We’re here! Actually we’ve been here for a week, but it has
been VERY busy.
I still have some photos from our cross-country trip to
post, but I figured I would start with some observations about our home for the
next four-ish months.
Chesire, Connecticut is a town of about 30,000 in southern
Connecticut. It seems to be highly regarded among towns in the area, and has a
reputation for good schools. In fact, it was recently named by Time Magazine as
one of the top 50 places to live in the US. Some old friends of ours moved to
Cheshire while we lived in Boston, and we visited them many times since
(although much less frequently since moving to California).
It was tough trying to find a decent rental in Cheshire for
less than a year, but after much hard work by Dan, we finally found one. We
wanted to stay in Cheshire because a) our friends are here, b) it has good
schools, c) it is close to Dan’s university, and d) elementary school goes
through the 6th grade. A couple of neighboring towns had good
schools, but middle school started in 6th grade. We felt it would be
a cruel and unusual punishment for Charlie to start a new school AND middle
school at the same time, not to mention the extra aggravation of having the
kids at two different schools. So Cheshire it was.
What Dan managed to find was a 3-bedroom apartment on the
second floor of a historic house in the middle of downtown Cheshire. We love
historic houses, so welcomed the opportunity to live in one again. The bonus
was that it was newly renovated inside. The house is called the George Keeler
house, and was originally built in about 1875. Apparently it is a well-known
house in the town. The story we heard is that the George Keeler house and
another old house next to it were in disrepair and belonged to the same owners.
The owners and the town came to an agreement where the other house would be
torn down since it was unsalvageable, and the George Keeler house would be
restored. The owners did a very nice job restoring our house – they must have
gutted the entire inside of the house, and the outside is freshly painted with
new landscaping. Here’s a photo of the kids and me in front of the house:
Having lived in a historic house before, we are fairly
tolerant of old house quirks. For example, the floors are nowhere near level.
We haven’t measured it yet, but we’re talking like a ½-inch per foot in some
places! Oh well…
The other downside we’ve found is that the owners have
started construction on a new building that is attached to the existing
building (you can see it to the left in the photo). The hammering and other
construction noises have been quite annoying, but the framing seems to be going
quickly, and we’re hoping the noise will die down once they’ve finished with
the shell of the new building.
Our friends did an amazing job of finding us a huge amount
of furnishings for our apartment before we arrived, so when we showed up they
had already moved in a queen bed, dining room table and chairs, desk and chair,
lots of kitchen stuff including a COFFEE MAKER (very important) and COFFEE
(ditto), and a ton of other stuff. They are the best!
Including a futon cushion without the frame:
The kids seem to be liking it just fine!
We have mostly finished furnishing the apartment after visiting several garage sales and an estate sale, three trips to IKEA, one trip to Target, two visits to
Goodwill, two trips to Costco, and a visit to a mattress store. It is hard to
resist the urge to buy more than the minimum needed for a functional living
space, but I keep reminding myself that whatever we buy here we either have to
get rid of or ship it cross-country. I have been restraining myself admirably,
although for some reason Dan still won’t let me go to IKEA by myself. I wonder why…
Much of the first half of the week was spent getting the
kids registered at the neighborhood school. It will probably be a post of its own
someday, but suffice it to say that ever since I called the school about 3
months ago to find out about getting the kids registered, Murphy’s law has been
highly in play. I tried to get as much done ahead of time as I could, but since
we arrived we have made two trips to Urgent Care for school-related issues, made
some frantic calls and emails to the kids’ former school, made two trips to the
new school, and made many other phone calls and web searches trying to get
everything done so they could start school this past Thursday. I lost quite a
bit of sleep over it, but I am happy to say that they were able to start school
on Thursday along with all the other kids, and even got to meet their teachers
the day before. In keeping with the whole Murphy’s Law thing,
Alice’s first name and middle name were switched when she was put into the school
system, but we were able to clear it up with her teacher so at least the first
day she didn’t have everything with the wrong name on it.
Charlie and Alice in front of their new school, Highland
Elementary.
Checking out the playground equipment.
First day of school!
I am glad that their school had only two days of school this
week – after all the issues getting them enrolled, and then the stress of the
first couple days of school (their bus was 40 minutes late the first day! Murphy again...), I think we all are looking forward to the weekend.
Dan and I are slowly regaining our New England driving
sensibilities. We are once again getting used to the lanes that suddenly appear
and then just as suddenly disappear, roads that change name every few miles, no
street grids, major potholes, etc. On the upside, gas is extraordinarily cheap by
our standards - we paid $2.42/gal today.
The kids were, for the most part, real troupers while we
dragged them around to all the shopping, although I admit at IKEA we did bribe
them with the promise of ice cream. Sadly that did not prevent a classic Alice
MeltdownTM in the middle of the lighting area. So we still do not have a lamp for the dining room.
Alice has made a friend at school already (a girl in her
class who is also new to the school) and Charlie has been able to play
Minecraft and Terraria with his online friends and friends from back home,
although the time difference makes things a bit tricky for being able to play
at the same time as his friends in SLO. No word yet on whether he has found someone at school to talk about Minecraft with, although I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
We’ve visited the town library twice so far. It is about an
8-minute walk from our house, and is very nice. One of the things I have really
missed about the area is their fantastic libraries. Cheshire is smaller than
SLO but has a much better library. The teen area alone is about the size of the
entire children’s room in SLO. I am definitely looking forward to taking advantage of the library
while we’re here!
I’ve been going for runs on the nearby multi-use path that follows
the route of an old canal. I’m told the path goes for miles and miles. The path
is flat, straight, and shady, making it an ideal running route. I am still figuring
out how to cope with the high humidity, which makes it feel like I am inhaling
soup when I run. Develop gills maybe?
I think we’ve accomplished a lot in our first week. School,
work, and the apartment have mostly fallen into place. More importantly, I
think we have settled in enough that instead of feeling strange, most things
feel almost normal. After three weeks on the road and a crazy busy first week here,
almost normal feels pretty darn good.
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