An article about anticipation, waiting, and having fun doing it.

Savoring the Moments

You know that feeling when you are about to jump off a high dive into a pool?

Or just as the plane is lifting off and you have that feeling of weightlessness?

Or when you are at the very top of the roller coaster and about to go really fast?

or

climbing a tree higher than you thought you were going to be able to?

That’s kind of where we have been with things right now.

Also-I love risk.

Those above experiences? I love doing all of those experiences. My favorite part of the plane ride is lift off. I try to pay attention to that first feeling of flying, and am kind of sad when I start reading my book too early and miss it.

I could write a pretty long story about how I took some risks at a ropes course during a work retreat, and ended up with a partially torn bicep.

The partial tear made it very difficult to write or type, which were two pretty big aspects of my job.

Another time I took risk affected my work was when that didn’t work out so well was when I participated in race called ‘The Warrior Dash’.

The Warrior Dash is a pretty physically strenuous competition where participants race for 5k with obstacles. While walking between events, I twisted my knee slipping in mud. My office at the time was on the second floor of a 100 year old house, so I had some challenges getting up and down those stairs for a bit.

My love of risk and my youthful exuberance for life tend to override my ‘stop’ signal. The ‘stop’ signal, which is really helpful in preventing injuries, since I am stuck with these overly stretchy, unreliable ligaments.

My history is to jump when possible, climb higher or ‘go for it’

Soon, we will be moving to the Dallas, Texas area. Our house is for sale, and when someone puts in an offer on our house, we’ll put in an offer on one we will have picked out.

Until that happens, we will wait.

To me, this waiting feels like standing at the end of the diving board and looking down.

Now waiting? Waiting isn’t my favorite part of things. I am working to become better at waiting on a daily basis.

For the past few months, we have felt pretty rushed.

I had surgery in December, I recovered, we had the holidays, and then my boys came home to turn 21.

At the time, it seemed like it would be the last time they would be in our Noblesville house for any length of time.

We have lived in this specific house since they were 8, so we’re talking about 13 years of development in their lives.

When they went back to school, it was time to go to into overdrive in getting the house ready.

It felt a little like a break in house preparing to go to Texas a couple of times to look at houses. After our house was on the market and we came home for the second time, I tagged along on a business trip while people ‘looked at our house’.

Polar Vortex

You might remember the Polar Vortex in January 2019. Remember when the Midwest was -11 or -9 or so? Well, those were the days I had determined, in my mind, that people would be looking at our house.

It turns out, very few people want to look to buy houses in negative degree temperatures.

Control For me, it is a good reminder about control.

I had decided on a schedule, and that schedule is taking longer than I had allowed. Even though I know that our house will sell at some point and that we will move at that point to Texas, I also know that it will be both hard and fun in many, many ways. I also have heard that January is really not the best time to put a house on the market, particularly in Indiana.

As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure it is one of the worst.

But still, even with all of that information, that is what I had anticipated.

So, here we go. I am going to try to make the best of it.

While we are in pause mode waiting for our buyer, I’m thinking of some things I savor, and some benefits to having more time than I need on my hands.

During this time, we will wait for that perfect family who wants to pick up with their family memories where we left have left off.

Our boys started helping us make our memories in those home when they were 8, and they are now 21.

Most days while we are ‘For Sale’, I make my bed perfectly.

I’ve been able to go to lunch with friends, schedule upcoming lunches and dinners with friends and family, and go to community meetings I enjoyed going to with a previous job. At am also able to have extended texting conversations with friends and family.

I get to really think about where I want to live in the Dallas area and what I’m looking for in the area where we choose to live.

I’m not a big ‘house’ person, (meaning the particulars of where I live are less important to me than it is to others).

My decorating skills are about the same as a 4th grader with very little interest in decorating. I care about an open kitchen where I can see the living room, a good sized closet, and I really want a pool.

Mostly, I care about community, and ways to get to chat with people who may become my friends.

I’m figuring out what my employment will be, and how to transfer a mental health license to a state that uses a different test than Indiana does.

A goal I’m going to try is to try to treat this time like I do when I eat one of my favorite snacks, Oreos and milk.

When I eat Oreos with milk, I like to sit down, with the 2 cookies and the milk, and really focus on the flavors (I need to figure out how to do that with salad…eh, probably not).

I get frustrated if I get interrupted and eat the cookies without paying attention to the flavors that I enjoy.

Sometimes, when I eat a cookie on my way to the couch, I go back for a third cookie so that I have 2 while I’m sitting. I try to savor the experience, just like I try to pay attention to that moment of lift off in a plane. That moment of freedom. That leap of faith jumping into the air over a pool. That feeling of climbing up one more branch in a tree to go higher and then look down. Riding my bike too fast down a hill.

These are moments that I’ve always enjoyed.

Until then…we wait. Ready to jump, but the water isn’t quite ready for us yet.

Swimmers Take your Mark…….

(Hold on a second, you got this)

Take a second and enjoy your time til the race starts.

We love our house. It’s been filled with love, laughter, talking, negotiating, and lots and lots of conversations!