More than you bargained for

As I'm vacuuming my home for the 2nd or 3rd time my eye catches the piles of large plastic bags piled in the hallways. Instantly I'm reminded of another time, just 6 years ago...
We were building our new house, and thankfully our house sold pretty quickly. Just 5 months, leaving our new home a few months leeway. We gratefully found a rental home for just $500 a month. Only needing to be there for two months we decided to store all of our belongings. Mr. Carey already had the place decked out in garage sales finest. I'll have to admit it was hard for me to even sit on the couch. I love garage sale finds, but this couches burnt orange tufts made it look as if it were from 1912. It smelled awful to top things off.

Having packed up every toy except a few baby necessities and the girls' dollhouse we moved in to our fun georgetown two bedroom. Rebecca had a birthday the day of our move so we happily brought along a few new goodies to tinker with. Shortly after moving in (I think the same week) we decided to watch Finding Nemo at a local theater. 10 days later we discovered Elizabeth had lice. It took me a while to figure it out: the lice was from the theater. I was so sad as this meant I could not see my very dear friend who lived within walking distance!

The lice stayed on for a while. We could not get rid of them, and for a while I blamed that blasted couch! But I knew it wasn't the couch. Two months went by. We stayed home. We combed hair. We cleaned. We fumigated. We vacuumed. We found things to do at home.

I've often looked back at that time at Mr. Carey's as being a very carefree time. I could easily see that less stuff, a more simple life, and no mortgage gave for a carefree attitude. If something broke, we called the landlord. With fewer toys, pick-up was easy. One bathroom made for easy chore time. But vacuuming today brought me a new perspective. Not only were we down to bare bone necessities, we packed most of those things up to get rid of the lice. Every pillow, some blankets I didn't want to wash, and every stuffed animal were put away for two months. And we learned that we could do without. It's interesting to me that 6 years later at a time in our lives when we are trying to cut back, to do without new material things the very same thing would happen. I was thrilled to vacuum a room with hardly anything in it. It was so easy! So carefree!!! Not much to worry about. So it's funny that in a time like this when getting rid of lice is really hard I'd have this funny feeling in my heart of joy. Joy that for a little while things in some ways will be simpler.

Now to get rid of the stupid lice!