Community and Cookies

Yesterday marked our one-week anniversary of being in our new home.  We just found out this morning that we inadvertently left a few items behind in the dryer (show of hands for how many people have done this?  I think I've done it at least three times in my adult life!) Strangely enough, it seemed like an odd jolt to have to go all the way back to the old house and neighborhood to retrieve them.  Teri and I are working on feeling settled in this new version of our lives.

This past weekend, we were invited to a little barbecue by our next door neighbors and we got to meet several other folks who live on our street.  Breaking out the shiny new cherry red KitchenAid stand-up mixer we received for a Wedding gift, we used it to make cookies to take to the party.  Gooey chocolate chip cookies in hand, Teri and I traversed the fifteen steps it took to get from our front steps to our neighbors and felt ourselves slipping into an entire new community.  One of the top ten things were looking for in our home search was a feeling of neighborhood and connection with neighbors and this time the universe provided.  We had a little taste of neighborliness at our old house with some fantastic folks and friends who lived on nearby streets and we wanted more!

The aftermath of the move has been a little bumpy as we struggle to find places for all our treasures and get back into a post-Wedding, post-move rhythm.  There is work to do and just general personal care to tend to.  After so much upheaval, both Teri and I are feeling a bit ragged.  We can't help but feel that a life without checklists and trying to find a misplaced sweater would be lovely.  There are new sounds to get used to, new details to absorb (What day is the garbage picked up and what time does the mail get delivered?) and there are all the little daily elements to learn.

We baked a pie last night from apples on one of our backyard apple trees and made note of the fact that this oven runs a little hotter than our last.  We are remembering to lock our side gate at night and learned how speedy it is to ride to the nearby DariMart by bicycle for ice cream.  As we sat with a bunch of our neighbors on Sunday night, we also learned other things--twenty years of history: who lived in the triplets' house before they were born; which houses tend to have trouble with bats roosting in the chimneys; which neighbors take in all the stray cats; and who else commutes by bike or foot.  We are starting to discover a new culture and as students of such things, we find that to be just groovy.  Now if we could just remember which light switch is for the garage and which one is for the dining room!