According to my parents, once you get to my age, you get to celebrate your birthday all week, so I’ve had a birthday week. Wednesday after I got my car serviced, I went shopping for birthday presents and bought myself a few things. Then late that afternoon I walked downtown to see the new Superman movie. There’s only one movie theater in town, a vintage 1930s theater downtown. They have upgraded the seats to cushy recliners with footrests and the projection and sound are modern, but when you see the front of the theater and the lobby, you feel like you’ve gone back in time. One other modern touch is that they show the movies with captions. The state school for the Deaf is here, and we have a large Deaf population, from the students to faculty to the former students who decide to stay in town, so I guess it makes sense to show movies with captions. I don’t know if it’s every show or if I happened into a captioned one. For once, I actually caught all the names of the characters because I could read them. I’ll discuss Superman more once I’ve had a chance to process it.

For my actual birthday, I did more shopping (mostly errands, but I bought some fun stuff, too), then spent the afternoon reading on the deck before walking downtown to have dinner at a bistro with a sidewalk cafe. We’ve been lucky to have had a cool snap this week, so it was a perfect evening to dine outdoors. When I got home, I sat on the deck and read some more.

Today I’m easing back into “normal” life because there are chores that have to be done. While it’s still cool, before a heat wave hits next week, I spent the morning working in my lawn, cutting the grass (the lawn is small enough and hilly enough that I use a weedeater instead of a mower) and digging up some bad invasive plants. When I heard the church bells from downtown chime noon, I figured it was time to come in and take a break.

I’m waiting on a delivery from one of my birthday gifts to myself, a new desk chair. The one I have is so uncomfortable that it limits my writing time, so I got a fancy one with an adjustable lumbar pillow and a softer seat. It also looks like it should be on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, so I’ll have to start my writing sessions by saying, “Engage!”

It’s the week after I finished a book and am emerging from my cave to deal with everything that didn’t get done and it’s my birthday week, so it’s a week of errands and housework but also some fun stuff. Today’s fun (which is interrupting my usual posting schedule) is getting my car maintenance done and doing some shopping. Then I might do something crazy like go to a movie. My plan is to do my main work for the day while I’m waiting for my car and then use most of the rest of the day for fun.

I got a start on emerging from the cave last weekend when we had a block party. I live on a short dead-end street that’s one block long, and it’s a fairly tight little community of mostly creative people. We have artists, fashion designers, and a theatrical costume designer who does shows all over, including the local Shakespeare theater. And me, the writer. There’s also an international flight attendant, who took care of the bar. All the liquor was in tiny bottles, and I’m not going to ask where that came from. The neighbor who organized the party also invited people from around town and who are visiting the town, including a couple of musicians here from the Netherlands for the big classical music summer institute they have here.

My social life has definitely increased since I moved to this house. It’s also reached the point where it can take me longer to walk down the block to my house than it takes to walk from downtown if people are out in their yards. But since so many people are artists, they understand when I say I’m working on a book and need to focus on it.

I think my main plan for my birthday is to take myself out for lunch at one of the downtown restaurants, but I may also do some shopping, depending on how much I get done today.

I’m gradually getting into a sense of what my “normal” is going to be in this house and what my daily routines will be, now that I’m mostly settled (I still need to organize the basement where a lot of stuff got stashed). This week, I’ve tried to get back into taking morning walks, and I’m figuring out what a good walking route may be.

One good place to go walking appears to be the big Victorian cemetery across the way (it’s across the street from the next street over — I have a good view of it from my front windows). A cemetery may seem like an odd place to go walking, but this one is a lot like a park. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Central Park in New York. It has a similar kind of landscaping, and some of the buildings are a lot like the ones in Central Park. There’s even a stone bridge over one of the paths that looks a lot like the bridges in Central Park. Think of a really hilly Central Park and fill it with tombstones, and you get the idea. The cemetery apparently dates to the 1840s, when the graveyard at the church downtown filled up, and this was on the edge of town at the time. It’s still in use now, but a lot of the graves are the ornate Victorian style, and there are a few mausoleums and monuments. There’s a whole Civil War section I haven’t walked around because it’s at the top of the very steep hill and I’m working up to that.

