Moving and house
Jun. 27th, 2006 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinamariYesterday was good, even wonderful, in many respects, but I will write about the new house.
Catpaw sent me home with a baker's rack that is full of Geo mojo! I am so happy about that, and about having a kitchen storage solution that is full of love and cooking magic.
Speaking of which, I must pull the Cookery contest entries and tally them...perhaps Jen will help me do that today in the afternoon at work, since she is neutral party...
Michael liked the rack to boot and is busy scheming about how to tweak it for even more storage capability.
Learning to 'feel' and talk to our house:
Our house is small and lovely, and it *wants* a little family. Dorothy helped me understand how to 'hear' houses and 'feel' them when I visited her and Phyllis, and I have been practicing on our house. I get that it was feeling sad and unloved when Michael bought it, and that it had been depressed for awhile. It felt droopy, but hopeful---hoping for a family, an energetic, happy fmily to live there and take care of it. The walls were dark and needed cleaning, and the carpet was disgusting, old and stained. It looked like a sad, lonely old lady with ugly stained clothes, who needs someone to appreciate her, love her and shower her with affection and bright, pretty things. Someone to hold her hand and spend time with her, and make her laugh.
I have been talking to the house a little bit and petting it and telling it that we will take care of it and help it feel better and more beautiful. When I leave, I blow it kisses, and when I work on it I tell it how pretty it is! Since Michael and I and Shannon and and some of Michael's friends have been painting, organizing, cleaning and reflooring over the last few weeks, it has seemed to notice and perk up a bit more every time we arrive and do more work.
The infrastructure has been bolstered, too, in the basement, so that water cannot come in. The chimneys will be rebuilt/relined next. We are helping the house become strong as well as beautiful. Michael's ex's partner is redoing the plumbing and the electricity, which were put in badly a very long time ago and need lots of help. He has also torn out the bathroom on the other side of the duplex completely and is rebuilding it from the beams up. For now, we are painting and decorating our bathroom, and we will put in a new sink and cabinet and a new mirror later.
This house needed a family full of people with sophisticated building and renovation skills, which is why it was so low in price---Scotch Plains is an expensive little town, next to Westfield, which has a scary upscale town center. Luckily, Michael's ex's partner is a very skilled builder and craftsman, and Michael is an excellent renovater/handyman himself. I am learning to paint and working on design, storage and feng shui, and I help Michael whenever I can. The house is also in the town's small multi-racial section, and there are many African Americans and Latinos living and working near us. It is close to the nation's first African American country club. That makes me happy, and the diversity in this less-than-wealthy neighborhood helps make it a happier, more comfortable place for me to imagine living.
Normally it is a place I would not imagine as a home---it has no university, and is a wealthy little suburb instead of an intellectual center---but it has a great school system for Trent and it is a lovely place to raise a family. A totally new kind of place with a new future in store, and much peace and happiness, I hope.
Tonight, I will be taking more loads from Michael's old place to my new one, and tell our house how pretty and delightful she is, and how much we appreciate her.
Catpaw sent me home with a baker's rack that is full of Geo mojo! I am so happy about that, and about having a kitchen storage solution that is full of love and cooking magic.
Speaking of which, I must pull the Cookery contest entries and tally them...perhaps Jen will help me do that today in the afternoon at work, since she is neutral party...
Michael liked the rack to boot and is busy scheming about how to tweak it for even more storage capability.
Learning to 'feel' and talk to our house:
Our house is small and lovely, and it *wants* a little family. Dorothy helped me understand how to 'hear' houses and 'feel' them when I visited her and Phyllis, and I have been practicing on our house. I get that it was feeling sad and unloved when Michael bought it, and that it had been depressed for awhile. It felt droopy, but hopeful---hoping for a family, an energetic, happy fmily to live there and take care of it. The walls were dark and needed cleaning, and the carpet was disgusting, old and stained. It looked like a sad, lonely old lady with ugly stained clothes, who needs someone to appreciate her, love her and shower her with affection and bright, pretty things. Someone to hold her hand and spend time with her, and make her laugh.
I have been talking to the house a little bit and petting it and telling it that we will take care of it and help it feel better and more beautiful. When I leave, I blow it kisses, and when I work on it I tell it how pretty it is! Since Michael and I and Shannon and and some of Michael's friends have been painting, organizing, cleaning and reflooring over the last few weeks, it has seemed to notice and perk up a bit more every time we arrive and do more work.
The infrastructure has been bolstered, too, in the basement, so that water cannot come in. The chimneys will be rebuilt/relined next. We are helping the house become strong as well as beautiful. Michael's ex's partner is redoing the plumbing and the electricity, which were put in badly a very long time ago and need lots of help. He has also torn out the bathroom on the other side of the duplex completely and is rebuilding it from the beams up. For now, we are painting and decorating our bathroom, and we will put in a new sink and cabinet and a new mirror later.
This house needed a family full of people with sophisticated building and renovation skills, which is why it was so low in price---Scotch Plains is an expensive little town, next to Westfield, which has a scary upscale town center. Luckily, Michael's ex's partner is a very skilled builder and craftsman, and Michael is an excellent renovater/handyman himself. I am learning to paint and working on design, storage and feng shui, and I help Michael whenever I can. The house is also in the town's small multi-racial section, and there are many African Americans and Latinos living and working near us. It is close to the nation's first African American country club. That makes me happy, and the diversity in this less-than-wealthy neighborhood helps make it a happier, more comfortable place for me to imagine living.
