Edith, 100% Ohioan

My Brooklyn baby has become a Columbus toddler. As of two days ago, she has officially lived in Ohio longer than New York.

I find this a little bittersweet, although putting into words the reason why is difficult. After all, she essentially became an Ohioan through and through the day we moved here in July. It could hardly be otherwise. She was only eight months old when we moved, so she was far too young to have any memories of actually living in New York. And with two Ohio natives as parents, she definitely has Buckeye blood.

Maybe it's because she had the potential to be a New Yorker. Growing up in the country, I always wanted to live in the big city. New York was my castle in the sky (the Baby-Sitters Club books set there were my favorites), but I wasn't picky -- Chicago would have done nicely, too! So maybe that's it -- Edith could have lived my dream.

I know, I know -- the last thing you're supposed to do as a parent is live through your child. But it's hard for me not to wonder if she'll one day regret leaving Brooklyn, if she'll wonder what might have been if we would have stayed.

Or maybe, as a city girl herself, cornfields and amber waves of grain will end up being more her speed, and her own dream will be to move to a farm. That would bring it full circle, wouldn't it?

Our Moving Saga

When you're in the middle of a move, the last thing you want to hear is that your mover is going out of business.

We officially moved into our new house two weeks ago, but the movers didn't deliver our stuff until late Saturday night. Thankfully we had bought a new bed, so we did have something to sleep on. Besides that and Edith's pack and play, we had little furniture besides a butterfly chair, an old uncomfortable rocker left behind by the previous owners and the porch furniture. We lived in an empty house for about 10 days.

It wasn't supposed to be like that. The day we found out that our closing was scheduled for Aug. 20, I called the movers to say we could accept delivery of our shipment as early as Wednesday, Aug. 21. I was told it would be delivered that Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

When I called about the status on that Thursday, I was told that whoever told me that was wrong. A truck would be going out possibly that weekend. Our stuff would be delivered the next week.

I was upset. Paul was less so. Movers, after all, are notoriously late. He predicted this.

But we couldn't predict what happened over the next week. I called the moving company on Monday to check on the status. The woman who answered the phone asked if we received the email. What email? The one stating the company was going out of business on Sept. 1 and that our shipment would be delivered by another company.

All questions were to be answered by this new company. However, the contact details didn't inspire confidence: Two first names, no last names, a cell phone number and a Yahoo email address. And they didn't answer multiple phone messages, texts or emails. Eventually their voice mailbox wouldn't even accept new messages.

At this point, I wondered if we would ever see our stuff again.

We never did receive this email -- the company misspelled Paul's email address during the original send, and we have no idea why the subsequent attempts weren't successful. Finally, however, the new company replied to an email. There was a mistake. They didn't agree to deliver residential shipments. Call the original company.

That email came late Tuesday, Aug. 27. On Wednesday I voiced my extreme concerns to a man who appeared to head up the reservation center, based in Florida. He hadn't heard about this twist, and when we spoke several hours later, he gave me the cell phone number of the owner of the company we originally contracted with.

Of course, I called immediately. He said our shipment would be delivered Friday.

This was already a week late, so I wasn't happy. Still, Paul took the day off work, and my parents planned to come to watch Edith while we went out for our anniversary that night.

I confirmed on Thursday, and a woman in the office said our shipment should arrive about noon Friday, and the driver would call when he was an hour away. Paul and I anxiously waited, and when we still hadn't heard from the driver by 1 or 2, we got nervous. The office woman couldn't or wouldn't help, so we called the owner.

The shipment never left.

What followed was a shouting match. Why hadn't the truck left that day? (Truck broke down, supposedly.) Why weren't we told? (Never got the answer to that.) When would we get our stuff? (Sunday.)

Nope, not Sunday, we said. It would be delivered on Saturday. Make it happen.

And for good measure, I called the owner at 5:15 a.m. Saturday morning to confirm everything was on schedule. We had understood they were to get the truck at 4 a.m.,  it would be loaded and then delivered by 4 p.m.

It didn't come until 10 p.m.

To give them credit, the two deliverymen were extremely nice and very efficient. Still, they didn't leave until 12:30 a.m., and that was with Paul, my dad  and I unwrapping the blankets that protected the furniture and generally helping to move things. Mom watched an exhausted Edith, who cried and didn't fall asleep until about the time the movers left.

We were lucky my parents arrived that morning and decided to take a chance that the movers would actually come that day. We might still be unloading if they hadn't been there.

I would say stay away from this company, but it's already out of business. Lucky everyone else.

On Leaving New York

A storm rolls into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Bittersweet is a word overused by me and nearly everyone else on the planet, but it's the single best word to describe how I feel about leaving New York in a month.

