Don't fence me in.

You know how when you first move into a place, it’s really just the start of the journey? You never have everything you completely need…or at least, completely want, and you kind of live out of boxes for a spell, until you get everything just the way you’d like it to be.

 

We haven’t exactly been living out of boxes at Green Victoria, but this past week-end, we finally picked out the last pieces of major furniture that we needed: the dressers for the master bedroom.

 

Before this, that room had been looking rather sparse, with only the bed, my old dresser from when I first moved out of Josie’s house, a plastic crate full of clothes that neither of us really used, and Kyra’s crate. For the most part, Corb and I had crammed all of our T-shirts and underwear and sweaters into five small drawers. The white T-shirts were hidden in one of the closets under all of our dress shirts.

 

And, we actually have a…get this...a sock box.

 

What’s a sock box? Maybe other people have them, too, I don’t know. It works like this: instead of matching and folding your sox when they come out of the dryer, you simply save yourself that step, take all of the socks and throw them, unsorted, into one central box, roughly the size of a milk crate.
 

Of course, since everyone’s socks are mingled together, touching and groping and snuggled up next to each other, it does make mornings interesting. First, you have to locate the box (it’s never where it was the day before). Then, you have to find a pair of matching socks. And by the way, you have to do this by going into the master bedroom, where usually, either Corb or myself are sleeping.

 

It’s functional, but not very convenient.

 

So imagine our excitement when two enormous mahogany dressers arrived yesterday afternoon. Corb and I were like kids at Christmas! We literally spent an hour sorting through our clothing and scoping out our turf in the brave new world we found ourselves living in. Where once I had three drawers, now I had six! Where once Corb had two drawers, now he had five! Seriously, it was as if we had died and gone to heaven, prompting cries of:

 

“Oh my God, I actually have a place for all my jeans!”

 

“Hey, is that where that thing went?”

 

“Wow, I forgot I had that sweater!”

 

"I haven't had a dresser with this much space since I was in my thirties!"

 

"Oh yeah? I haven't had a dresser since I was twenty!"

 

And of course: “We actually have a drawer for all our socks!”

 

It’s in my dresser (since I had the extra drawer), and we are co-mingling, although we have banished the socks of Theo and Ashes to their respective dressers. But it is a thing to behold and made life extremely enjoyable yesterday. It also meant that the blue tub has been banished to the basement and Kyra’s crate has been moved to the room outside the master bedroom, which means that our master bedroom is finally starting to look like a master bedroom.

 

Brilliant!

 

Of course, somebody had to be there while the furniture was being moved in, and that lucky guy was yours truly. I worked from home, typing away in the den, and the furniture guys arrived at around one. It was a half an hour job: all open doors, and grunting and groaning, and sweat. I offered the guys something to drink. They declined.

 

Around two, I was working away, and I happened to notice, out of the corner of my eye, a small brown animal scurrying across our lawn. That was weird, I thought. Was it a chipmunk? I put down my laptop and looked around, to see if I could see it again. But it was gone. Vanished into the shrubbery. I resumed working.

 

Twenty minutes, it dawned on me. Was that? Could that have been? I put down my laptop and looked around the house. Hmmm.

 

I opened the door, looked outside. It was a beautiful spring day, in the eighties. Wow, this was what the outside world felt like?

 

I hunted around the front lawn. Looked around the patch of woods in front of the house. Ah, sure enough.

 

There, under an old tree, looking cozy on a bed of pine needles. Our oldest cat Hayleigh. She was an indoor cat, but always longed to be outdoors. She had escaped during the move, and was enjoying her newfound freedom.

 

I picked her up. She made an odd groaning noise, as if she didn’t want to leave.

 

I completely understood how she felt. A little bit more freedom is a wonderful thing.