have out there on the warehouse floor on any given day.) Graziella spotted some garden plant kits and suddenly felt an overwhelming horticultural urge, which, dang, I’m certainly not going to stand in the way of. Of course, you can never quite get all the essentials at Costco, because either they don’t have what you want or they do but not the right brand or flavor or whathaveyou, so on Sunday I was at SuperTarget getting a few more sundries, as well as a trowel and watering can and gardening gloves and all that stuff that we’ve never had before because we’ve always lived in a townhouse community where the exteriors are maintained by the homeowners association. Now, though, yard beautification is all up to us and my wife is stepping up to the challenge, which is pretty sweet.
3. Went back to the comic book shop. I actually spent a good chunk of Friday evening finally reading through the large stack of recent comics I’m always talking about needing to sit down and read, and having done that I was able to justify picking up the new comics that have come out in the interim. I went back to the local-ish establishment where I had a semi-grating nerd run-in last time, and I’m pleased to report that it was significantly less irritating this time around. Largely this was due to the fact that I got to the shop at noon, which is when they open on Sundays, so the only people there were one employee, me, and Waggis. The employee did not force himself upon me (conversationally, I mean – I have yet to ever be physically molested in a comic book shop and Odin-willing never will be) and had no one else to banter (in the loosest sense of the word) with at please-eavesdrop-on-us-and-note-how-witty-we-are volume level, and yes that really is all it takes to make the difference between pleasant and unpleasant shopping experience: just don’t assault me with your nerdiness. Waggis was very well-behaved (I only had to physically restrain him once, and you might think that was to stop him from ripping the cover off a comic or pulling a toy off the shelves, but no, it was because he was trying to drag a snowshovel out of the door-ajar bathroom, of all things) and all around it was a successful excursion, which brings me one step closer to embracing the store as “my” comic book shop. We’ll see how the decisive, yet-to-be-scheduled third trip goes.
4. Got kabobs. Sunday evening we ordered take-out from the local kabob place. There was a kabob place near our old house which was consistently crazy-savory-good, and we knew we were going to miss it terribly when we moved away. One of the odder things about the move is that nobody had to change jobs, we still hang out with the same people and generally still move in the greater Northern Virginia orbits, but we moved just far enough that it doesn’t make sense to go to the same restaurants or other local businesses. But we are slowly but surely rebuilding a stock of go-to joints (see above) and I’m happy to report that our local kabob place is satisfactory. It’s a notch below the old place, but that was to be expected and we can’t in any fairness hold that against it. My wife and I both got kabob combos, but we also noted that the same restaurant also vends rotisserie chicken, so we’ll have to check that out at some point as well.
5. Hung some stuff. Some time over the course of move-in weekend, we put up a shadow box full of wedding photos and mementos in a prominent place at the end of the entrance hallway, but we really haven’t done a lot of other picture mounting (excepting of course my ridorkulous mancave). We started addressing that on Sunday night, unpacking all of the framed pictures and various other wall-oriented knickknacks, and finding them places in the new house. We still haven’t finished painting, and thus not everything can be hung yet, but it’s amazing to me how much more the house feels like home with just a few additional personal touches in the décor.
6. Talked about getting another dog. The loss of our backup cat has created an opening in the pet hierarchy (I refuse to allow the humans to be outnumbered by animals, so at the moment three pets is our upper limit). Graziella isn’t quite ready for another cat, and I respect that and also allowed that a small dog would also be acceptable - which suits my wife fine, since she has always wanted a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and has recently found a rescue organization for that breed. Graziella spent a lot of time this weekend e-mailing back and forth about potential adoptees, and we seem to be getting close to finding a good match all around. The connection to the overall hominess-of-the-house is that, at the moment, all of the residents (of all species) are transplants; we’ve all lived together somewhere else before. A new pet who had only ever lived with us in our current house would incorporate a lot of the sense of the present, the forward-facing now, of the whole experience. I concede (as always) that this may just be a weird, over-thinking way of looking at things, but it should go without saying that’s kind of my wheelhouse here, folks.
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