The newness of it all

We closed on and started to move into the new house on Friday and on Saturday morning a close friend and I went and picked up the new addition to our household: Lizzy, the Brittany Spaniel. Although Lizzy appears to be purebred, in the Brittany Spaniel world, like in the rest of the world, "blackness" is a disqualification (believe it or not) so Lizzy couldn't begin to dream of qualifying for any best in shows. But that's alright by me. As I told another friend, like Lizzy, I also "look white" but am not.

It's been a hectic weekend, with my husband doing all the heavy lifting (with our college daughter's help yesterday) and with me turning the new house into a comfy and welcoming home. Lizzy hasn't made things more difficult, surprisingly. Except for vomiting in my car when my friend and I arrived back in our small college on the hill (we picked her up from her foster mom about 30 minutes away), and for a couple of peeing and one pooping "accident" inside the house, Lizzy has been as easygoing as you could want in a dog. It's like Geni reincarnated.

But Lizzy is no Geni in the fact that she absolutely, good spaniel that she is, adores to play. Stray street dog that she was, Geni never did quite understand the concept of play. That's not a problem with Lizzy. I bought her a squeaky ball and she has now mastered the art of rushing across the yard at her highest speed (which is not inconsiderable) to fetch the ball and bring it back. I'm seriously considering getting her a Frisbee because I think that she would love to chase and jump at it to get it. We'll see. I've already purchased a new leash and harness for her (pink color, of course), ordered her a collar with her name and my cellphone number stitched on it, and bought her a doggy car harness to keep her safe when we're traveling.

Day 2 with Lizzy today began with a long walk on the roads near my now former tiny apartment near the woods, and more moving boxes and things (and they are endless!) from said apartment to the house, and her first experience being left on the deck by herself. She quickly proceeded to figure out that this wasn't a bad thing and enjoyed sunning herself, just like a Puerto Rican dog would do.

By this afternoon, when my husband began to haul things out of the garage into our humongous basement (it's like another country down there!) to convert the former into his dream space, Lizzy had become so possessive of "her" yard that she started barking at the strange person who kept walking by the deck. My husband came up and let her know it was him, but she was unconvinced and kept issuing short growls of warning, just in case.

Meanwhile, the cats, who have taken Lizzy's arrival and stay in a display of good humor that is truly impressive (I had envisioned a constant war, at least on Magellan's part), have also made this new house very much their home. Darwin, for instance, found the space under a gigantic fern that the former owners left behind and which sits on a ledge just over the front door, irresistible and spends most of the day there, instead of fighting with Magellan as he did in the tiny apartment. My husband and I think that the fern allows him to play at jungle cat in his very creative mind.

Magellan also has adapted well to her new surroundings and to Lizzy except that she's doing her "throw yourself on the floor" thing a lot because I think she wants more attention given that mine is now divided four ways.

My husband couldn't be happier with his nice new office space, and I'm very content here ensconced upstairs in a pink room with frilly pink and light green curtains, which obviously used to belong to a girl. The only major drawback was that we couldn't create the TV room that we had envisioned on the second floor loft area because there are no TV cables that come all the way to the second floor so the TV sits in the living room, which none of us likes because we like that space to be conversational. But de los males el menos as my abuela would've said.

Still, my college daughter had a good idea and suggested that we turn the loft area into a reading space, which we've never had. So we positioned the big chair we used to have in the living room in front of the wide windows that look onto the grove of trees that belongs to a colleague across the street and soon, very soon, I'm going to spend some good time sitting there, starting War and Peace, finally.

I became a "doctor" (albeit one of those who can't cure a thing) almost a year ago, but it's now, with this house, that I feel that I finally live like a professor, whatever that means. I told my college daughter that I'd always thought I'd know I'd "made it" when I had a master bedroom with a master bath and walk-in closet. OK, so I don't have tenure, but I've certainly "made it" in some ways and I feel blessed and humbly thankful for the bounty of these days.