Today we finished painting the dining room in cream and orange, which basically completes downstairs bar doing something with the kitchen floor, and it leaves me with a funny feeling of melancholy.
It hit hardest when I was flattening a few boxes- very sturdy boxes from a Korean courier service, which carried all our stuff from Japan over a year ago. Emptying them and now flattening them (I felt like keeping them in storage in the attic, for the next time we might need them) really felt like closing that door to the past.
It’s unexpected, as we’ve been in the UK for a year now, but it was always so in transition. I guess at any point we could have gone back to Japan and not really skipped much of a beat. Our stuff was ready to go.
Now it’s not. It’s getting spread into this house. It becomes clearer slowly that, by buying this place, we have most likely committed ourselves to living here for an extended period of time. That is something new for us- after having lived year to year, constantly debating when we were going to move.
I had the same feeling with getting the wardrobes in. I’ve heard people say a house and furniture is an anchor weighing you down- and I begin to feel that, though not in a negative way. It’s just a new thing. This is absolutely what we wanted, and what we want, but it will take some getting used to.
Bye bye boxes. Each step forward stretches our ties to the world behind a little thinner.
Writing news
I put The Last to 99 cents to see if it ups sales. The major income has been from borrows and page reads through Kindle Unlimited- and a cheaper price won’t affect that negatively at all- it could only increase visibility if more people buy, which should lead to more borrows.
Photo of the day
Today’s photos come from our trip to the Harry Potter studio three weeks back, before we’d moved in at all. See the giddy, responsibility-free youth in these camera angles!
A cauldron. This was part of the Winter Ball they did in Goblet of Fire.
Harry and Ron’s bedroom. Apparently these beds were too small as the actors grew up, but they never changed them.
Gryffyndor common room. Designed to look warm, lived-in, cozy and very familial. It’s like a common room at one of the outdoor pursuits centers I used to go to as a kid. Comfy to sprawl in after a hard day orienteering.
Hogwarts gates.
Dumbledore’s office.