Light As Air, Sharp As a Knife

It has happened again.  Something we did not really plan on, but who was it that said, "the best laid plans of mice and men"?  Our stint in Georgia has come to an end and we have found ourselves back in North Carolina.  We were standing at a crossroads, wondering just which way we should turn.  Then, like the saying, "when one door closes, another opens", so it did.  A job offer, too sweet to pass up, in exactly the same location we had spent the last year in....Raleigh, NC.

For folks who stayed in the same place for nearly six decades, we have moved five times in a years' time.  It has been quite an adventure, the gypsy life, but now we are home.  As I walked Runtly, the ever so entertaining Jack Russell Terrier, down the familiar streets, the warm spring breeze in my face, I suddenly realized I had not felt this content in a long, long time.  Yes, we had come home.

Having arrived before our permanent apartment was ready, we stayed in a temporary one.  Taking in only the bare minimal essentials needed to survive, so as not to unload everything and then move it all again, we ended up with a couple of chairs, the dog, paper and plastic dinner ware and our clothes.  We had an unexpected surprise when our two youngest daughters showed up to help and there were lots of air mattresses spread out across the floor.  

Sleeping on an air mattress, on the floor, is a real treat.  Especially if the mattress tends to lose air during the nighttime hours.  This was extremely noticeable when I dove into my side of the mattress and launched my husband and the dog straight up in the air. Getting out of one is equally fun and after flailing like a beached whale, I literally crawled across the floor, to grab the doorknob so I could pull myself up.  

In the kitchen, I discovered it was impossible to slice an onion and tomato with a plastic knife.  Off to the store I went and purchased a four pack of knives with brightly colored handles.  I justified this purchase by thinking it is always handy to have a couple of extra knives in the drawer.  The knives where packaged in a hard bubble wrap plastic container.  I laid them on the counter, and tried to will them out, but that did not work.  I needed a knife to cut the packaging on the new knives, but if I had had a knife, I would not have needed to buy knives that I could not open because I did not have any knives.....I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.  Later, when my husband returned from his first day on the new job, he saved the day with his pocketknife.

Another adventure, another journey.....such is life.  We should all look at it that way.