Getting there

I signed up for this blog months ago but every time I go near a computer system I end up tied in knots and frustrated, with a pounding headache.

Well I made a small amount of progress this week and I seem to have issued two blurbs although when I look at the admin. site it tells me I have nothing posted. I guess I need to bite the bullet and call for help, but I have a telephone phobia..whatever that is called, I’m not sure. It’s like I expect something awful to happen when I place a call. Yet when I was working I spent my life on the phone. Just one more thing I haven’t figured out yet.

Mostly my blog is going to be about the animals that have shared my life, but right now I want to write about the brief trip I took last weekend which was a small accomplishment as for the past twenty years I would make any excuse not to go away from home. I had basically become a hermit. But so much has changed since I returned east .

A very dear old friend called me recently, proposing that I should visit him in his new apartment, where we would have a mini rendezvous with some other old friends.

The first time Tim and I moved was in the apartment swap I mentioned in my first posting. Somehow our following moves have always remained synchronized, by sheer coincidence.

Just as I suddenly upped sticks from Washington State, Tim announced that he was selling his brownstone in Brooklyn. Whereas my move was long distance and fraught with problems, Tim, typically had everything fall neatly into place. His new home is a mere fifteen-minute walk from his old residence on Carlton Avenue. And he has gone up in the world, in more ways than one!

The purchase Tim made in 1987 turned out to be a great investment. For years he had tenants to help pay off his mortgage and generally keep the wolf from the door. But at age 75 he decided he really didn’t need the hassle anymore, and now he is in a 46th floor penthouse, and it’s all very nice, thank-you very much!

My personal idea of heaven is a little different. Washington State is lovely. I was thrilled to be there at first, close to the Pacific, with mountains all around, what could be wrong?

But I never wanted to live in suburbia. In the eighteen years I lived in Washington, I moved three times, and each time it started to encroach. Everything green was being bulldozed out of existence and replaced by box-like condos. One could not so much as pop out to get a loaf of bread without getting stuck in traffic.

So, I decided to return east. Before going to Washington, I had lived in New York for 36 years, so if anywhere is “home” for me, I suppose it would be the Empire State.

But I wanted no part of returning to Long Island’s madhouse. I discovered on the Internet that homes were affordable upstate. It was just a matter of finding the right one. I had driven back and forth to Maine a number of times, long ago, so I had some familiarity with the area, but the obvious place to start my search was a little community I had been reading about for the last decade. It sounded like the kind of place where I could be happy, and it was within easy reach of New York City where I still have a number friends.

While my move was complicated and stressful in bthe extreme, everything began to fall into place for me. Once the decision had been made, I became very focused and by keeping my mind on the target, I was able to side-step the many pitfalls that were in my way.

My view of the first property that came up on-line was what helped convince me I was doing the right thing. I wanted to bid on the house, but needed financial advice first and I realized I should do at least a bit more searching. I did so, over a period of days, but I kept coming back to the home with the big windows and verdant views. When it went off the market, I wasn’t upset, as I hardly expected to buy the first place I saw! Just as I prepared to make an offer on another house, the spectacular views popped back up. The potential buyers had changed their minds! It was obviously meant to be.

This is my heaven. I can stand at this window watching the light change, as it does constantly, and I am bewitched. As the light changes through the day, so it changes with the seasons. It is magnificent and it lifts my heart as nothing else has ever lifted it.