And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Pancakes: It reads, and I quote, “Fuck waffles.”
- George Carlin
Today marks the seventh day in our new house, and while we’re still not completely unpacked and settled in, this place is slowly beginning to feel increasingly like home. It’s a distinctly odd feeling; nothing is familiar- new house, new neighborhood, new part of town, and I can tell it’s going to take awhile to break old habits, create new ones, and get used to the new surroundings.
The place in the house that feels the strangest is the kitchen. For the almost four years Erin and I lived in our old place, the intricate dance of doing anything in the kitchen- making coffee, boiling water, cooking, getting silverware, etc.- became second nature. If I was standing at the sink and I needed something from the refrigerator, I just turned around and there it was. That’s largely unchanged in our new kitchen, but it’s about the only thing that is.
When I want to boil water to make tea, I turn around…and run into the pantry, because the stove is actually adjacent to the sink on my right. I reach for the cabinet where the plates are…and discover that they’re now on the opposite side of the kitchen, as are the glasses and coffee mugs and the compost bucket and…well, you get the idea. I turn to grab something, only to find out it’s not where four years of memorized actions have taught me it is.
It’s funny how you never realize what creatures of habit we humans are and how much you depend on memory and doing things without thinking until your environment changes and suddenly nothing is what it feels like or where it’s supposed to be. I’ve almost managed to get over not remembering where the staircase leading upstairs (or the one leading downstairs) is; for the first four or five days it felt as if I was getting lost in my own house.
More than anything, adapting to having three times the floor space has been wonderful. It’s hard to truly appreciate just how tight your living space has been until you’re in a space that allows you to spread out. I think I’m going to like it here.
Now if I could only remember where we hid the tea….
