In This House

Tonight I can't sleep. And the reason isn't because I created the biggest flame ever when trying to fire up the pilot light on the gas-stove. - There's something up with the stove, but the landlord never bothered to fix it. The pilot light constantly goes out. Unfortunately I've become immune to the gas smell. I don't always catch it right away. Tonight I smelled it as I was drifting off to sleep. I sent the kids out on the porch to take care of the problem. The kind of problem that creates one of those "Ughh, single Mom!" moments. The flame was huge. The flame isn't coming out where it should. Very freaky. But no, not the reason why I can't sleep.

I sort of overdid the hauling boxes & carrying furniture thing & I'm aching all over, but no, that's not the reason for my insomnia either. (My children were just the most amazing helpers, though. So awesome. I must squeeze that into this post. I just love them so much.)

I can't sleep because my mind is flooded with memories. Tonight I sleep in this house for the last time. It's the house Brent came to when he first visited in April of last year. I remember that rainy night. I had picked him up from the airport. After traveling for 30 hours the combination of having a car speed drive on a 4-lane motorway on the right side of the road, with my interior control lights being out (I had no clue how fast I was really going) ,and getting lost in downtown Richmond in the middle of the night probably didn't give the very best first impression.

He was pretty impressed with the water pressure in my shower, though. We went up to Philly a couple days later. We stayed in a B&B with a horrible water-pressure. I kept complaining about it. It caused him to remodel his bathroom when he went back to New Zealand. His water pressure was even worse than the one in the B&B, and he said he would not be able to put up with me complaining about it for 5 weeks when visiting that June, so it was better to have a new one put in.

But yes, this is the house he first came to. In this bedroom we spent our first night together. (We did other things in here, too. I won't go into those. You know, things like breakfast in bed & playing board games.) We celebrated Easter together in this house with a lovely breakfast out on the porch. We decorated our first Christmas tree together in this house. We cooked in the kitchen together. He hooked up a wireless net connection for me here with some device he purchased when he lived in China. I remember him telling me the password. I told him I wouldn't remember, that I would just ask him when I needed it. Sigh. I really don't remember...

This is the house where we sat together in the living-room, talking, with me working on some knitting, and him rubbing my feet.

It's the house with many more memories, the house in which I will sleep for the last time tonight. - That's if I can fall asleep at all and if the house doesn't blow up first...