I've been absent for a while. There are reasons, either too misaligned with the optimism that a blog like this is supposed to convey or just a little too personal.

But today, I'll tell you that I loved this house. Outside, it has the sweetest-smelling lilac trees and bee-seducing lavender. I didn't think the lavender would live after I'd yanked it from the ground during the reno and forgotten about it for months. But my mom, a Croatian who knows lavender (as all Croatians do), told me that this plant had remarkable survivalist qualities--and as I watch the bees congregate in droves on the massive, purple-topped bushes along my front walkway, I can see she was right about that. 

Inside, the house brims with stories from the past--stories about childhood, marriage, births, deaths, and familial love that soak into your skin the moment the huge wooden door with the iron peephole pulls you inside. The house was a vexing old charmer. Too, it was stubborn and unyielding. It pissed me off when it refused to comply with my plans and sometimes we threw plates and swore at each other, neighbours peering through their half-closed blinds to survey the chaos. But we came together in the end, didn't we, old house? I'm grateful for your button-pushing--creative and personal.

Today, I need a phoenix--a new, old house to fix. But in the next chapter, I'll be more careful about letting labels like "forever home" seep into my head and register as some kind of immutable fact. The only certainty is what today offers and the people/ moments it contains.

My fridge tells a good story about the sanctity of little moments. Though not the most blog-worthy of specimens, the fridge, so ridiculously loaded with tacky, tiny fragments of life, has a way of starting my mornings off right. My girl, my family, my friends, my crazy dog--all the creatures I couldn't possibly live without--are gathered here.

In all likelihood, I will soon have to leave this place. But it's okay--I'll take the important creatures with me and we'll create something else that is awesome. In the meantime, I have newer photos of rooms not yet published on the blog, but will post soon. Thanks for reading...and, with luck, I'll have another project to tell you about in the near future. 

-N