A friend recently asked me about why I was living in a van. Didn’t I like living in a house? I said, yes, I had liked my house okay, but I was never there. Between work, being at my boyfriend’s house, etc., I was only there a couple of nights a week, and then mostly to just grab some stuff or to sleep.

I had an odd little moment where I realized that that’s mostly what I’m doing with the van, too. With temperatures being so high, I’m mostly just in the van to grab some things or to go to sleep. I spend my time at my boyfriend’s house, working online at Chick fil A, or spending all day at the gaming bar on free ladies day. So why the van, if I’m not living in it any more than I was living in my house.

I realized that expectation is the difference in what makes the van more comfortable for me. Having a whole house creates a certain set of expectations just by its being and by your having it.

I found this post in my drafts. Apparently, I never posted it. It’s 5 months later now, and I’m well settled into my new home at The Wallow. What has happened and what has yet to come? Here’s the draft I wrote back in August:

“I won’t be moving to my new house in Tennessee until October. So much waiting! I’m reading up on bees and pigs in the meantime, as well as prepping for Burning Man and Alchemy, which happen between now and then. There’s lots to do, but I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming away, too.”

I heard a commercial on the radio the other day for a car dealership. Usually, I don’t listen to commercials. I change the station as soon as they start. This one caught my mind wandering though, and managed to sneak in a line. Here’s what I heard the moments before I got to the dial: “We have every car, from entry level to the car that says ‘You’ve arrived!’”

Now that it’s 2010, I’m thinking towards the year ahead, which always involves a nod back to where I’ve been. The biggest whirlwind of awesome has been in just the last handful of months. In case you missed some posts, here are a few of the highlights for me:

The Wallow has lots of distinct parts to it. There’s the house, of course. There’s the two-story barn, which now contains Joshua’s workshop. There’s the hill, which is behind the house. There’s the forest-ish area on the way to the creek, where the bee hives are. There’s the front yard, which will be the garden area come spring. There’s The Bowl, an area made up of driveway and concrete walls at basement level, making it seem like you’re in a bowl of concrete. There’s The Island, a grass and tree space between the two main driveways where Joshua chops wood and wood that has been delivered is stored. And finally, there’s the area we’ve been calling the field or the pasture.

The field is about a 1/2 acre of space, enclosed in a high-quality wooden fence. This is the area that we plan to use for keeping animals. However, like the rest of the property, it had been completely taken over by brushy weeds.

While Joshua and I closed on our new house in mid-September, we didn’t move until mid-October, because for the beginning of October we were participating in Alchemy, a Burning Man-related event in Georgia. I’ve tried before and failed, so I’m not going to attempt to describe a burn to you. If you’ve never been, you can probably tell from pictures whether it’s your kind of thing, in which case you should go. It’s always the pictures that speak the most to me about burn events, so I’ll just share some of the photos with you. None of these photos are mine. They are all borrowed from various artists from the Alchemy 2009 Flickr pool.

In the past few days, we have set up most of the rooms in our home, Joshua has tilled three garden beds and built a work bench, I’ve begun building a crafting table, Joshua mowed and we both raked up the grass to become hay for later, we worked on hoeing the weeds off the brick walkways, we ran cable for internet, we’ve grilled out several nights, we sit on our front porch swing and enjoy the view, we’ve met some neighbors, and so many other random bits of this and that.

Today Joshua and I closed on our new house!

I’m on my way to becoming a farm girl! Last night Joshua and I signed the contract on the house. (Well, Joshua signed it, I looked on in awe.) We’re hoping to close by the end of this month, but I have no reference for how likely that is. It seems soon, but our broker thinks it’s do-able.