Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~ George Carlin

I awoke to rolling claps of thunder this morning that seemed to resound thru the heavens forever. The rain was drumming down on the roof and lightning flashed and lit up the bedroom. I can not remember ever waking up to a thunder storm when I lived in Oregon.

Yesterday Dear Hubby and I took a drive to West Bloomfield early in the morning. He has been a bow hunter for many years and had heard about the Detroit Archers club, one that Fred Bear, a legend in the archery world, had been a member of. There was a pea-soup fog and it was 44 degrees as we left Livonia. We didn't see much of the surrounding countryside during our drive. We could barely see 10 feet in front of us. But once we got home the fog lifted so quickly it was hard to believe it had ever been here. And within a short span of time it was 82 degrees.

Since arriving here in Michigan, natives have been telling me if you don't like the weather, wait. It'll change in 5 minutes.

You know what? They're telling the truth

A Life of pages waiting to be filled... -- Michael W. Smith

It's a funny thing, moving away from all that's familiar to a place where things are seemingly the same and yet...aren't.. I mean, Michigan is part of the United States of America, as is Oregon. And yet Michigan is so different. The air is different. The terrain is different. The architecture is different. The roads are different. There aren't potholes back here...there are teeth-jarring craters in the road at the end of winter you quickly learn to dodge if you don't want your front end knocked out of alignment every time you drive to the grocery store. Life doesn't stop back here when it's 5 degrees outside. Babies and toddlers are swaddled up to their eyeballs in parkas and caps and mittens and boots. I have not seen one feral cat. In fact, outside of a neighbor's cat I spy every now and then sitting on a table looking out the window, the only other cat I've seen was one dead by the side of the road a few weeks back. Today is April 5th...the sun is shining...and yet flurries of snowflakes were falling in the sunlight. I thought they were cherry blossoms until I realized there aren't any trees in blossom here yet.

I have visual memories that will come to me every now and then during the day. Like on Sunday when Dear Hubby and I walked all the way over to Farmington Road and I said to him I was almost more tired walking 4-5 miles of flat streets than I was when we walked to the top of Mt. Tabor. And then I pictured the beauty of Mt. Tabor -- pictured above -- and the vista of downtown Portland from the western side, and the majestic beauty of Mount Hood from the eastern side. And I could see it crystal clear in my mind's eye, the many mornings we'd trudge up there around daylight or on a warm summer evening. It's a moment's memory like that that will jar my heart. And I'm not sure if I miss it. I haven't had a moment of homesickness yet. And yet a moment's memory will make me feel...unsettled. I guess where I'm at right now is somewhere between finishing pulling all the roots up before planting them down deep in new soil. The work is being done but I've yet to experience the harvest.

I love my new home. I love my new town. I love my new state. I feel welcome here. I am not lonely here. I am at peace here.

It is amazing how quickly we humans adjust, how quickly the unfamiliar becomes familiar. How I wake up in the middle of the nite and know that I'm home already. I am not lost.

Home. At Last.

Can it possibly be?! Are we finally moved in? Do I have a house to call home now? The answer is yes, yes, yes!

What a journey.

We arrived in Livonia on March 5th. We spent two weeks 'living' in the Comfort Inn on Middlebelt Road a tantalizing 5 blocks away from 'our' house. But thanks to the very incompetent ministrations of Chase Bank's home loan department in Portland, we arrived thinking we were ready to move right in, only to find the loan couldn't be processed in Michigan if it originated in Oregon. They hadn't even bothered to open up the FHA Appraisal that stated a few repairs were needed before the loan could close. They hadn't even bothered to inform us of all this. Every phone call, every email I sent, I was given the same answer: "Everything's moving right along. It's with the underwriters and should be closing at the end of February". So Dear Hubby and our d-i-l set out to drive across country at the end of February. And when they were in Iowa Dear Hubby received a phone call from our realtor: "We've got problems!" He hadn't heard anything from Chase in a long time and took it upon himself to call our loan officer, only then to find out we didn't have a loan, let alone being even close to closing. We were nowhere! So Dear Hubby called me with this news, totally freaked out. Not only ours wasn't any good...neither was the kids' loan for their house. Now what to do?! Here Dear Hubby and our stressed-out d-i-l are in Livonia by this time and the rest of us are living...surviving...in a Days Inn in Portland waiting to fly out to Detroit that Saturday while our belongings and vehicles were on their way across the country. Arggghhhh.

To make a long, stressful-beyond-belief, and wild story short, our wonderful guardian angel of a Real Estate Guy named Bill and a mortgage broker friend of his named Sam went above and beyond the call of duty to secure home loans for both of us from square one, doing everything they could to push the closing dates up as quickly as possible. And two weeks later we finally took possession of our homes. But our possessions themselves were still in storage, somewhere in Indiana, so we had to wait a couple of extra days to have them delivered. But they arrived and some great moving guys got us all settled. The kids didn't even have to stay with us for a couple of weeks, like we'd originally thought. Sam the Miracle Worker got everything closed on the same day. I could've kissed the guy.

And now I'm all hooked up to the fastest internet I've ever had. I am back typing on a keyboard at 70-75 wpm instead of plunk-plunk-back space-back space-plunk-plunking on my new Droid phone. I am more than happy to put that thing back to just being a phone, tho I must admit it was nice to have something give me limited internet access. I was just abominably slow typing with my left thumb. And 9 times out of 10 whatever I wrote wouldn't post or send anyway. Sigh. I wish I knew how many emails are lost somewhere in the outer darkness of cyberspace.

I feel like I'm starting from the very beginning again. Like it's going to take time to find my 'blog' voice once more. It feels like forever since I've written anything of any substance. I feel rusty and very out of practice. Like my voice is creaky from lack of use. But it feels so good to be here once more, chronicling our lives for the grandboys. I wish I'd been able to keep it up-to-date while we made our way 2/3 of the way across the country. But so much of it was so hard. So much of it was scrabbling around to find the needed paperwork when everything was stashed away somewhere in the back of a semi truck trailer somewhere in Indiana. It was days of trying to keep two little boys who were beyond sick of being stuck in hotel suites for three weeks entertained and quiet. It was more dinners out in restaurants than I care to eat ever again.

Ah, but we survived. We did. And in looking back at it now a couple of weeks later it doesn't seem so bad after all. I'm sure a year from now we'll laugh about it, rolling our eyes and calling it our Grand Adventure of a Lifetime.

But do I want to move again any time soon?

No, thank you.