Holy moly, this place gets COLD.
 
Or maybe that's just me. I lost forty pounds last year, and ever since I've been super sensitive to the cold - even more than usual. But when I married my husband, I also moved across the country. From a place that almost never gets snow in the winter, to a place that gets it pretty much every year. It's fall now, and boy, is it cold. It hasn't even hit freezing yet, and I want to bundle up like a sausage. This winter is going to be brutal.
 
In other news, I made the mistake of looking at our wedding pictures tonight. Terrible mistake. They're beautiful pictures, and I love them. But it's a reminder that all the people I love are so far away. My parents, my grandparents, my cousins, my friends...they're all an eight-hour flight away, and I haven't seen any of them in person for six months. The realization that most of the people I love won't ever be in the same place again hit really hard. It's painful to realize that I can't just walk to my Grandma's house if she needs my help. I can't watch my siblings if my parents have an emergency. I can't hug my friends when they're hurt or angry. I can't hug my sister for her birthday.
 
I'm making myself cry. I need to write about something else.
 
Ummm....the house is finally coming together. Not fast enough, though. Our garage is still mostly full of my MIL's stuff, which turned out to be a bad thing. We couldn't park our car in there, and it got broken into. We went to get inside one day to go shopping, and the contents of the glovebox were strewn across my seat. Nothing was taken that we can tell, and there wasn't anything of real value in there anyway, thank goodness. But it was enough to freak me out a little bit. I *did* feel safe here, but now I'm not so sure. If someone can break into a car, then can they break into a house? Our house?
 
It was frightening. My husband, though, is doing what he can to make me feel safe again. He's amazing. <3 I went around the house and locked all the windows, and we've been locking the door up tight every night. I've got some of my hand weapons from martial arts training within easy reach. I'll probably never need them, and it sounds kind of silly, but it makes me feel better.
 
Anyway, the house is coming together nicely. It looks so much better than it did before. I've decorated the fireplace mantel with my pretty figurines and some seashells and sparkly rocks. I've filled the shelves by the fireplace with our books, put my cupcake dishes in the kitchen and filled them with fruit. Hung white Christmas lights around the opening over the half wall between the kitchen and the work area and around the bathroom mirror. I've vacuumed the floors, which, until recently, we couldn't even see. I've swept the hard floors, linoleum, and wood, and wiped down the counters, the oven, the fridge. I reorganized the kitchen cabinets so nothing is on the floor or counters that shouldn't be.
 
I've also been working on my cooking and baking. I've almost mastered lasagna now, and I found an amazing recipe for pumpkin sugar cookies with caramel cream cheese frosting that we ate in two days. The only processed foods we have are the bag of Jolly Ranchers my husband wanted, and a small bag of peppermint patties for me. I've figured out how to bake biscuits that are healthy and can be used for sandwiches, too, eliminating the too-hard yeast-less bread I was making before. I'm making omelets for him for breakfast, with cheese and vegetables inside. I learned how to make poached eggs, and crack an egg open with one hand.
 
I've been spending a lot more time in the living room. It's so...nice...down there now. It's clean, and my MIL isn't there. I can take my crafting projects down and work on them on the couch. I can do laundry down there, eat in the living room, or just read a book and be near my husband. It's wonderful.
 
But, the best news yet.
 
My best friend, my cousin, is coming for a visit in two weeks. And she's staying for TEN DAYS. We're going to celebrate an early Thanksgiving/Christmas together, with all of our old family traditions. I'm going to make our traditional goodies (chocolate covered cherries, buckeyes, rice krispy treats, lemon tea cookies, chocolate chip cookies...) we're going to eat Asian food on "Christmas Eve" and then watch A Christmas Story. I'm so excited. I've missed her so much! She's an HSP, like me, so she understands virtually everything I've gone through, and can see why things would bother me. Things that anyone else would just brush off. I've missed that support. That feeling of being understood on that level. My husband is amazing. I love him so much, and I wouldn't trade him for anyone. He tries so hard to understand, and he does remarkably well. He's not an HSP, though, and he's also a man, so there are going to be things he doesn't get. And it's not fair for me to hope he gets them all, for him to be my only close friend. That's a lot of pressure for him.
 
Also, he;s going to be out working without me for the first time since the break-in, and it'll ease my fears to not be alone the first time.
 
The people at church invited us to a little potluck, and I brought cookies. We actually had decent conversations with people, and I found another lady (who, admittedly, is quite a bit older than me) who has a similar passion for cooking from scratch and digging through thrift stores. Her personality was exactly right to get me talking, and our shared interests made it even more fun. And her husband does computer stuff, which my husband seemed to like, since they talked for a while, too. It was a lot of fun, and it was so nice to really talk to someone.
 
Afterward it was weird. My husband has mentioned before that he doesn't think I'm full introvert because of how I interact with people. In a way, I have a surge of energy after certain social interactions. But I'm also always exhausted. So...maybe he's right? Maybe I am an extrovert, but I'm an HSP, so it's confusing the issue? I dunno. Either way, it was nice.
 
So I've been feeling pretty awesome lately, despite the sudden cold and the runny nose that came with it. It feels like things are going my way for now, and I'm going to enjoy it!