Normally it is a place I would not imagine as a home---it has no university, and is a wealthy little suburb instead of an intellectual center---but it has a great school system for Trent and it is a lovely place to raise a family. A totally new kind of place with a new future in store, and much peace and happiness, I hope.
Tonight, I will be taking more loads from Michael's old place to my new one, and tell our house how pretty and delightful she is, and how much we appreciate her.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 04:11 pm (UTC)I am glad to hear that the school system is indeed strong, and it is true that i am just a half hour away from Rutgers and UMDNJ. That's the farthest I have ever been from a large university, except for a couple of sometimes tense and often tumultuous years in Dallas.
I hope you will see it soon---I can't wait to move in and have the opportunity to host my friends, family and community there. We can even have---gasp---circles outside because of the privacy fence (although soon, the building of the one house next door will be finished and it will be sold, with its tall second floor windows overlooking our yard. Hope they like to watch circles!).
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 04:12 pm (UTC)I love your icon, by the way.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 04:25 pm (UTC)Walk in quietly, and look around carefully. Calm down your mind and listen, like you are listening for a distant, quiet sound. Listen with your full attention. Put your hand(s) on a wall and stand still while you do this. Close your eyes if it helps you focus.
Central areas of the house are especially good for this, I noticed.
You will start to get impressions and thoughts; thoughts about how the house is feeling (angry? hostile? depressed? asleep?) and who belongs in the house; who/what kind of people or family would 'fit' in the house.
Stand still and let the thoughts coalesce.
Then walk through every room, looking and paying attention to every detail of construction and decor that remains in the house (this is usually done on houses that are for sale).
Your impressions about who and what the house is like will form from both observation and listening, and if you stay calm and still periodically and suspend disbelief, you can access a fair amount of images and suggestions and intuitions.
After a while, you can figure out where the 'heart' of the house is---it's center, it's focus. You'll tend to drift back to that spot multiple times.
Dorothy could doubtless describe this process alot better than I can. She has added her particular expertise to Phyllis's own over the last few years, and together, they have purchased a small collection of investment properties while rejecting others.
Angry, hostile houses are easy to identify. So are deeply dysfunctional houses---I saw/felt one of these when I was with Phyllis and Dorothy. Lots of transience and drug use there.
We should ask Dorothy to teach a class on this at Clover when she comes to visit. Or maybe she sould teach an E-class?
Just thinking.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 04:31 pm (UTC)She says that younger houses have less awareness/self awareness/sentience than older houses do. Most houses tend to notice the people who work on them, and they get attached to people who improve them and take care of them. But getting them to pay attention to us can take time.
Thank you for these insights, Dorothy!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-28 07:36 pm (UTC)"appreciation"
Date: 2006-06-28 07:43 pm (UTC)The double meaning of "appreciation" is occurring to me now...we give our kind attention to [the house] over time and it reflects back to us in the value, I don't mean market $$ but rather the feelings and thoughts that we value.
Re: "appreciation"
Date: 2006-06-29 11:49 am (UTC)The house we're in has always been friendly and warm. I never feel any discomfort being here. My grandparents bought it in 1948 and it's only been rented out since Grandma had to go into the nursing home - hopefully, it didn't concern itself too much about the other renters. My mother and her siblings grew up here.
My first memory of hiding behind the sofa (as opposed to a big cushion) while watching Doctor Who was at this house (it was the episode where the Doctor - Tom Baker - and Romana land on a planet where there is a great slug-like beast in the catacombs below, which absorbs people by rolling on them; I used to climb in the pear tree, which now doesn't look so big, but used to be ginormous; we used to toast bread and crumpets at the fire here, and we'd come here for lunch or after school if Mum or Dad were working late, and later when we were at the local college. I have been horribly ill, read right the way through everything Enid Blyton ever wrote, spilled blackcurrent juice on carpets, slid down the bannister (OK, I admit that I did that when we moved in 3 months ago, just for old times' sake), eaten very bad dried liver and fantastic pies and cakes, slept in every bedroom and the living room, and generally always loved the place. I think it knows that, somehow. Several times since moving, doors have opened at convenient moments, and I've said thank you to the house and whoever else might be involved. I haven't hear Great-Grandad doing his daily march in and up the stairs in the afternoons since we moved; maybe he doesn't do it any more, or maybe he's being extra quiet about it. Still, I like to think we're amidst a friendly horde.
T asked me the other day how I felt about the idea of buying the house at some point. I said I felt pretty good about it. Legally, it can't be sold until Grandma dies, and goodness knows how long she will keep going in the strange Alzheimer's twilight; but when she goes, as she must, I would seriously consider it. Very seriously.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 03:35 pm (UTC)My house keeps telling me to buy the house next door, tear it down, and build a fruit orchard and a rose garden. With a hedge. A BIG hedge.
It's great fun reading these nesting posts. I'm living vicariously through you.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 04:26 pm (UTC)I'm glad you like these posts.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-27 05:48 pm (UTC)I notice it too with my car. A thorough cleaning and a full gas tank....and my car just feels different. It feels like it's luxuriating in the love.
Hard to describe :-) B thinks I mad when I've described this to him...;-)
I'm really happy for you, Sabrina
Date: 2006-06-27 05:49 pm (UTC)There is a school nearby for her daughther that is decent, and although it is on the outskirts of Philadelphia, it is not too far out. Like you, I never imagined this as home, but it fits.
We're busy. We're very, very busy. But happy. Very happy. Glad to hear you are, too.