Writing from Brooklyn

So apparently I enjoy keeping you all in suspense.

We are here!

The last month has been, well . . . intense. Difficult? Amazing? Horrible? Fabulous? One of those. Or maybe all of them. In any case, we are (finally) safely ensconced in our lovely little Brooklyn apartment, we have our stuff (it was in storage, then in transit for almost three weeks), and we are all wired up with Internet, telephone, and cable TV. Actually, I didn't want the cable TV (too much potential for time wastage, to which I am prone in any case) but it turns out that cable is cheap in New York (possibly the only thing that's cheap) and it's more expensive NOT to have it. Go figure. The point is, we feel connected again after several weeks of being adrift.

So much has happened that I don't know the best way to document the entire journey, but it included adventures such as:

~~Both girls getting the stomach flu. Our 2-year-old got sick at 2am while we were sleeping on a king-sized air mattress in a friend's basement; she was in the middle of the mattress when she started puking, and she continued to throw up every 20 minutes for the next six hours. The 5-year-old came down with it three days later, while we were driving over the mountains to spend the weekend with my grandmother. Instead, we spent the weekend in a hotel, holding her hair back and giving her ginger ale. (Poor Tom had to clean the car - remember the Harvey Keitel scene in Pulp Fiction? It was like that.)

~~Our bank withdrawing all the money from our account and sending it (in cashier's check form!!!) to our house, after we'd sold it and flown to New York, without even notifying us. We found out the day before we had to put a deposit on our apartment, when I called to check the balance. This was followed by many hours on the phone to our bank, the post office in Denver, and a few other people. My bank is "very sorry" for the error, for which they accept full responsibility, but if you live in Denver and you'd like to know who NOT to bank with, send me an email and I'll gladly let you know.

~~Sleeping on the hardwood floor of our new apartment our first night here, because I'd planned poorly (what else is new?) and only had time to look for an air mattress at one store, which was sold out, and then it was really late and the kids were melting down and we ended up with no other choice. Possibly the most uncomfortable night of my life, except for maybe the above-mentioned night with the puking on the communal air mattress.

Other than that though, things have been pretty good. People in Brooklyn are really, really, nice - no, really! The librarians, the traffic cops, the shop owners, the neighbors - everyone has been amazingly welcoming and warm and helpful. I admit, the night we flew into LaGuardia, I looked out the airplane window onto the city lights and panicked. The city is so vast, and suddenly (finally) I understood why some people had expressed incredulity at our plan. "Eight million people live in this city, and probably seven million of them are artists! Why did I ever think we could make it here? This is crazy! What have I done? This is a horrible, horrible, mistake! " These were my thoughts as the plane touched down. I started to cry while we were in line for a taxi to our hotel. For years, I've pushed hard for this move. For months, I've worked almost non-stop to make it happen. I never allowed myself a moment of doubt that we were doing the right thing, I ignored people who said how hard it was going to be, and I blithely put my husband and children's futures on the line as I cut ties and burned bridges on the way to our new life. I guess at some point, I was bound to crack. After we checked into our hotel though, we found our way to an all-night diner in Sunset Park, where a good meal helped me regain my composure.

For better or for worse, we've made the leap. So far I love it, but I also don't even know the best place to grocery-shop yet. There's a lot to figure out.