So, why walk in a cemetery? In this park-like space, there are walking paths winding throughout, and there’s no traffic, so you don’t have to dodge cars. No dogs are allowed on the grounds, so you don’t have to worry about the “it’s okay, he doesn’t bite” idiots letting their dogs run loose while they carry the leash. It’s very peaceful. There are a lot of trees around the paths. And it’s interesting. I like trying to read the stones (some of the older ones are too weathered to read well). I’ve recognized names that are now attached to streets around town. The people who used to own the land where my house is are buried there, but I haven’t found them yet. You definitely see the impact of modern medicine and vaccinations in the huge number of infant and child graves from the 1800s. There are stories in every one of those stones. I’ll avoid the place if I see a setup for a funeral, but early on weekday mornings, it’s a nice, quiet, safe place to walk and think.

When it’s not as hot or when the sun’s at a different angle, I’ll probably walk downtown sometimes, too. I love walking around a downtown area early in the morning when the shops and businesses aren’t open yet. There’s also a park nearby that has good hiking paths, but that may be best to drive to. It’s in walking distance, but if I’m going to do a serious hike, I don’t want to use up my energy walking through the neighborhood to get to it.

I’ve also had to rethink the way I do things around the house, like where I put my shoes. In my old house, I had one of those shoe caddies you hang from the closet rod. Here, I have very little hanging space in the closet, so there’s no room for that. Then it occurred to me that I don’t wear my shoes inside the house, so why do I need to store them in my bedroom? The “basement” of this house is the back half of the first floor (the house is built into a hill, so that part of the house is underground). It’s just through a door in the kitchen, and the closest part to the door is the part used as the laundry room. I put a garment rack there so I can hang things up to air dry, and I also have a few coats hanging there. I hung my shoe caddie there. I can put on my shoes just before I leave the house and take them off before I go upstairs when I get home. That was a big mindset shift, going from the way I’ve always done things to the way it makes sense to do things now. In my old house, my bedroom was right off the entry way, so having the shoes in my closet was the easiest way to put them on just before I left. Here, that’s the basement.

So, morning walks in the cemetery and shoes in the basement. Just a couple of ways my life has changed.

I had a big realization last week: I can sing in the shower now.

My whole life so far, I’ve either lived with other people or lived with walls that connected to other people’s homes. My house in Texas was a townhouse, and because builders like to put all the plumbing together, the bathroom walls always seem to be where units intersect. I could hear when my neighbors flushed or had the shower on, so I was hesitant to sing in the shower.

At least in that house the living room didn’t connect to anyone else’s home, and I was my own upstairs neighbor, so I didn’t have to worry much about TV volume, and I could generally sing in my living room or the upstairs loft without worrying about bothering neighbors.

Then I moved here and spent a year in an apartment where I could hear every sound my upstairs neighbors made, so I was hesitant to make any sounds at all. I didn’t dare sing (unless the neighbors were being particularly noisy and obnoxious), and I didn’t even say anything when talking on the phone that I wouldn’t want them to hear.

But in this house, my walls don’t touch anyone else’s walls. There’s a good 20 feet between my house and the neighbors’ homes on either side, with trees in between. I can’t even see the house behind mine because it’s up such a steep hill that their floor is about even with my roof, and there are a lot of trees in the way. While I was in the shower, I realized that I could sing and no one could hear me. It was so liberating to just let myself cut loose and enjoy the acoustics from a small space with all that tile, plus the warm, moist air that’s good for the vocal cords. Now I try to remember to sing when I’m in the shower.

I’ve started singing in choir again recently, so this is good for helping me get my voice back in shape. I’d started drifting away from choir even before the pandemic. I’d missed choir for a month or so after a bad cold that left me with a lingering cough, and the director didn’t seem to notice, so I wasn’t exactly feeling the love, and I wasn’t enjoying a lot of the music we were doing. Then the pandemic hit, and I hadn’t felt motivated to go back before I ended up moving. I’ve had to switch denominations because there’s really only one church in town that has a big music program and a lot of activities, but it’s an Episcopal church and I’m Methodist. The Methodists are actually an offshoot of the Anglican/Episcopal church and the services aren’t that different from what I’m used to. It’s a historic church. The congregation pre-dates the American Revolution (and there are graves that old in the churchyard), but the current “new” building dates from around 1850. It’s a local tourist attraction, largely because of the architecture and the fact that the stained glass windows are from the Tiffany workshop, with one even signed by Tiffany himself. The choir loft is in the rear of the church, in the loft with the pipe organ, and it’s like sitting inside the organ when it plays. The acoustics are amazing, and the church is often used as a performing arts venue for classical concerts. Buildings designed before there were microphones tend to work that way.

