A.R. Geiger

I had a completely different plan for today’s post.

Okay, not completely different. I’m still going to give you a house update and tell you how wonderful it is to see our project creeping along little by little, making progress and coming nearer and nearer to completion with every task we tick off our list.

I’m going to tell you that. Later.

For right now, look at what I found in my Facebook memories! Six years ago, I was celebrating a year in my little house, discovering the joy – and loneliness – of living alone for the first time, and looking forward to many years more in my tiny paradise.

Look at how many plants I had, y’all. Look at how pretty they were.

Look at that floor. It’s clean.

My house was always clean back then. It was perfect. I had space and stillness and lovely dishes and decor that never got ruined with black markers.

Amazing.

Now, I can’t remember the last time I thoroughly swept my floor, there is a toddler bed and a baby dresser crammed into that front room, the plants are gone and replaced by an enormous dog and a million baby toys, men’s socks are stuffed under the bed and left on the bathroom floor, and my lovely dishes were chipped and broken and replaced with fifty cent plastic plates from a Target sale. Oh, and my child thinks it’s very silly to scribble on my decor with whatever he can find. Which sometimes is black markers.

I need to wipe down my wall. Or paint it, or something.

A whole lot of love has grown up in this house, y’all. So much. The cat I used to come home to has been replaced by a little boy that thinks I am the most hilarious, wonderful person in the whole entire world. Now we eat dinner and read books together and wait for Daddy’s car to come up the driveway so we can pretend to be shocked and amazed that he came home because that’s a very funny thing to do.

My house is no longer clean, and my little paradise is too small for everything that has grown here. In a few months, our refurbished airplane hanger will be finished, and we’ll leave the tiny cabin in the woods behind. I’ll miss it, but little by little, our life is growing, and little by little we are moving on to bigger and better things.

I’m so glad I still have the pictures to remember what I left behind by. I wouldn’t go back for the world, but it is nice to remember.