Goin' Back to Indiana

When I was sixteen, I couldn't wait to get out of my small town.  I dreamed of living in a big city, living footloose and fancy-free.  I stayed in Indianapolis after I graduated from Butler and lived a great life...for a while.  After a particularly rough patch, I moved back to Valparaiso because I needed to be home.  I bought a house, had a great job, incredible friends, and my amazing family.  I stayed for a few years, and then I moved to Lexington to start my life with Trevor.  I like Lexington a lot; it's a fantastic city with a small-town feel.  I have some pretty fabulous friends here and a home that I have worked hard to fill with beauty and love. But lately, I have felt like something was missing.  It took a little while for me to realize that what I have been missing is home.

Lexington is my adopted home, but Valpo will always be where my heart is.  My family is there, my friends are there, and Chicago is pretty darn close.  It seems as though the Wells family is ready for a change, so we're heading to Indiana.  Trevor is ready to get a buzz cut and bust out the Picket Fence on a regular basis.  (If you are scratching your head at that reference, you haven't seen the movie Hoosiers enough times.  Go watch it.  I'll wait.)

So, yeah.  We're moving.  If you had asked me five years ago if we would ever move my family to Valpo, I probably would have given you a blank stare.  But there is something about having kids that makes one long for a sense of family.  We're going to live in my parents' neighborhood: according to my friend Tiffany, that's either genius or insane.  My kids will go to the same schools that my niece and nephew attended.  We'll live about 1/10th of a mile from my brother, sister-in-law, and their family. It's going to be fantastic, chaotic, agitating, soothing, and gratifying.

 The details: Trevor will continue to work for Miller Wells, but he'll work remotely from home.  He'll still have to come back to Lexington once a month or so for meetings, court appearances, or just to get away from being at home with me 24/7.  (I kid.  I kid!)  My parents are keeping their condo here in town, so we'll all have a place to stay when we come back to visit or when Trevor comes back to work.  Our new home is nothing like our current home.  Although I adore our historic home on a beautiful street close to downtown, I'm looking forward to having a newer house with windows that open (!) and less square footage for me to clean.  It also has a totally sweet theater room in the finished, daylight basement.  I will miss the quirky character and beauty of our almost-one-hundred-year-old house, but I'm eager to make our new house into our home.  (And if you know anyone who is looking for a fantastic house in the Bluegrass, here it is: our home listing.)

Although I will be a Midwest housewife when we move in the summer, I'm going to keep the name of my blog.  I started writing as a housewife of the Bluegrass, and changing the name of the blog just doesn't feel right.  I put myself out there as Real Housewife of the Bluegrass, and that is what I'll stay.

I'm going to miss lots of things about Lexington: the family and friends we have here, our babysitter who has become a member of the family, walking to the local park, the huge public library, the wonderful preschool both kids attend, Cajun fast food, the Kentucky theater, the complete panic when there is a threat of snow...wait, no.  I won't miss that at all.  Lexington has been good to me for almost seven years and I know it will be a period of huge transition for all of us.  But I know in my heart that as long as I'm with the people I love, I'll be home.

The skeleton in my laundry room

I’m about to let the world in on a shocking secret.  Are you ready for it?  Are you sitting down?

I don’t like to iron.

There.  I said it.  Go ahead and judge.  Let the name-calling begin!  Throw some rotten tomatoes at me if you feel the need.  You won’t change my mind, though.  I just don’t like to iron.

I’m a housewife.  I do everything under the sun during my daily life.  I plan, chop for, and cook meals; I bake; I clean the house from top to bottom; I do laundry on a daily basis; I ferry kids to school, parks, play dates, grandparents’ houses, and appointments; I have been known to mend a hole or two in a t-shirt; I do the yard work; I deal with servicemen who come to the house; I do the majority of the child rearing; I give moral support to my family.  Note that ironing isn’t included anywhere on that list. 

When Trevor and I first got married, I did try to fulfill my wifely duties by ironing his shirts.  I realized a couple of things right off.  I’m not good at ironing.  I mean, I’m terrible.  I had a great teacher; my mom rocks at ironing.  In fact, she finds ironing relaxing.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The woman enjoys ironing.  I’m not sure how I came from her womb.  Anyway, when I iron, whatever I’m ironing ends up looking worse than it did when I started.  Quite often, a shirt looks like a wild animal dragged it away, spent a restless night rolling on it, and deposited it back on my doorstep.  The second thing I realized is that Trevor is waaaaay too tall.  No, that’s not right.  He’s not too tall; his shirts are too tall.  The fabric pools on the floor on one side while I’m trying to smooth out the creases on the other side.  It’s not pretty.  And with all of the wrestling I do to keep the shirt from getting dirty, it just ends up wrinkled again.  And have I pointed out how much time it all takes?  Egad.  In the time it would take me to iron all of Trevor’s work shirts for a week, I could watch an entire episode of Dance Moms or Real Housewives of New Jersey.  Priorities, people.  Priorities.  Not to mention the safety issues.  If anyone would have kids who would run into the laundry room, trip over the iron’s cord, knock over the ironing board, and injure themselves or others, it would be me.  Clumsy is sort of my thing. 

I tend to enjoy chores that give me immediate gratification like mowing, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen, or organizing a closet.  By that definition, I should like ironing because I can watch the creases magically disappear.  But, c’mon, it’s not magic.  It’s my bum right shoulder making it happen, and that’s no magic, baby. 

My compromise with Trevor as soon as I realized my ineptitude was this: you took your stuff to the dry cleaner before we were married and you can keep doing it now. Where is the compromise?  There really isn’t one.  That’s the way I roll. 

So now you know my dirty little secret.  I’m the best housewife around, except when it comes to ironing.  Maybe someday, when the kids are older, I’ll go back to school and take Ironing 101.  Then again, maybe not.  After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.