For the summer, they have a “just show up Sunday morning” choir, and I’ve been going to that, and I think I’ll ease into choir when it starts up in the fall. I’ve had to switch parts because they have too many sopranos and need altos, and I’m the kind of soprano who can sing alto (both having a good low range and the ability to read music and find notes).

So, I’ve started singing again, whether singing around the house or in the shower, and I’m getting back some of the joy I used to find in it that I’d lost.

One other fun thing I’ve realized about this house: It’s the first time in my adult life that my address has been just a street number without a unit number attached to it. I’m having to be careful when filling out online forms to change my address to be sure to erase what’s in the “unit number” field because the autofill doesn’t necessarily do that, even as it changes the street address.

This is also the first time I’ve been responsible for yard work, which is its own story. We’ve been having daily afternoon storms, so the grass is growing like crazy, but the grass is also never dry, making it harder to trim it. As soon as the sun dries it enough, it starts raining again. I call it the Daily Deluge. I’m planning to spend the fall and winter getting rid of weeds, then plant something to replace the grass in the spring, but I still have to get through this summer with the patches of grass I have among all the weeds.

A couple of years ago, I got into a planning/time management program that’s really helped me with staying on top of things and being realistic about what I can accomplish. It starts with the big picture of your vision for your ideal life, then drills down from there to specific goals that will lead you in the direction you want to go, and then you figure out the projects you can do in the time you have available that get you to those goals. And then you break the projects down into tasks and schedule them.

It’s a quarterly process. My second quarter of this year was pretty much taken up by the move, so I didn’t even try to plan. Now I’m going through the whole process for the next quarter and revisiting the initial vision work I did, since my life has changed a lot. And I realized that I’ve pretty much got the ideal life I outlined when I started doing all this, before I moved from Texas.

Of course, I’d like to earn more money, and I need to improve the way I use my time so I’m devoting real time to both work and fun, but I’m in a position to have the kind of daily life I said I wanted.

I’ve got my little old house with a big deck and a yard full of plants and trees, so I almost feel like I’m living in a forest. I have congenial neighbors of the sort who gather on the front porch for a glass of wine in the evenings and who stop in the street to chat (our street is so quiet that you can stand in the street to chat). I live within easy walking distance of a downtown area full of restaurants and shops and venues for concerts and theater. I’m surrounded by mountains and places to go hiking and exploring. This was all stuff I dreamed of when I started imagining the life I wanted to work toward, before I was seriously considering moving.

Which means now I need to focus on getting my work life in order and actually taking advantage of my living situation to do the things I want to do. I’m trying to be more diligent about prioritizing and scheduling work, getting it done, and then moving on to do the other things I want to spend time on.

Summer is my usual time to really focus on work because it’s too hot to spend much time outdoors. It’s not as bad here as it was in Texas, but summer is still not my favorite time of year or a time when I manage to go out and do a lot. It’s a good time to sit indoors and write during the day, and then evenings are relatively comfortable (and late!) here, so that’s when I can go to things like concerts in the park or I can work in my yard.

I’ve planned my major projects for the quarter, and now I need to schedule the tasks and then actually get stuff done.

I have decided that June will be back to “normal” routine and establishing a new normal routine that works for my current situation. I’ve been living kind of like in vacation mode during the move, and now that I’m mostly settled in, I need to figure out what normal life will be like here. I can’t spend the days mostly goofing off and occasionally putting something away and call it “moving” anymore. I have been doing some writing work this week, but I need some structure and routine.

That means the weekend will be spent doing the last arranging and organizing. I won’t be entirely done, and there will be some fine tuning, but I want to be where it doesn’t look so much like I’m moving. No boxes or stacks in my main living space. Things I use regularly unpacked and put away.

I also need to get back into an exercise habit. While I was actively moving and hauling boxes around, that sufficed, but now I need to be more deliberate about it. I’m more active in the house than I was in the apartment, since there are stairs and I have work to do in the yard, but I’ve been a bit of a slug in between. I have been walking to church on Sundays, but I need to walk more regularly than that. I can easily walk downtown, and I rather enjoy that on weekday mornings when it’s quiet. There’s also a huge historic cemetery a couple of streets away (that’s the view from one of my office windows when the tree in my front yard isn’t fully leafed out) that’s like a park. It has walking paths and hills. Once I get the last of the boxes cleared out from my spare room, I want to be able to use that as exercise space. I’ll be able to spread out my yoga mat.

