Moving On

The pool and courtyard--we've been living like movie stars. 

Today we leave AVE Clifton luxury rental residences. State Farm Insurance found our temporary furnished home here after a towering tulip tree fell through our roof. We moved in March 21. We've been very comfortable, very lucky. We felt few bumps in the road while most of our house was gutted to the frame and refashioned.

The surprise perk is we've crossed paths with such colorful people, from a young African man studying malaria cures to a Swiss family with a lovely two-year-old named Alice Rose [just like me]. I loved talking to her mom about their holiday traditions. Then there are other residents like us, displaced due to fire or storms, or between moves. Thank God for home insurance.

I hope we'll be able to remove everything by about 5 P.M. Everything except H.'s and my bicycles. [Figgy's is already back in town.] I think we'll ride them over to Montclair one day next week. It's a bit of a long and hilly ride, and no time now.

I Never Can Say Goodbye
We'll miss living here. I don't know if I will ever again have a view of the NYC skyline twinkling at night [when the trees are bare]. And we have to move on from free hot Starbucks all day in the cafe [H. is really going to miss that], the pool and patio in the summer, plump warm comforters, beautiful landscaping, the kind and courteous guest services staff, a sleek business center to work in. Figgy will miss the gym, and the sunrises. One big rude awakening: We will have to clean our own home again, no knock on the door from the nice lady in housekeeping every Wednesday. [Here's the link: aveliving.com.] I'll let you know how that cleaning blip goes. The forecast isn't pretty.

I've been thinking about moving, and why I don't like it. I wonder if it has do with losing my mother when I was 20. Maybe I don't want to lose something I've gotten used to. My mother was sentimental like me; after a haircut when I was a little girl, she saved my sun-lightened ponytail in a baggie in a mahogany bureau drawer. What can I say.

There's also a finality to it. H., Figgy, Sug and I have been here for 2/3 of a year--through Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween. Now we move on to the next chapter--back in our carefully rebuilt 1920s home. Figgy will have good stories to tell about this upscale living. We all will--even Punch.

And God willing, our next chapter will be a long and happy one. My old desk with the spool legs from Good Housekeeping http://insearchoftruthandbeauty.blogspot.com/2010/02/climbing-out-of-blue.html is waiting for me in my cozy sunroom office. It's the same desk I was working at when the tree fell. And if the old brick chimney had not caught the trunk--like a fearless, protective father, but breaking in half under the pressure--I might not be here to tell my story.

P.S. I love blogging daily, but if my posting becomes erratic, it will be because my laptop is broken, our internet service is out or I'm totally stressed out fending for myself without a concierge staff. ;) Wink--I think.