Are we there yet?

Apologies for being absent for so long.

To be honest, since I lost one of my most consistent readers (my dear friend Karen last year) I now find myself wondering if anyone is still out there, and if the world has moved beyond blogging?  Is Instagram as good as it gets?

I am grateful to have this blog here, because when I lost all of the photos, it was reassuring to have so many favourites, and so many snippets of my pre-fire life held captive.  The joy of modern technology means I will be able to download and print all of those photos and start to recreate albums.

So where are we at?

We get keys next week. It has not been a fun build.  It has been 14 months that I would rather had not happened the way they did.  I still have days where it feels brutal, and whether I wonder if I will even be able to live in this new house.  It is a very different house to the one I adored.  There are many things I don't like (a stupid pantry because the cabinet maker didn't listen, a massive ugly retaining wall where I once had a bee/bird/butterfly garden, a weird wonky ceiling bit where someone stuffed up) and quite a lot of things I love (that kitchen, my new bath, the wooden floors, my craft studio, the verandahs)  It is definitely new, and modern, and I'm not sure it will really feel like "me" for quite some time.

I talked with another "total-loss"* friend (who moved into her rebuild just before Christmas) and she said that sometimes it is like the new build is on a "ghost house"  - I think that is a good way to describe it.  The light might fall the same way, the view from one window might be the same, but so much is altered, different, and not able to replicate the shadow of the house that was. 

Having said that, the thought of just being in our own space again, the thought of being "home" is so enticing and I feel as though, once we are in and beds are made, I might want to crawl into bed and sleep properly for the first time since the fire.  It feels very much like we will be coming "home" to our haven on the hill and I absolutely can't wait.  I have been so connected to the land there, feeding chooks and/or gardening every day, and somedays just wandering around barefoot lamenting what was.  While the chooks and garden have been a solace and a blessing, I can't wait to be back living there full time - to see and hear birds from my bedroom window, and to begin re-creating gardens and green, quiet spaces around the house.

We are busily packing boxes, and hoping that the real estate can find tenants for the rental and generally obsessing over all the stuff that has to happen between now and next week.

I'll be back with photos of moving in!

Until then,

Keep smiling,

Nell

*I don't personally like that term - we didn't have "total" loss - we didn't lose our friends, our relationships, our memories.  I don't believe anyone had "total" loss and I don't believe grief and recovery can be measured in terms of the haves and have nots.  It was a bushfire. It was shit.  There were no winners. We will all move on in our own way, in our own time.