THINKING ABOUT:
When you move 40 miles away from the place you have lived for 23 years, you are starting over. Your brain can tell you that you’re “not that far” and that any person/place/service provider you love is just a longer drive away. Your brain will lie to protect you from the sadness of starting over.
It will feel overwhelming, starting over, and the amount of overwhelm is in direct relationship to how old you are. Older = more overwhelm. This is normal and is not something wrong with you.
You will find your new grocery store first, then the Home Depot and Lowes because you have a new-to-you house and you will wear tracks in the pavement going to these stores. You will search for an electrician you can trust, then a handyman. You will get ridiculous, astronomical bids for jobs that cause your head to hurt.
You will realize you need to find a new primary care doctor and this, too, makes your head hurt. You put off changing your neurologist because he actually treats your head pain for reals and you can’t imagine starting over with another person and 40 minutes every four months is not that long to drive. As long as your head isn’t hurting.
You will find a chiropractor and he will never, ever, ever be as delightful as the guy who took care of your back for 20 years. You will find an acupuncturist and he will be fine.
You realize you need a haircut so you go on the dumpster fire that is NextDoor and you will find someone who supposedly knows how to cut long layers and when you call she is in Europe for three months and so you say yes to the person they offer because your hair looks like a bird’s nest most days and you cannot stand it for one more day and you hope and pray this person knows how to cut hair.
You realize you haven’t been to the dentist in 18 months and that is definitely too long but you really need to figure out the insulation and the landscaping first.
You order Thai food. It’s terrible. You try again. Terrible in a different way. You methodically order the same three Thai dishes from a total of six different restaurants before discovering that for some reason, 40 miles north of where you used to live there are no good Thai restaurants.
You move on to Vietnamese even though your husband isn’t a soup guy.
On a whim you pick up some tacos from a strip mall after hitting the UPS store where you were returning one of six styles of planters that didn’t work for your yard. The tacos are good. You are tired, so you decide that this is your new taco shop and you aren’t trying any more.
It’s summer and you have been to the dentist and the doctor and the house is mostly done and you can’t believe you’ve been here more than a year and you really need a pedicure.
NextDoor raves about a place so you make an appointment and it’s full of terrible fumes and it’s hot and no one is wearing a mask anymore and you decide that maybe you can do your own pedicures again.
You aren’t good at pedicures.
You go back to have your hair cut at the little salon in the next town because she actually did a really good job and gave you the bangs you wanted even though you swore you would never, ever, ever have bangs again but menopause keeps changing your hair and at least with bangs you don’t look like you just came through a wind tunnel every time you pull your hair back.
You realize that your 93-year-old next-door neighbor is getting her hair cut in the next chair.
You realize that there is a manicurist at the little salon and she wears a mask and because it’s only her and she’s not doing gels the smell isn’t bad at all so you make an appointment.
And when she finishes your pedicure she gives you a little ziploc with the tools she used on you and tells you to put them in your car for next time. “Or I will have to charge you.” It has always bugged you how wasteful it is that they throw out all the manicure tools.
You look down at your sparkly teal toes and you know. You’re home.
WATCHING:
I just finished One Day on Netflix, a devastatingly beautiful show based on a novel I didn’t read. I don’t even want to explain a thing about it. Just watch it. It’s about home and coming back to what makes you feel like home and friendship and connection and redemption.
READING:
Is my head still attached to my body? I felt my brain explode over and over again after reading Anti-Diet by
EATING:
Nothing says home to me more than comfort food like chicken (or vegetarian) pot pie. Since this is a long post, you’ll find the recipe here.
Don’t eat chicken? Here’s my vegetarian version.
Also, big thanks to Christine Pittman for having me on the Recipe of the Day podcast to talk about one of my favorite SOUPS ever. Please give it a listen!
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