N has apparently taken over my blog, judging by my last few posts.

Soon something else will be taking over not just my blog, but probably my whole entire life. Not that it hasn’t taken over my life already. Most of my sleeping and waking minutes are consumed with mental gymnastics and rote recitation of what I want and what needs done at our new house.

Today I again dropped in on the current residents–they’re hoping to be out by noon next Saturday–and again dreamed and plotted for my post-departure work-in. Then I sputtered over to help my brother-in-law with some of his projects around their house.

See, pretty soon he’s going to be over at our house helping us out (like, all the time), and so my weariness of just thinking about doing, coupled with our anticipated labor debt to him, prompted me to believe–rightly–that digging fence post holes and stretching barnyard wire (that section of fence was to keep their kids off the road) would help dissipate my uneasy worry that we’ll never actually get to move in to our new house and that none of our renovation hopes will ever materialize.

I think in extremes, I guess, but that’s just how life is, sometimes.

Between my gasping questions about how to do such-and-such anticipated projects, J peppered the air with his own quandary: my sister was all excited about the possibility at being given–for free–30 or 40 six-week-old fryers.

“So you think I could just switch out the boiler and put a new one in myself?”

“I’d have to build a pen and drag it around the yard to a new spot every day.”

“What about tearing just part of the wall out? To avoid the pipes?”

“I’d rather just work a couple of extra hours and buy the damn birds at the grocery store.”

“Soil and Conservation said they need to talk to the spring owner, not me. Apparently the water’s been getting cloudier more recently, although still not often.”

“What’s she thinking? I’m going to need to by a feather plucker, the kind that spins like a dryer.”

When I left they were still waiting for a call back from the neighbor, and I was still wondering if our new country life would ever get here.

But at least that section of fence was almost finished.

A friend asked yesterday, “So is the house you bought a fixer-upper?”

“It’s livable,” I said, “but there is a lot to improve.”

“That’s the worst kind of place,” he said. “You never know if you want actually to tear into what needs done next.”

As we’ve brainstormed and brainstormed–we think we have a pleasing floor plan, now–we’ve had to acknowledge time and again that our new house won’t be finished or how we really want it to be for quite some time. We have to move in and live in–and enjoy–its current state, and then chip away at realizing our hopes for it.

It’ll be a process.