Part 2

So I'm still sad, but not as sad as last week. I'm not crying every day, which is good, and I've done a few more things that have made me start to feel better. We had friends over for the 4th of July for brunch and then to take the kids to the parade (pictures on fa.cebook and my family blog) - it was nice to do something social and it definitely did help make me appreciate the new house since it is set up so much better for entertaining and has so much more room for company than the old house. We also went to a firewor.ks party, just Husband and I, at the home of one of our old neighbor's fiance. His house is actually walking distance from our new house, and they are tearing down and building on this lot, so she will be our neighbor again in a year! There were a lot of our old neighbors there, so it was fun to see them and hear stories about the people that bought our old house. Apparently they are addicted to concr.ete statues and large plants and the neighbors all think the yard is starting to look tacky! The new people also have been rummaging through everyone's trash and taking things - broken patio umbrell.a, wagon, old dirty planters - that they then display in the yard! I found that so funny - I have nothing against taking things from someone's trash if it is usable, but I would never take something from a neighbor and then display it where everyone, including the person who was throwing it away, could see it.

So the nostalgia is getting a little better. I still really, really miss Te.xas and have wasted some time trying to figure out if there is any way we could move back there. I've also wasted time thinking about all the ways it would be better there. And the only conclusion I've come to is that the only way I would be moving back there would be without Husband, because he's not moving there, so I don't really think that's an option. But, since this is my blog and I can say what I want, I have to admit that part of me considered that for a little bit. Then I realized that I would probably miss him more than I miss Texa.s. I also realized that as much as I am idealizing what my life would be like if I lived in Te.xas, there would still probably be things I didn't like about it and even things that I missed about St.L.ouis!

One thing that I did that has helped make me feel better is writing letters. The real kind, that requires a stamp and pen and paper. I stayed up late one night re-reading letters from college and on that I had saved, and I realized that it's been a really, really long time since I've written or received a letter, unless it was for someone's birthday or some other occasion. No one I know writes letters (well, except my Mom) since email is so accessible and cheap and even calling long-distance is so easy now because of cell phones and free minutes. So I wrote a few letters to friends and mailed them off. I still have a few more that I want to write, so I am going to do that in a minute. There's one letter I really want to write, but it's one that will be hard to write, and I'm working on it. It has to do with a lot of the stuff in my past that I am trying to make sense of, and I don't want to write the letter until I know exactly how to say things.

So that's the nostalgia. It is getting better. I think that I may make another trip to Da.ll.as this fall, before our scheduled Christmas trip. The hard part about going down there is that it is so hard to fit in everyone and everything that I want to see and do. And it doesn't' help that my mom gets upset if I don't spend enough time with her (if she had her way, I'd only hang out with her while I was there and not do anything else!). So it's hard to balance it all. And I hate fighting with my mom when I want to go see someone but she thinks I'm not spending enough time with her and starts getting upset about how she spent so much time getting ready for me to visit and blah, blah, blah and then hits me with a guilt trip and makes me feel bad for leaving to visit someone else for even an hour. So I never leave feeling like I got to see everyone that I wanted to and that even those I did spend time with, it wasn't enough.

So Part 3 will have to focus on the church and God stuff. Or maybe church alone will be part 3, because there's a lot there. And I've been thinking through that also and trying to make some decisions about what I can do to help figure it out. So up next, my search for a church.