Sunday, June 17, 2012

it's all about the door knobs.

so yesterday i said that i was having this week-long struggle about what to blog about yesterday.

because yesterday was pete johnston, and you spend something like... a year preparing for that to go down. and how can you not blog about that?

even if you blogged about it last year?

and if you had a blog a year before that, then the year before that?

seventeen pete johnstons i could have blogged about. but i feel like blogging wasn't much of a thing for me when i was four.

so then today, after i went piloxing (that's kick boxing and pilates. MY ASS HURTS SO MUCH.) i went to my grandma's house for popcorn with my cousin.

om nom nom kettle popped popcorn.

and then it hit me all of a sudden.

you know, like. boom.

i could blog about my house turning five.

okay this is what just really happened in my brain before i typed that last sentence.

emily's brain: you lived in your old house for sixteen years and sixteen days. that means that your house turns five on the nineteenth, not the sixteenth, which was yesterday, and the nineteenth is tuesday. shit. what the hell are you going to blog about? can you pull this off? do you PRETEND that your house turned five when you were at pete johnston? do you valiantly carry on? WHAT DO I DO OH MOTHER OF GOODNESS.


this is how my brain works.

so now that you know my thinking process, we can PRETEND that my house turned five yesterday, when it really turns five on tuesday.

i'm busy on tuesday. i'm seeing the avengers for the third time with the twins. then we have our first dual meet of the season. i'm sure i'll find something else to blog about that day.

so we'll celebrate my house turning five today.

who celebrates houses turning ages? honestly? you saw what i wrote back there (unless you're a skimmer. shame on you.) about living in my old house for sixteen years and sixteen days.

i have this thing about age. it's like, critically important to me. and so was moving.

i lived in my old house for sixteen years and sixteen days. gosh, i've said that three times now. but my house was awesome. i loved everything about it.

mostly the heart we put into it. and the trees.

this is my old house.
and me when i was fifteen. going to prom.
uh. yeup.
i kid you not, we redid every single freakin' room in my house at least twice. the kitchen was probably a good four times. and my parents did it themselves. except the kitchen the last time and our new carpet installation. we did all of the painting, and we even did the hard wood paneling in the family room.

there was a tree in the front yard that i named alex, and she had the perfect reading nook. guess where i spent a lot of time reading harry potter.

my best friend lived two blocks away. we walked to school together.

but the best part was the pool. i swam for blackhawk swim team for... fourteen years? thirteen? something like that? and the pool was a few blocks away. every morning my brother and i would ride our bikes to practice, come home, eat lunch, and then we'd walk to the pool with my mom and spend all afternoon there.

trick-or-treating was the best. i knew every single street in my neighborhood. my mom and i would take walks all the time.

and then suddenly, when i'm fifteen, my parents start talking about building a house.

me: WHAT NO WE CAN'T MOVE I LOVE IT HERE I HAVE MY SWIM TEAM AND MY POOL AND MY FRIENDS WHAT NO
my parents: deal with it.

so then we started looking at builders. and i refused to believe that we were moving.

my biggest point was: but we just spent a bunch of money to redo the kitchen. with granite counter tops. we can't leave our granite counter tops behind.

seriously. that was my argument.

but then suddenly we have a floor plan and my mom is going over blue prints on my grandparents' floor and we're trolling for open lots. i refuse to go with them except for one time. and we turn into this neighborhood with all these new looking houses and my mom is getting excited.

i fold my arms. i glare. and i say, "I WILL NEVER LIVE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD."

oh hey, guess where i live.

anyway.

so we buy this lot on a pond. and suddenly this whole building a house thing is getting complicated. i've started my freshman year of high school, and that sucks because the only person i know at my school is my brother because my dad teaches out of district. which is half of why we're moving, so we're closer to my high school. so we're moving, my mom is taking like, crazy chem classes at some university half an hour away, i'm trying to adjust to being awkward and i'm learning to drive on my permit, and at dinner my parents are talking like this.

dad: i want a three car garage.
mom: we don't have three cars. a loft sounds nice.
me: i'd like a loft.
dad: walk-out basement?
mom: maybe. what color is our house going to be?
me: YELLOW. IT WILL BE YELLOW.

my house is yellow. and i got the front porch that i begged for.

if you're wondering, three car garage, no loft. and now we have three cars. for some strange reason.

and then all of a sudden our house is up for sale and some guy is calling us and he's like, WE BROKE GROUND ON YOUR LOT and i'm like, this is real this is real i'm moving.


building your own house is a pain in the ass. people are so picky.

does your bedroom door swing in or out? what style door knobs do you want? where do you want electrical plugs? how many internet jacks are you going to have? what shade of cherry do you want your cabinets?

i mean, jeez.

but watching your house get built is kinda cool. it goes from a blueprint on your dining room table to some posts. and then to some wooden slats. and then to some sidings. and then suddenly you have a house with bricks and no lawn and you can move in.

my bedroom! it's so clean.
and it has walls and a floor and stuff.
in february we walked through my house. it didn't have a floor. or walls, for that matter. and i went up the half-finished staircase and went into my bedroom and i thought, i'm going to live in here?


yep. bloggin' here.

i seriously just spent ten minutes looking for a picture of my house being built. because my mom took like, eighty pictures of it. man. that's half the reason why i wanted to blog about this.

sorry, kids.

but anyway.

moving is a long, annoying process. and it was right at the end of school. the best part was when i moved a box out of my dining room and there was a huge spider on it. i have never gasped so loudly in my life. it was totally like, theatrical ridiculous LE GAAAAAAAAASP.

the day that we moved, i spread myself out on the floor in the middle of my bedroom, looking at it for the last time. and i could look under the heat register underneath my window, and it said GUEST ROOM.

i'd lived in a guest room my whole life. maybe this was a sign that i would actually be okay moving.

my dad made me drive our packed to the hilt van with my permit that was almost a license. we moved all of our stuff into the new house in four days.

yep, we were good. none of that WE UNPACKED THE LAST BOX! crap like, five years later. we were bosses.

i don't think i managed to get across the point of how big of a deal i made this move. i spent a long time refusing to move. i was not excited. i thought that our new house had too much roof. i wasn't even excited to have a basement.

where i live now, my entire street is retired except for three houses. and my neighborhood is two streets. it's a big deal when there are children. i tweet about children. like a pedophile.

but i do live behind a chocolate factory. which is pretty badass.

but anyway, i didn't want to move, not one single bit. it didn't sink in until like... a week after i'd been living in the new house.

and now i've lived here for five years and it feels like i've lived here all of my life.

i think i don't like change. actually, i know that i don't like change.

but you know what? i really love my new house.

don't get me wrong. i still go creep on my old house. i'll park a few houses away and i'll walk around my old neighborhood and i'll stop at the pool.

but i love my new house. and you know what else?

the door knobs that my mom decided with?

they're pretty awesome.

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