Saturday marks our one year anniversary of our arrival in Seattle. At first I wanted to say that it doesn't seem like a year, but after further review, it does. A lot of time has passed. Living in two places, having a child and having five offices at work seems to put higher value on time.
It's kind of fun to read the various blog posts from our move. While I can appreciate all that has happened in the last year, this particular week of driving is so fresh in my mind. I just couldn't believe how few decent places there were to eat on that drive. I loathed bringing up all of my camera gear, suitcases, four cat carriers and a tub of cat litter up to hotel rooms every night. The crying of the cats, and Oliver clawing at the carrier until his paws bled sucked. The stress of driving through winter weather in the Rockies really aged me. But despite all of that, I still have an enormous sense of pride about driving all 2,500 miles myself. We had a brief, but very nice time at Mt. Rushmore. The views through the Rockies, Idaho and the central part of Washington were completely stunning. The very honest truth is that I'm not likely to ever see the country again that way.
The weirdest thing about that week was that we were literally homeless during that time. We really had no address. As someone who very much needs the comfort of home, that was a scary thing for me. I remember standing in my drive way with my camera, getting a shot of the address numbers over the garage, when it hit me in the biggest way that this was it. After 22 years of living in Brunswick, that was it. The house that served as home base for the best and worst parts of my life would no longer be my home (even if I would own the fucking thing for the next year anyway).
That first weekend in Seattle was really hard. We hated the temporary housing, and 18 hours after we arrived, we were looking at places to live. The first place we looked at was one of the most beautiful townhomes I've ever seen, and it was crushing to find out the commute was impossibly long. We settled on an apartment that I was initially pretty excited about, given its "low" price, and honestly I didn't really dislike it until the month I had off with Simon.
We had been in town almost for two months by the time we finally got into Seattle proper for some touristy nonsense, the weekend of Diana's 40th birthday. That was a fun weekend, with perfectly sunny weather. We did some museums, took the monorail, wandered around Pike Place Market and just took it all in. I wanted to find all of the places around town that they shot scenes from the movie Singles, but never got around to it. We did, on that trip, at least by sheer coincidence find the Virginia Inn, where Steve meets Linda for water.
Throughout the year we'd make other visits to Seattle, and it's actually fairly easy to get around once you get a feel for the different areas. Having Simon at a hospital downtown certainly helped too. But the bulk of our navigational knowledge involved the east side, since that's where we lived and where I worked (the east side is generally considered anything east of Lake Washington, and maybe areas at both ends of the lake, depending on who you ask). Bellevue in particular became familiar because it had the closest Babies-R-Us, Lego Store and an Apple Store. It's also where a different hospital did some of Simon's tests.
We really liked living in Issaquah, even if we didn't care for the actual apartment. Having just moved from it a few weeks ago, I can say that we'd honestly consider a house there at some point in the future. It's close to work, has a number of grocery stores (and Costco), and is convenient to Redmond, Bellevue and the freeways.
Prior to Simon's birth, there was an intense feeling of isolation some of the time. Our entire social circle was really Joe's family. Fortunately, as time went on, I found it easy to build a number of trustworthy friendships at work, and Diana's PEPS group is completely awesome, particularly once I was able to meet up with them as well. We're no longer total strangers.
We had a ton of change in our lives in the last year, and while it was mostly good, it really put me on edge at times. Lately, I generally feel like we're more balanced out. Understanding how to be parents helps, as does feeling confident about getting around. I struggle with the idea of what "home" really is, and there's a part of me that feels that the designation belongs exclusively to Cleveland, even if I never want to live there again. Moving into our second place, I can say that I can feel the comfort of home even if it's not on Beaumont Dr. That feeling comes from the presence of my new family unit (plus kitties), as well as lots of sun coming in all these windows.
So what about a year at Microsoft? That's another post...
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