new house

Who: Becky, Jesse, and Jessie
Where: The new house
When: After dinner

No matter what her days were like, Jessie knew that there was always one thing she could rely on to put things into perspective and make her feel better: her family. So a dinner with her grandparents was just what she needed. She was able to play with Leo for a while (who had been staying with her grandparents while the moving was under way) then help her grandma in the kitchen. She snuck tastes of the upcoming dinner out of pans and skillets as her grandmother cooked and set the table for a dinner and JJ knew was going to be delicious.

It was easy for her to get lost in her family and she was all too happy to focus on them and the recent purchase of their new house. Her grandmother chatted away with her and Becky, tossing ideas back and forth about the color of the kitchen, while her grandfather spent his time insisting Jesse let him know if he needed any help at all with renovations of any kind..not to mention letting his son know that he was proud of him for the step he'd just taken.

By the time dinner was over, Jessie's head was filled with images of what their new house looked like, which was good considering that their night wasn't nearly over yet. They'd spent some time at a furniture store that, thankfully enough, was open a little later than most. And Jessie had been energetic and eager the whole time they were shopping. But by now, Jessie was ready to be home. She hadn't had time to just get settled into the new house and she was more than ready now, so she was happy when they were finally home for the night. Kicking off her shoes, Jessie pulled her jacket off and smiled at the house, even if it was lacking in furniture. "Home sweet home..."

Jesse kicked his boots off, leaving them in the front entryway with his coat. And, he realized...he had a front entryway. It was strange. He had a big house. And while he had done all the paperwork, shopped for furniture, let the ladies have full free range to do whatever the hell they wanted with it, it was still sinking in slowly that he had a home. A proper home, with room for people, and it wasn't a shitty apartment where he didn't have his own room. and he had that now. And no sharing walls with neighbors who occasionally got too loud when they'd had too much to drink.

'Trippy' didn't seem to cover it. Still, what truly cut through everything, cut through the weird, cut through any misgivings he had...was the look on his daughter's face as she walked in and said what she did. Yeah, he deemed everything worth it, for that single moment in time. He leaned his shoulder against the wall, just watching her for a moment.

“Imagine how much better it’ll be once we have it all decorated,” Becky said with a sleepy kind of smile as she hung up her own coat. She toed off her shoes while she was at it, not wanting to track anything on the floors. She was in a little bit of awe herself. The apartment she lived in with her mom hadn’t been as small as Jesse’s old place, but it had been shabby with its own mess of problems. She walked past Jesse to sling her arm around JJ’s shoulders as they surveyed the living room. The couch was there, as was the little coffee table and the bookcase that was empty because things still hadn’t been fully unpacked. “You picked a damn good place, Chirp,” she congratulated.

"I did, didn't I?" She joked, a grin on her face as she looked up at Becky then back at her father. "We picked a good house. And you're right, it is going to be even better when we have things in it, but right now I kind of like it like this. It's like a big blank canvas that we can make into anything we want. But I think the first thing we do is unpack those figurines." She glanced back at her father, smiling more. "They need their own special place in here. When we get everything ready, they should have a dedicated shelf in the bookcase or..even their own shelf on the wall. Are we putting up shelves?" She asked as a general sort of question, even though she assumed there would be a lot of shelves being put up.

"I'm pretty sure I can handle shelf hanging without destroying something." Jesse told her. "So, wherever you want to put them, that's where they'll go." They had quite the collection, there might need to be more than one shelf. When you had a tradition like that, that carried on for years, you accumulated tons. "I'm pretty sure the boxes they were in are...." he paused, frowning as he tried to remember. "Er. The dining room?" he suggested. Since he'd had a lot of the boxes shoved in there, because it was a room they had never had before and therefore there wasn't anything to put in it, really. Not yet, anyways.

“I’m sure I saw the box in there,” Becky confirmed. Well, boxes to be more specific. All those little people wrapped in a sea of newspaper and scrap cloth. “Do you want to put them all in one place? I mean, there’s a lot and a lot more room. Maybe they could decorate each room?” she suggested because there was so much to cover and not enough to go around. It’s not like there was an accumulation of paintings and photographs to hang up.

"Good question...I was thinking of just putting them on the bookshelf until we get real shelves up but I like your idea too," She said, looking from Becky to her dad. "Should we do that? We each pick favorites and put them in our rooms? Or scatter them around the house?" It was still nice to say that. Around the house. They could actually put things around the house now. "If we do that, I know the perfect pair to put in the kitchen by the window."

"Do we really want to inflict ugly on every room of the house?" Jesse asked, amused. "We probably have enough to do that though." he added conversationally. "Also--I keep telling you two that I'm not decorating. That's your job. I bought the house, you turn it into a home. I swear that was the deal." he said.

Becky held her hands up in supplication. “This time it wasn’t me asking,” she said and nudged JJ’s shoulder with a smile. “Because there are a lot of them. Hell, we could turn this room into the ‘Ugly Room’. Chirp, what do you want to do?” JJ could make the decisions. That sounded like a good idea.

"Hey, it was just one question," She said, giving her father a grin. "I thought you might want some say in where they went, but I get it. No more decorating questions from me," She promised then turned back to Becky and finally around the room. "I like that idea. Their very own room, the living room. That way we can always see them when we walk in here and no matter what kind of day we had, they'll be there to cheer us up. We should put them up on the bookcase for now, until we get shelves..." Taking a few steps away from them, she glanced around the room and turned in a small circle. "I think we need a shelf here...and one there, at least."

Jesse paid attention to where she was indicating, and thought he was going to be spending the next week at home just doing little things like shelf building and painting, and shit like that. Which he guessed wasn't a bad place to be or anything. Might help him get his head straight, since it still didn't seem like it was, so much. But getting the house helped, and he was still thinking that now, maybe Ronnie just wouldn't find them anymore, and she wouldn't put the effort into searching.

Becky leaned against the door frame of the dining room, watching JJ gesture around for where she wanted things with a little smile on her face. It was kind of weird, talking decorating and house planning with the two of them and Becky was still having a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea, and maybe it wouldn't feel really real until it was all said and done. Her own thoughts were going to sleeping arrangements again because there was still just a bed and the couch but at least the next day the furniture would be in. "Sounds like you have it all planned out," she said.

"Pretty much everything except how I'm going to convince one of you guys to sleep on my bed for the night and let me take the floor tonight." She knew it was a lost cause but it was worth a shot, right? She doubted they'd break down and let her, but that didn't mean she had to stop trying. She made her way towards Becky and glanced into the dining room at the myriad of boxes in there. "I guess we didn't think ahead to mark the box 'Ugly' or anything, did we?"

"Not happening." Jesse said, freely answering for both of them. "It's your bed, you're sleeping in it. I'm sleeping on the floor, and Becky's sleeping on the couch. See? It's all worked out. I think it's a fine arrangement. One more night without a proper bed isn't going to kill anyone. Then there'll be beds aplenty and you won't have to worry about it ever again, Baby J." he told her, smiling.

Jessie gave her father back a knowing grin. "It was worth a shot," She said, before disappearing into the dining room and searching through the boxes. "They'd be in something smaller, right? We didn't space them out among boxes..." She said, thinking back to the blur of packing. "I don't think we did."

"We'll find them when we're ready to unpack them," Becky said, stifling a yawn as the food coma started to hit. "But they're probably in here. However I think I'm going to go experiment with the bathroom and get ready for bed. I can barely keep my eyes open anymore." She was feeling the exhaustion creep in and resisted the urge to rub her eyes. Tomorrow was going to be an even longer day with all the unpacking and the furniture.