I got out of the habit of working in an office while I was in the apartment, so I’m trying to get back to that. I’m typing this at my desk. But this week, my main work has been re-reading a book prior to doing a round of revisions, and I find that my posture gets weird at a desk when I’m just reading, so my back and shoulders hurt. I finally got my den set up this week when my sofa was delivered, and it’s been rainy, so I’ve spent the rainy days sitting on my sofa, reading my book, and looking up to watch it rain. One of the big reasons I decided to buy this house was a vivid mental image of sitting on a sofa in the den and watching it rain, so I decided I needed to do that.

The other routine I need to develop is housework. I’ve been so busy setting up and organizing that I’ve neglected the maintenance work, and I need to figure out what to do and when to do it. I need to also factor in lawn and garden work and schedule time for that. And I need to do more menu planning and get back to cooking. I relied pretty heavily on frozen meals and convenience food during the move. I’ve done some cooking, but I need to plan enough to make sure I have the ingredients, since I tried to use up as much as possible before I moved and now I need to start from scratch in stocking my pantry, especially since I now have a lot more storage space around the kitchen.

I often resist scheduling, but I find it really helps me because it not only means I get stuff done, but it also means I’m more likely to do fun stuff. If I don’t plan and schedule, the whole day can go by, and then I realize that not only did I not do anything productive, but I also didn’t use the time to enjoy myself.

I’m not even the newest person on the street anymore, so I have to get out of “I just moved” mode. While I was moving in, the house on one side of me was being remodeled to sell, and the new buyers closed on it this week. I haven’t met them yet, but I hope they fit into our quirky little street full of artsy and creative types. The neighbor on the other side is a fashion designer/textile artist, and there’s a radio DJ at the end of the street. The person across from me is very counter-culture (in a fun way), and then there’s me, the novelist. Supposedly there’s another writer around the corner, but I haven’t met him yet.

Now I need to unpack a few boxes and set up a couple more bookcases.

My adventure this week was a road trip to buy things for my house. One downside to the place I’m living now is that it’s a smallish, fairly remote town without a lot of the big stores. And one downside to my house is that the rooms are small and the doors are narrow, which limits the furniture I can get. I haven’t been able to find a loveseat or chair for my den that I can get through the door, whether the sliding door from the deck or the interior door (and the interior stairs are narrow). So I had to resort to something like Ikea, where you can assemble the furniture inside the house. I didn’t want to buy a loveseat without trying it out, which meant a road trip to the nearest Ikea, which is in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., more than two hours away (more or less depending on traffic). There were also decorative items that I wanted from another store they don’t have here but that’s near the Ikea.

The weather yesterday was good for a trip, so I loaded up with road snacks and headed out to drive across northern Virginia. It was actually a lovely drive, following the Blue Ridge Mountains much of the way, then crossing the mountains. I was surprised by how little traffic I ran into. The route my phone sent me on had me mostly driving through the woods, even after I got off the freeway, and suddenly I was at the mall where Ikea was. The traffic was a little worse on the way home because it was the beginning of rush hour, but it still wasn’t as bad as I feared for the D.C. area. The drive from my house in Texas to the Ikea there was shorter, but this longer drive was much less stressful.

I have a loveseat on order — the one I liked was the one people seemed to gravitate toward to sit on while the people they were with were shopping, which is a good sign — and after a break to have a Swedish meatball lunch I bought a bunch of organizational things. After that (and picking up some cinnamon rolls), I headed to the other store to get throw pillows, kitchen canisters, and a footstool. Now I have just about everything I need to set up my house, and it’ll be a lot more homey once the loveseat is delivered (I could have fit it in my car, but even if I opened the boxes and moved pieces one at a time, I didn’t think I could get the main piece up the stairs by myself, and I didn’t want to count on drafting a neighbor to help without checking with him first, so I had it delivered).

My living room color scheme is navy and ivory. I’ve already got a navy and ivory patterned rug. The sofa is a sort of ivory color, and I’ve got navy velvet throw pillows, footstool, and curtains. With all that velvet, it should be nice and cozy.

But today I’m giving myself permission to not do any work on the house (unless I really want to). I’m doing some writing work and putting my feet up because yesterday was a long, tiring day, not just the driving, but also pushing a very full cart through an Ikea, then loading and later unloading the car. I am looking forward to having it all done so I don’t have to think about the house, though then it will be time to focus on the yard. Today it’s a month since I started living in the house, so I figure I’ve done pretty well. I’m the sort of person who likes to be settled within a week or so, but I had to get so much furniture and organizational stuff, and I had to figure out where things would go, which took me longer.