Whenever I travel, it usually takes my body a day or two to acclimatize to the new environment. It’s as if it has to breathe in this new oxygen from a new corner of the world for 24 hours, and have a good, long sleep, in order for me to fully blend in. This weekend, I was exhausted.
Fiancé and I moved into our new place from Friday morning until Sunday evening. We were ever so fortunate to have the help and gritted-teeth smiles of our parents and siblings as we shoved couches through narrow doors and moved dark wooden dressers down rickety stairwells. Not only that, but my future parents-in-law spoiled us, like veritable apartment fairy-godparents. They gave us a wonderful new bed and headboard, ceiling fan, barbeque, groceries, and a slew of other extras to make our house more of a home. Unless you’ve been a poor student with student loans and a budget tighter than Richard Simmons’ spandex, you don’t know how appreciative I am to be given such nice, NEW things. Things that otherwise would have been filed in my mental “to buy” list to grow longer each month, with both a mounting cost and mental worrisome toll.
While lifting tables and emptying a kajillion boxes is also a likely cause for the fatigue that hypnotized me at each day’s end, I also attribute it to my body’s need to absorb into a new niche. I needed to undergo a biological transformation from downtown market body to greeny Glebe body. No longer are my nostrils infiltrated with the hot, pungent odour of cigarettes when I exit my door. I do not have to train my ears to ignore the constant beeps, engine revs and sporadic drunken singsongs that glided in through my old bedroom window. In my, (nay, our) new place, I walk out my front door greeted by the extended family of sparrows that inhabit the tree and garden, and am easily guided to sleep to the sound of far-away cars that sound, to me, like ocean waves lapping the shore.
On Saturday, my Dad and I sat on the front step for hours, feeding the sparrow family and watching the world go by. We saw families walking past to go to the fair, Glebe-ites walking their pugs, old men with harrowed hair that looked as though they spent the entire day walking and thinking. Yesterday my mum, sister and I walked down the corner street and found some fantastic little shops that will no doubt pepper our future weekends with interesting finds, unique gift ideas, and an expanded mental repertoire of home decorations. We went to Purple Cow, where I got some peanut brittle, Mrs. Tiggy Winkles, where we spent almost an hour looking at things like “Freudian Slippers” and mugs with Van Gogh o the front, where his ear disappears when it’s filled with a hot liquid. We went to Britton’s, where I indulged and purchased the New York Times because my internal journalistic thirst lives for the wonderfully written columns and stories in the Sunday Times. I spent hours reading it, and have more to go today when I go home!
I am just thrilled to be living in this new part of town. I think waking up to the love of my life, preparing good food and eating it in my sunny sitting room, and watching the world go by a little more everyday will be the remedy to the increasing chaos and business that goes along with getting older.