Living in Rural Oregon

So, many of you know that we have gone through all the house hunting, buying, escrowing, and moving and made the huge lifestyle change by moving out of Southern California and into the smallest town in rural Oregon.

I'll save you all the details of getting here... and just get down to the point of being here as homeowners in a (really) little town, population 1500. (Yes, that's right. Just a little bigger than my graduating class in high school.)

I love this house so much, especially the garden. We've already watched a few rabbits graze the grass, and seen deer in our front lawn too! But settling in is going slowly. I feel like a druggie in rehab, trying to sweat out my funk through hard labor in the garden and unpacking. I didn't realize how much living in SoCal changed me until we arrived here. Dave keeps asking me, "Do you like it here?" "Are you glad we came?" "I'm not getting ANYthing from you!" I'm just feeling blah and wanting a huge amount of personal space to absorb it all. I cleaned up and weeded the garden for two hours yesterday afternoon and it felt amazing, as if I'm weeding out crap from my life... I really think it's going to take some time for me to get back to the person I used to be, if that's even possible.

I guess I'm just feeling the rub between living life in an area where I have to compete just for my fair spot on the crowded freeways and living life in a place where the cashier at the store yesterday wanted to chat with me for about two minutes after I paid for my stuff even though there were four people in line behind me.

However, Annabelle loves that she gets to just walk outside any time she wants to and we don't seem to care. (Though each time we checked on her she was just hanging out on the porch swing looking around.) She is just SOOO happy here and that makes me feel great. She loves to go in through the front door, through the living room, through the kitchen, through the utility room and out the back door, and around to the front door... around and around. She also has spent an amazing amount of time hanging out with the cat (who came with the house.) They are total buds. She just gets a snack and sits next to him and chills out. She cries terribly whenever he's done and just wanders away. She REALLY loves this cat, I'm in awe.

This morning I flooded the utility room... twice. Fun times. The first time I was cursing myself, the second, well, I just hung my head. So silly. I had wanted to spend those hours on something other than sopping up water off the floor with a million towels. And we still don't have the gas turned on (who said something about time moving slowly in rural Oregon?) and thus, no hot water -going on four days! I've been heating it in big pots on the stove for Annabelle's baths every night.

And it's amazing how you don't see things until you've looked at them a few times and then you finally realize what you are seeing- like the fact that the utility room isn't made with hung drywall, but painted plywood. That's not something I want to fix! Especially since there are so many other priorities. But I'm sure we'll eventually get around to it. There are other things I didn't notice before either- some good and some not so good. But this house is ours and we're glad to have it and be living here!!! In fact, I can't stop thinking about ways to change things in the house, and paint colors, and lighting choices, knocking down walls, getting new bamboo floors, landscaping the yard, and repainting the outside of the house. Dave can't stop thinking about sitting on the deck with a beer. We are still trying to find some meeting ground.

I'm struggling to decompress, relax and find myself amidst all the hustle and bustle. I haven't yet slowed down enough to know where I fit into this little town... but I know I will, and I know it's going to be very very good for me.