It’s 4:30 in the morning in Phoenix and I’m wide awake, ready to get on with Operation Nesting. I’m here for ten days to help my daughter and her family settle into their new home. The keys are theirs for good, or at least until they’re ready to pass them on to someone else. For now, there’s a maze of boxes and appliances to navigate and that question that comes up every time you unwrap something. Where should I put this? That’s where I come in.
I arrived last night, and here I am in the wee hours, flying through my old Pinterest boards. I rarely go on Pinterest these days, and I have to say, it’s come a long way since I was gathering ideas for Tahilla Farm. Of course, once I started looking, there was my English phase from our years in the UK, then all the ideas for Château Mango, our home in Vietnam. Even Hong Kong 43, our apartment in Hong Kong. But I digress.
The house is a classic mid-century Phoenix ranch with a shaded front porch. I’m already wondering how much that porch might tell me about the house. Here, the sun is bright and the summer temperatures are off the charts. You’d think I’d be figuring out where to put the toaster, but at 4:30 in the morning I’m already leaning toward a little mid-century California bungalow. We’ll see what my daughter thinks when she wakes up.
In the meantime, I’m keeping quiet. Baby Fletcher is still asleep. More soon…
Update
My daughter is braver than I am. She’s putting together a desk and a set of drawers for her office. There are pieces everywhere, all with letters on them. I get the jitters just looking at the instructions.
One thing I’ve learned. Before you open an enormous box, make sure you have the tools. Once it’s open, you’re committed. In our case, that means a road trip to borrow a drill, a hammer, and a box cutter from friends in town.
Like her mother, my daughter has a knack for starting these projects when her husband is away and unreachable. The tools are in the shed. He knows the combination.
There’s nothing like a challenge to get the energy flowing. Fingers crossed…
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