“I want what I love to just be what I love, not for sale until I’ve gotten what I wanted out of it and it’s no longer of use to me anyway.”

—J explaining why she doesn’t necessarily want to get paid for doing what she does best, on Schnozzfest.com

What’s that you ask? How’s the unpacking coming along? Oh, slowly. The first week or so there are always half-unpacked boxes in every room, unopened boxes stacked along the walls, empty bookcases and dressers sitting awkwardly in corners. That’s still the stage we’re in right now. We didn’t get a whole lot of unpacking done over the weekend since Troy had duty on Saturday (which meant he had to stay overnight on the ship) and we spent most of Sunday driving up to my aunt’s and having dinner with relatives. But when we came home we brought my mom with us for a couple of days’ visit before she flies home, and she helped me unpack four big kitchen boxes and ten boxes full of books! That’s a lot of unpacking in one day for me! We were pretty proud of ourselves.

I’m not lazy exactly. I just work much better and stay more focused when there’s another person working with me. As long as my mom is here, I’ll take advantage of that. We’re hoping to get a bunch more boxes unpacked tomorrow. We also want to make some lemonade!

When we first got here we picked all the lemons that came easily off the branch, so we have a bunch ready to go. Today when we were unpacking one of the kitchen boxes I found the glass juicer, and when Troy and I were on a date tonight we found a lemonade carafe on clearance and bought it. I figured, why not have a special lemonade carafe since we hope to make lemonade often while we’re living here? I am already imagining Annalie reminiscing about it in future years, how when we lived in the green house in California we’d pick lemons and squeeze them and make lemonade in the special lemonade carafe. I have good memories of picking lemons from my grandparents’ tree when I was a kid and making lemonade with my Grandma Adams. I want Annalie to have memories like that.

But I really don’t want those memories to include cardboard boxes in every room of the house. We’ll make lemonade, but mostly we’ll try to focus on the unpacking. The sooner we’re all settled in, the sooner we can have guests come to stay!

The lovely kc posted seven fill-in-the-blank questions and invited her readers to ask her anything they liked, deep or silly, personal or surreal. I thought that sounded like fun so…

Ask me some questions! Just copy and paste the following list into the comment box, fill in the blanks, and I’ll answer as honestly as I can.

1. What do you think of _____________?

2. When did you last ____________?

3. __________ or ___________ and why?

4. What did you ______________?

5. What’s your favorite ______________?

6. How would you ______________?

7. Who would you most like to ________?

Edited to add: Be sure to check this post’s comments for people’s questions and my responses.