Doorknob:

"Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction."*

Next week, we are scheduled to officially close on our first house. Our experiences with neighborhood-searching, house-hunting, and mortgage rate shopping have run the emotional gamut. From frustrating to exhilarating, we've now settled on anxious. As a "big-picture" thinker, I've been imagining the moment we can let Evie explore her new home and enjoy the backyard (if not the woods, yet). In my mind, our new house is rearranged and decorated the way we'd like and Evie is frolicking amidst the lilac bushes while I write. In order to progress to that point of sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our labor, I suppose we actually need to labor.

Fortunately, in the age-old romantic tradition of couples complementing one another**, my husband is largely a task-by-task thinker. And, while he may not be able to visualize what the new living room would like in a certain shade of olive, he is much better than I at hunkering down and knocking items off of our to-do list. Today we purchased new door hardware (a very classic and stylish handle set for the front door and a bronze lever handle for the door from the garage). We needed to change the locks anyway and decided that an upgrade was in order. After a little hemming and hawing about the merits of this door handle or that, Eve decided that, after approximately one and a half hours inside Home Depot, she had reached her limits and gave me a sweet, if exasperated, look which begged the question: could she please have her nap? We made our final decision, steered the loaded orange shopping cart to the checkout, and we are now the proud owners of new door handles (and a plethora of painting supplies).

* Bonus points if you can identify the quotation.

** I wouldn't exactly say that we represent the old "opposites attract," we actually have quite a bit in common. Our methods of processing and relaying information, however, could hardly be more different.

***The font and size on blogger.com are rather uncooperative right now, I'll attempt to adjust them again in a while.