Paradigm Shi(f)t

There's saying I like that goes, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." I've been hunting for the crappy things about this move just for the sheer joy of hammering them flat with my caustic wit, but then all this good stuff happened out of nowhere and I was left shuffling my feet, ashamed to admit that maybe I kind of like this place.

I had fun this weekend. We had people over and our initial suspicion that the house had a good social vibe and party layout proved accurate. In fact, the weekend had such a nice vibe that I actually got to hang out with my mother, my grandfather, my brother-, mother-, father-, and sister-in-law and the two-year-old nephew, and three guys my husband knows from the base, all at the same time without the universe collapsing in on itself in complete multi-generational chaos. White people just don't do this, hang out with different generations of multiple families, except maybe deep in Appalachia where they have no choice. But it was great and I felt really lucky to be there.

And we got a new-to-us bed. Carl Jung be damned, I will not dwell on the symbolism that this is my parents' old bed that my husband and I have inherited-- I'm just ecstatic that I can lie in one position for over an hour and not awaken to discover new and shocking muscles in deep spasm. The fact that I have to army crawl almost two feet to reach my husband's side of the bed is the smallest of inconveniences.

Even the dobermans are on their way out. Our neighbor, who I so thoroughly eviscerated in my last two entries, turns out to be the son of the true occupant, and in some epic biblical battle for supremacy, the rebel son has been cast out. With him go the giant broken down truck (towed away with little fanfare by a far lesser, sissy little foreign truck), the chopper, and the dogs. I don't know what fate awaits two attack dogs used to pacing around a tiny patch of mud in their own feces, but soon they won't howl and bay outside my bedroom window.

Hooray for paradigm shifts!