Day 48: Homemaking
From “settling in” to “settled”
There are a few things that, I’m discovering, make me feel like we just plain live here now, and yesterday was full of them.
Walking the Dog:
With Mitzie here that means the routine of daily walks starts up again. This is generally speaking something Bill does and I know he enjoys both the reason to go outside and the structure it gives his day. Of course Mitzie enjoys getting to do her business and smell all the things. Since the beginning of the pandemic these walks have often been the only moments I have at home by myself. Yesterday, after almost 7 weeks without them, the daily walks resumed with a Spanish twist: I went with for 2 of them.
Mitzie is a dog used to the wastefulness that is the urban lawn so grass is where she has been trained to pee and poop. Spain doesn’t really “do” grass outside of actual parks, so Spanish dogs use the sidewalk as their bathroom. Poor Mitzie is very confused and waits a full 2 blocks to relieve herself because that’s where there’s a tiny patch of grass surrounding a tree.
Since the sun rises late here (yesterday’s sunrise time was 8:04, for example), going out for the morning walk with her at the time she’s used to also meant we also got to see the pre-dawn show.
Building Ikea Furniture:
Is there anything that says “I’m home” more than cracking open a fresh Ikea box and following the detailed and wordless instructions? Nope, I don’t think there is.
The Awesome Flat is fully furnished (totally common in Spain) and lovely. The only furniture items we’ve added so far consist of a terrace table & chairs (no building required) and the shelf I built yesterday that is really for holding my laptop for filming classes. Thankfully there was only one human pictured which meant I could build it on my own (Bill was working), and our awesome landlord left us with an awesome tool set because apparently Ikea is done with the allen wrench.
Having House Guests:
It’s been years since we’ve had a house guest — years — and we just finished being house guests. Having our friend here, staying in our guest room (we’ve never had a guest room), finding us a housewarming snail, sharing pre-Shabbat cocktails on the terrace, and laughing/talking/laughing our way through a meal and right up to bedtime seems to have instantly transformed the Awesome Flat into our home.
