KC-PB-NY: Settling In

D keeps telling me that I need to update my blog and continue on with my story. She is right so here I am. I need to write more. It is so healthy for me emotionally to write and get what I need out since I tend to hold things in until there is an explosion. Plus, I love writing and I love sharing my story with whoever decides to read my public journal.

I promise to continue on with our story of driving across the county, but I want to check in with how it is living here in New York after 7 weeks. Two words: Culture Shock!

D grew up here, but has been gone for the last 20+ years. A lot of things changes in that time and after living in small towns for at least the last 16 years, it's been a challenge for her. We just take it one day at a time and we have found that playing Uno is a great way for her to relax and distract her for a bit...especially if she is winning.

Living in NYC has always been a dream and wish of mine. We have lived here for 7 weeks now and I think L.I. (Long Island) is the closest I want to get to NYC. I am still getting used to all of the traffic. And most of the traffic is all the time. I have been out a few times around 7am on a weekend and it's not too busy out yet. I keep telling D that the traffic hasn't seemws that bad to me yet, but she keeps reminding me that we have barely left the town where we live. She's right...I am sure I will get to know the real traffic of L.I. when I start having a daily drive to work. At least a couple times a day we look at each other and say, I can't believe we live here. I love being so close to pretty much anything I need or want. It's been fun exploring the area around our house and finding the restaurants that we like or don't like, where to get Lizzy's food and where to get work done on our cars. During the inspection for my car they told me the brakes on my back tires were really low and I needed to get them changed soon. When I asked about making an appointment they told me to just come back..and sure enough when I took the car yesterday they got me right in and get this....I was charged less than originally quoted. Then this morning my tire pressure light came on and I found a tire store within a mile from us and I took it there today and with just a little bit of air in each tire the light came off and they didn't charge me anything. Such nice people.

People are starting to recognize D and I around town because of she uses lunch boxes for her pocketbook and her current one is a South Park one. The DMV people remembered us from her pocketbook, as did the waiter at the diner. One of the many things that I love so much about D...her willingness to not care what anyone thinks and carry around a metal lunch box as her pocketbook.

We finally got the blinds up on our house. It's made such a difference in the amount of noise we hear from the street. When we looked at this house it was in July and there was no school. We have about 8 buses that go up and down our street 2x a day and most times they are at full speed. It's impossible to have our front door open in the afternoon when the buses and all the cars are driving by...it's so loud and noisy. We have found that our neighborhood is pretty quiet otherwise. We have met all our surrounding neighbors and most seem pretty friendly. The one neighbor to our right brought us over 4 boxes of snack cakes from Sara Lee. It was a very sweet gesture.

So much to get used to that is different....trash here is 2x a week, plus once a week they pick up recycles, we get our mail right at our house (we are so used to having to go to the post office), still trying to get used to watching the NY news....so many scary things going on in the world and right down the street., I suddenly want to read all about L.I. history...there are signs all over that mark the place of a building from the 1800's, etc . So fascinating I'm loving learning so much.

Life here is so good for so many reasons. We had no choice in moving out of Leadville and when we knew we had to move we talked about different places we could move and it always came back to being here. We always said...family, friends, food and we have had so much of all 3 that our bellies and hearts are filling back up with food and love.