Sometimes "bitter" predominates, particularly on these perfect spring days when the city that never sleeps is so welcoming that you don't want to sleep either. But leaving seems particularly sweet when you're hauling two loads of laundry around the corner, or Paul has to spend 20 minutes finding a parking spot.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to being closer to my family and Ohio friends. And equally obvious should be the fact that I'm going to miss the friends I've made in New York. But even aside from these connections, I'm going to miss Brooklyn and all of New York City themselves.

I'm still working this all out in my head, and when I do I'll have a longer blog post on the subject. It's difficult to explain, and I'm sure whatever I come up with will sound trite. I suspect this post already does.

In the meantime, life now is much more prosaic, filled with the ho-hum chores of packing, picking a moving company and finding an apartment we can call home until we find an actual home.

Three Years in New York

We told ourselves we'd be in New York a year or two.

Today, it's been three.

Paul has said that he expected this to happen. I didn't expect it, but I had hoped. I'm certainly not ready to commit a lifetime to New York (see last week's posts about Ohio), but I did want to actually live in New York and not be just another tourist-as-resident.

That first week we moved here in 2007 was obviously very busy, but a few things stand out in my mind. Lying awake at night, wondering if I would ever be able to sleep through the horribly loud traffic. Having an oven that didn't work and a refrigerator that hummed incessantly (the former was fixed and the latter replaced within a few weeks). Wondering if we made a huge mistake.

But my best memory of that first week was on our first Sunday here. Paul had to return to work the next day after having the week off, and even though I didn't yet have a job, it still felt like the end of my vacation, too.

The week had been gray and rainy, but that Sunday was sunny and just cool enough for a light jacket. The perfect fall day. We took the train to Central Park and wandered. The park was crowded enough that it probably would annoy me now, but I liked it then. It didn't matter. I was living in New York.

I still get that feeling sometimes. Not every day, not even every week. But every few months I'll see or do something that makes me so happy to live here. When that goes away, I'll know it's time for me to leave.

Two Years in New York

Two years ago today I spent about ten hours in a car with two cats and a tense husband.

Yes, two years ago today, we moved to New York.

A traffic jam in Pennsylvania put us a couple of hours behind schedule, so we didn't arrive in Bay Ridge until long after dark. The cats were scared stiff not only by the new digs, but by the sharp beeps from our fire alarm every few seconds alerting us that it needed new batteries. Tired and starving, we dragged a ladder that happened to be in the entryway to our building up to our third floor apartment to unhook the alarm.

By this time, it was almost midnight, and we still hadn't eaten supper. The Mexican restaurant/bar downstairs appeared to be closing, but the Mediterranean place across the street was still open. I don't remember what I ordered, but I do remember watching the Cleveland Indians beat the Yankees in the playoffs while we ate.

Back in our empty apartment -- we wouldn't be getting our furniture until the next day -- we unrolled a couple of blankets on the floor and quickly fell asleep.

I've long found it ironic that we chose Columbus Day 2007 as the day we left Columbus, Ohio. Seems like there should be some meaning to that. Something about exploration? Maybe I'll have a thesis by next year's anniversary post.

Home sweet home?

We've been here two weeks and two days now, and I think we have only one box left to unpack.

The books are on their shelves, the electronics are plugged in and the coffee table/trunk is in place.

At long last all of our appliances are working, and we even have the internet at home. Pop open a bottle of wine!

We left Columbus at 10 a.m. Oct. 8 and arrived in Brooklyn 12 hours and 4 cat scratches later. Will and Grace didn't meow quite the entire trip. Grace was actually quite curious, looking out the windows and and (unsuccessfully) trying to sit with the driver. Will spent most of his time in the (unused) litter box. When we got to the apartment, they spent at least a portion of the first hour laying on top of each other in a small cranny in the bathroom.

Our 100 boxes and various pieces of furniture arrived the next day. I felt bad for the movers, carrying box after box of books, a sofa and dressers up about 30 stairs (no elevator here, fellas!).

Most of the rest of that first week was dedicated to unpacking. It almost felt like Christmas, except you knew that everything you unwrapped was something you really wanted. In Columbus, Paul had placed in a large rubber tub about 50 beer bottles he uses for homebrewing, thinking the movers would shrink-wrap the tub as-is. Instead, they wrapped the bottles up two or three at a time in a few pieces of thick white paper. Some forest somewhere is down a tree or two thanks to us.

We didn't leave Brooklyn-- and it didn't actually feel like we were in New York City-- until the first Sunday. We rode the train to Central Park and leisurely strolled the grounds for a couple of hours. (That's Paul in the photo with, I believe, the Upper East Side in the background.) I tried to determine who were the locals and who were the tourists, not really sure which group I now fit into.