On Moving Out And Moving On

You all know the story. Girl needs a home. Girls seeks home on Craigslist. Girl FINDS home. Girl LOVES home. Girl realizes that home is run by a mildly insane dictator. Girl finds new home.

Okay, so this might not be a story for the books. Or one that could be made into a blockbuster film (hmm...MAYBE a quirky comedy!). But it is MY story. And one you all know well.

I mostly want these images to reflect the many *cough, cough* "fond" memories I have of the "home" I had in "Owls Head, Maine" (okay, enough with the quotation marks).

I will also give you a small taste of what my new room looks like!

And then at the end there will be some pictures of spring that I have taken at Merryspring (It's been BEAUTIFUL the past few days!)

Here-a I's-a GO-a!

So this is my dirty room in the process of being cleaned and packed up Saturday morning.

And then THE CLEAN ROOM!

Aw, just how I remember entering it. There's that plant. I still can't decide if I liked or hated that thing. It was sometimes cumbersome. And I never knew if *I* was supposed to take care of it or not. So I watered it sometimes. But not regularly. And it DOES look like some horror movie cancerous growth coming our of the floor...

A last view of R/L's studio.

Here are the front steps and part of the porch. This is a part of the house I really never see since we enter from the side. It's such a NICE porch. I wish I would have used to front door more often.

More of that expansive porch. Actually, I don't think ANYONE in Maine uses their front doors.

This, for your information, is the house where I used to do laundry. Please note that you ALSO do not use the front door to enter this house.

My last view up Guptil Lane. Look how different it looks without snow!

A view of the field that is R/L's un-utilized property and her studio in the distance.

My last view DOWN Guptil Lane, looking towards the ocean.

Yes, I did in fact leave a note for the new tenant. No, I didn't tell her anything scathing about R/L or warn her (except to let her know that if she did not follow the showering schedule that R/L WOULD turn off the hot water). This was because I knew R/L would be doing a deep clean of the room and find the note and read it. I didn't want there to be anything bad.

The back of the house.

The view from the driveway.

The side door that we used to enter the house. The door that is not the front door.

Javier in the driveway, for the last time.

The sun room that always smelled of cigarette smoke so I could never enjoy it.

The random holey lamp.

R/L's vices. Wine, sometimes beer, and Coke.

I'm not really sure what these are, but they are on the cabinet as you enter the house (from a door that is NOT the front door).

This is the washing machine, not to be used.

This is the creepy cheetah that greeted my every day on top of the fridge. Looking like he was going to pounce on my head.

The tiny bathroom.

The living room. I hardly ever spent a pleasant evening here.

The top of the non-functional dryer. Gross.

The dining room that was only used for dinner parties. I ate in here a grand total of once because that was the number of her dinner parties I was officially invited to. And it was at the very beginning of my stay. For the most part they drank and a lot and smoked a lot and talked about the 70's. So I don't think my NOT attending their "dinner parties" was that great a loss.

This is the weird lamp that hung in the kitchen. She had an interesting and random sense of decor. The tying theme seemed to be "NYC modern art" combined with "things I collected from my South American Travels" with just a dash of "I have a house near the ocean so I think I should throw some sea shells and pictures of boats in there."

And last but not least, we have the ancient vacuum. I'm amazed that it still works.

This ends the photo journey down not so distant memory lane. Now lets start a new journey. On free of oppression, aggression, depression, and.....cigarette smoke.

This is what greeted me when I entered my new room. My mail (with my new Netflix), lovely flowers, and a King Sized Hershey's bar.

All signs that this can ONLY be 50 times better than what I had just come from.

Here is my new room without any of my stuff in it yet. Not the furnishings! The purple carpeting! The homey feel of everything! Very different to the sparse emptiness that greeted me when I first arrived to the house in Owls Head.

Another view. This bed comes complete with nice warm bedding that compliments the room. How nice to feel like the bedding isn't just a hodge podge of things that I brought with me (which is what my bedding is).

Kathy, the new roommate (I have decided to call her my roommate because it's more like we are living together rather than her dictating how I live in her house), is a sweet older woman (older than R/L). She keeps reminding me that I don't have to stress about things. She tells me "Sarah, stop it! I'm not whoever it was you were living with before." She also says that there are no rules. Which is the complete opposite of how things WERE. The house is generally neat, but she is trying to sell it soon so she is constantly finding new projects and things that need to be done. And often in the middle of a project, she will see something ELSE that needs to be done so she stops and starts her NEW project before the first one is done. So sometimes the downstairs has a slight cluttered look to it. She is also pretty hard of hearing so I have to go against my nature and speak slowly and clearly. It's kind of a good exercise in speech. I have to THINK about what I am going to say, so I don't waste words.

I admit that I can see the cluttered nature of the house (as she organizes things and packs them away), the "no rule" policy, and speaking slowly and clearly are all things to get used to. But they are all INFINITELY better than EVERYTHING I put up with in Owls Head.

I am going to miss that ocean view. I am going to miss having an address in Owls Head (such a cute name!).

But that's about it. I will really not miss anything else.

Now, a few pictures I took on the FIRST day it felt like SPRING in Maine since I got here. These were all taken at Merryspring.

We have a lovely Day Lily garden. I don't know what these were called but they are some of the first ones that have come up so far.

This one is my FAVORITE in the Day Lily garden so far.

And right next to the Day Lilies we have all these little violets popping up. So cute and PRETTY! I really do love wildflowers more than ornamentals.

The sun had finally set. And the sky was a lovely rose and azure color.

And lastly, Thursday and Friday I brought my computer to work so I could use the internet to download updates. So I had TWO computers on my desk. Twice the productivity, or twice the distraction?

I'll let you decide.