A Bit of Nostalgia

...7...

I have a surprising revelation, one that might shock you: Life can change dramatically in a year. I know, it's startling. Allow me to walk you through this discovery I made today.

Knowing there's a baby coming (has anyone mentioned that? August 2nd, my friends, the general due date), I've been thinking a lot about... reading. Because this is who I am. Basically, there might be a wee bit of downtime between nursing and sleeping (the two things I'm informed I'll do pretty much round the clock) and it would be nice to have some good book to sink into when not otherwise occupied. I'm just weird about this, but I like to have a book handy. I know other experienced moms might laugh and say "Reading, right, that's going to happen." They could be right, but better prepared than staring at a wall with nothing to do. For me, hell is a waiting room with no reading material.

So this book. It has a few requirements. It needs to be interesting, yes, enough to hold my attention, but it also needs to be dull enough I can put it down again without bother, without irritation, not thinking "oh, just two more pages, hold your horses, Just Born Little One." Not really the feelings I want to cultivate towards our first child (or any other child for that matter). The solution being it needs to be something I've read, but still care about.

I think anyone who remembers this blog from last year (and how could you not?) might remember this same month, almost to the day, a little something called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived in bookstores around the world. Because of this, I remember exactly what I was doing: moving into a new house.

Funny association, I know. But we had just bought this gorgeous home (though I say it myself) in Greensboro and literally the same day that Harry Potter came out, we were moving ourselves in. This was a baaaad day. How could it not be? It was the two of us doing the moving (meaning, The Hubba and about twenty-five percent of another person) and not only that, I insisted we stay up past midnight, to go buy HPATDH so I would have the book first thing in the morning. The Hubba, because he is wonderful and I had bought him a new Playstation game the day before, acquiesced.

But the next day, Saturday, that was a great day. I remember, we got up and unpacked enough to be able to eat food off plates and a few other small necessities and then we both agreed, that's it, we're done, time to relax. We filled the fridge with easy to make snacks and sandwiches and a variety pack of Magic Hat Beer and we hunkered down. He settled himself in front of his game and I settled myself in front of an enormous hardback and that is how we spent the weekend.

I thought about that this morning as I dug the Deathly Hallows out and cracked it open for maybe the fifth or sixth time. Because here we are, almost one year later to the day, and life is a bit different now. We live in an entirely new house. That new house happens to be in an entirely different state. Biggest of all, we're about to have a whole third person living here with us and this could happen today or three weeks from now.

My life is amazing. That's not a brag or boast of any kind. It's completely personal. For what suits and pleases me, my life is amazing. Oh sure, tweaking can always happen, things can always get better. And situations will come up, as they have even this month, that throw you off kilter, force you to make the decision I can be worried or I can be happy- what do I choose? (For me it's about a sixty-forty split leaning towards happy. I'm working on upping that number.) But as life stands right now, I am one of those people who will honestly say, I have got a swell deal. I love my husband, I love my house, I love my dogs, I'm about to have a baby, and I'm pretty darned fond of me too.

So it's interesting to me to look back at only a year ago- a year!- and realize how much has changed. And yet, how little. Because, except for the Magic Hat and the boxes needing to be unpacked, I imagine we'll spend this weekend almost exactly the same way, hunkered down, him with his newest game and me with my HPATDH and it will be two very well spent days. I wish I had some marvelous conclusion to draw from this, to pull it all together, a bit like Daniel Stern, as older and wiser voice-over Kevin, always did on The Wonder Years, but I don't.

I'm just really, really happy and mighty, mighty grateful.

And only a little bit sad over the lack of Magic Hat.