#137 Reflections on a year in NY March 4, 2013

I started work in NY on Feb 5, 2012.  The past year has brought a massive amount of change in my personal and professional life.

Firstly, I did not fully appreciate the difference between the suburban sprawl lifestyle we had and the rural sprawl lifestyle we now enjoy.  I call it rural sprawl because there's woods everywhere, and the land has been cut into 1-5 acre lots for miles around.  Where the land is flat and the farming is reasonable, there are farms.  Most of the land is a shallow layer of soil on top of shale or granite.  It's deep enough for trees to take root, and seriously unbelievably rocky.  No wonder the first Europeans headed west, where the farming was easier.

We now have to think about the grocery store.  My work commute brings me right past a grocery store.  It's not the cheapest around, but it'll do for milk, eggs, fresh veggies, and meat when it's on sale.  As I leave the house in the morning, I take a quick obvious inventory and make a mental note.  On the way home, I'll stop in if needed.  All of our non-grocery purchases either go through Amazon or to special trips to town.  And even that is consolidated with the weekly major grocery trip to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.  Our life is much less commerce oriented, and that is refreshing.

Instead of doing whatever it was we were doing in the evenings in the suburbs, we spend our evenings either out with the church youth group (Katrina and I both do that now), or at home.  The kids play in the lego room, do homework, sled, read, work on projects, and sometimes play video games or watch TV.  In the summer, there are fires in the firepit, swimming, and exploring the forest we live in.  I've been working on house projects.  The most recent is sorting and organizing our basement detritus.  Some of that stuff moved with us from California 9 years ago, and I just sorted through it.  Now that is complete, and spring is nearly here, I'm transitioning to trimming, raking, and doing some other early outdoor maintenance.  Because out house is in the middle of 2 wooded acres, I can use power tools in my garage all night long and nobody notices.  Not even in the house, because we've built the pantry between the garage and the house and the bedrooms are on the far end of the house.  It's wonderfully freeing.

Katrina, after a frantic few months of moving in and getting organized and having family here for Christmas, jumped into college, and she's been doing homework most evenings.  It's a pleasant life - not lazy.  Certainly not lazy.  But a life that is less driven by outside rhythms and more by internal rhythms.  Is Aria in a show?  Are the kids' friends coming over?  Did something in the house break and need fixed?  Conversely, is there an improvement project that needs doing?  Those get queued up and done, one by one, as time allows.  It's nice.

The kids have grown immensely in too many ways to document fully.  Liberty is still fully in transition.  She has a very good friend at school, but she really misses Oregon.  Jacob is fully acclimated to life here - he loves the outdoors, the Lego room, and the freedom he has here to go outside, scream, and run around.  Christian is coming around.  He has become much more responsible with his homework, and now chooses to spend his free time with books or Legos instead of the TV when he has the chance.  He is making life choices confidently, and that's encouraging to see.  Aria jumped into school, did 2 plays, and had made the honor roll every term.  Her last report card was straight As, and she's very passionate about doing well at school.  She's an amazing person.  A seriously impressive individual.

I suppose that's enough for this post.  I owe more detail and more frequency.  We'll see.  I have a busy Spring lined up, and things to accomplish!