We have a new kitchen

and literally everything is now forever altered deep within my soul.

We’ve got a new kitchen in our house.

It took six months and all our money and college probably won’t exist by the time our kids graduate from high school anyway, and

IT.

IS.

PERFECT.

My new kitchen has green cabinets and wide drawers with many segments for many utensils and a garbage disposal and a sink big enough to bathe a small child. I’ve spent the weekend unpacking our things and outfitting the space with all kinds of organizational and aesthetic accoutrements, and I am pleased to report that I am now a completely new and different person.

In my new kitchen, my coffee lives in pretty glass jars with a bamboo tray. In fact, many things are perched upon bamboo trays now. The soap, a little wooden dish brush I’m not sure how to use, my salt and pepper. We’re all so much better for it, the soap and salt and pepper and I.

In my new kitchen, I drink chocolate collagen powder mixed with ice and water in a neat little shaker straw cup and I’m quite certain I’ll be exponentially more youthful the next time I look in the mirror. It tastes like water that once read a long-form think piece about how chocolate is supposed to taste and it got a lot of ideas and was really into it, but got distracted by a TikTok video a third of the way through and then went back to the article hours later and just scrolled to the bottom and read the last paragraph and figured it got the gist well enough.

It did not.

It doesn’t matter, because in my new kitchen we’re all about health and how beauty starts from within. In my new kitchen, the new me won’t worry about carbs or have to buy a size up in jeans every year because we just eat what our bodies need and we care about the kind of fuel we put into our tanks and when you listen to your body and take good care of yourself, it shows. The new me won’t pick at clogged pores because she won’t have any because she just exudes clean living and she practically glows. The old me probably wouldn’t have understood this a few weeks ago, but drinking chocolate collagen water in a well-lit, orderly room really helps a person evolve, which is ironic because in the process of moving forward I’m actively aging backwards with every virtuous sip.

In my new kitchen, I have acquired lovely glass jars with bamboo lids and I’m sure we’re all on the edge of our seats wondering what they will contain. Half a box of dried pasta? A quarter of a bag of pretzels? Several days’ worth of chocolate collagen powder? That bag of lentils I bought four years ago and just keep moving around to different shelves? Perhaps in my new kitchen, the new kitchen version of me will actually cook the lentils. And perhaps the new version of me’s children will even eat the lentils. One thing is quite certain: I do not regret purchasing those glass jars. In fact, I see now that I need many more of them in a much wider array of sizes. Yes. It is evident to me that the purpose of the jars can only reveal itself once I have completed the assortment. I will know in my heart when the mission has been fulfilled. The kitchen will guide me and all will be made clear in due time.

The new version of me that has a new kitchen also has a nice, big desk with lots of drawers and shelves and cabinets. It has a cute glass dry erase board upon which the new me has written a to-do list which I will complete without fuss in a timely manner. The desk has an in/out acrylic paper tray in which I have placed all the mail I’ve been ignoring, for it is finally time to pay the $3.96 balance I’ve owed a medical lab since last November for a kid’s strep test. This me pays her bills upon receipt and doesn’t require a series of increasingly colorful and threatening notices, although I’ll admit that sometimes it’s just nice to get a letter.

My new kitchen has a beautiful half bathroom directly off the office space in which the new me will accomplish all kinds of feats of productivity. She will write things down in her calendar as she learns of them and certainly won’t forget to empty her kids’ folders on a daily basis in order to make a timely note of important school events like Crazy Sock Day and Dress Like a Centenarian Day. She will make doctor’s appointments before it’s too late. She will always know where her scissors are.

The new half bathroom has dramatic, artfully ornate wallpaper and a big, aged brass mirror and high ceilings and my son just walked past me as I typed, pulled down his pants to pee without closing the thoughtfully considered new pocket door, looked directly at me and then let out a very long, very loud fart without breaking eye contact or stopping his flow.

“Did you hear that fart, mom?”

Yes. We all heard the fart. The new me, the old me, the whole gang.

The new version of me who has a new kitchen and a new desk and a new adjacent fart-room is nonplussed. We’re just feeling hopeful and excited to find out more about us and what we’re capable of achieving. What possibilities lie ahead now that my home and brain are no longer filled with cardboard boxes and construction dust? What will my new future hold now that the old me went out with the old Tupperware I’d had for a decade, even though I’d long ago lost most of the relevant lids and they were all permanently scratched and stained with tomato sauce? Perhaps this version of me won’t cram her pantry with duplicates of items she could have sworn she was out of before she went to the store. Perhaps this me won’t let the kids keep their Halloween candy for an entire 12-month period. This me will probably still have a cabinet filled with plastic bags full of other plastic bags, but perhaps she will wash her berries in vinegar every week so that they keep forever and she won’t eat cold cuts standing up at the counter as a meal. She’s going to use her onions before they liquify and her potatoes before they sprout legs and run for safety because now they live in lovely, dedicated bins in the pantry and they know which side of the bread their butter’s on. And maybe this me will sit down and finally become the writer I keep claiming to be to other people when they ask me “what else I do” aside from manage my household and care for my children and feed my family and volunteer for every damn thing and drink liquid collagen and stare at empty glass jars. Maybe it’s all happening.

Anything can happen. Everything can happen. Maybe maybe maybe.