Home for the Holidays

Those that know me personally know that I'm a talker. I always did well in school, but the consistent comment on my report card was, "Julie talks too much in class." Every one of them. I recall getting in trouble for talking in Economics when I hadn't said a word. I'd been reading with a pencil wedged in my mouth. But I couldn't shake the rep. I was the talking fall guy for the class.

It's when I'm silent that you need to watch out. My staff knows this. If I'm hollering about how the floor didn't get mopped properly, they can handle that. But if I come to the front, grab a cup of coffee without a word, they know they'd better hide...while wiping something down.

But it's not only when I'm mad that I'm silent. It's also when I'm going through a big change, embarking on a new endeavor, or simply struggling with a scene I'm writing.

My silence as of late is because of something joyful. We've moved! After 12 years of living in a part of a triplex, and being landlords over the rest, we've finally moved to a single family home. It's been a lot of work selling and buying a house but I couldn't be happier.

We have more than one bathroom.

That needed a line of it's own. Besides the plurality of places to ponder life's big issues, I'm also overjoyed with the closet space. That said, I'm truly amazed though that though we've doubled our living space, our stuff has filled up the new house. Sure I bought a few pieces of furniture, but the sheer volume of broken toys and ripped, stained t-shirts in our family is staggering.

I guess we should have weeded more out before moving, but this whole process was at first extremely slow - we thought we'd never move, and then incredibly fast, where we made an offer and just like that we had a house, and at the end knuckle-bitingly slow where our close date kept getting delayed for nitpicky reasons, except at the very end which was a mad, mad dash to get moved in two days. All of this happened between Thanksgiving and the Christmas catering season.

I look forward to a much slower pace in January. I plan to lolly gag and canoodle. I may be silent as I seep into this new house and it seeps into me.

Then I'll talk. Probably way too much. You may say so in the comments, but I've heard it all before.

Happy Holidays.