Today we're closing on our new house in Crystal Lake.
WHAAAAAAAA!
We'll be doing the big move this weekend, so we'll have a few days to get in there and clean and bring over our artwork and some of the other delicates.
Here's the new house:
The front!
The back--and yes, that's a whale weather vane on the top of the garage!
Our little beach down the street from the house
And this is what you'll see as you drive up the road to come visit us
We'll have a lot more pictures in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
Back in April we posted a very short message announcing that we were moving out to Crystal Lake, and since then, I've been talking around it by posting about packing, our wonderful hallway neighbors, and the things we'll miss about our West Town, Chicago neighborhood.
But I figured that I should talk a bit about why we're moving, since it seems a little out of character for us.
It was a perfect storm of sorts: motivation, opportunity, and romance. You see, Trevor has always envisioned living on water (notice that our blog [which he named way back in 2006] is called "Archipelago" and the web address is "seafolk"). He even mused about us moving to Alaska so he could become a deep sea king crab fisherman. I quickly--very quickly--forbade him to even think about it. I refuse to be a sea widow. (is that a thing? well, it's a thing now. and I don't want to be one.) So we just lived in our shoebox loft, happily.
But our romantic daydreams of living on water were pushed into the realm of quasi-reality when, last summer, we considered buying a little cottage in downtown Sturgeon Bay, WI, where Trevor and his siblings have been vacationing and visiting his grandparents since they were all little Power tykes. Trevor, who loves to look at houses and apartments online, found a 400 sq.ft. cabin (and you all thought that our loft was small!) for sale. We visited it--twice--and got close to getting it for a vacation house. But we ultimately realized that rehabbing a house (it needed a lot of work) while we were living four hours away wasn't going to work for us. Plus, two mortgages is, um, twice as many mortgages as we currently have.
400 square feet of absolute Wisconsin adorableness. But not for us.
But of course Trevor kept looking. He found a house on an island somewhere in northern Illinois that was very cool, but unrealistic for year-round living (unless we were okay with snowshoeing across the frozen lake in the middle of January to get to our car, which would be parked on the mainland, and then driving to work. nope. not okay with that). He found a few houses around Powers Lake (in Wisconsin. We couldn't justify crossing a state line to go to work.) and he even explored Trevor, WI (Wisconsin again, but there is a bar called Foxy's, so there's that. oh, and it's called TREVOR! and it's close to Powers Lake. kismet).
And then, sometime in late fall, he found a little house for sale in Crystal Lake, only three miles from the college where I teach. When he showed me the listing, I thought it's another cute house we won't buy; not because I didn't like it, but because...well, because it was Crystal Lake. And we live in Chicago. End of story.
I define myself by living in Chicago, in fact. I mean, really, I do: my Twitter handle is @chicagocommuter. It's who I am. It's what I do. I live in Chicago and I commute to Crystal Lake to teach at a terrific college. I've been doing it for over seven years, and I fully intended to do it for another twenty-five years (at which time I would retire to focus on my writing and urban gardening and I would work weekends with Trevor at his art book store). And I forgot all about the little house and I started the spring semester.
But a couple months later, Trevor mentioned it again. Should we actually think about it? So we thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it some more. We had an equally long list of reasons to move as we did to stay. We're currently only miles from a lot of our family, and Trevor works so close to our place that he sometimes walks. We have everything we need--grocery stores, restaurants, bars, museums, theaters, music venues, (sandwiches!), family and friends--at our fingertips. But moving would mean a bigger place (an actual house!) with a yard, and a beach and lake only steps away from our back door. It would also mean a ten minute one-way commute for me, which would be quite different from the two hour one-way commute I currently have. But if we moved, Trevor would have to commute.
So, with our list of pros and cons totally even, we were at a stalemate. What would we do? We'd do nothing and continue to think about it.
But then, one snowy afternoon on my way home from work, I drove past it. And it was pretty damn cute.
Apparently we like houses with big trees in the front yards
So we talked about it some more (and then some more), went to look at the house, and, at the end of March, we decided to do it. We were going to move to Crystal Lake.
Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Crystal Lake, it's a city of just over 40,000 people in McHenry County, about fifty miles northwest of Chicago. It's not a suburb, and not only because it's really too far to be considered to be a suburb. It's not a suburb because it's rural. And I mean ru-ral. This is the two-lane highway that takes me the 2.8 miles from our new house to my college:
See that stuff off the road on the right? It's corn.
There's also a cow farm (dairy farm? I'm new to this.) right around the corner:
Our decision was not made lightly, but we feel good about it. In addition to being just a couple of steps from a little shared neighborhood beach, our house has three pot-bellied stoves (one in the house proper, one in the garage, and one in the room built out above the garage [our future game room/reading room]) and a fireplace in a screened in porch off of the kitchen. Trevor is going to be chop-chop-chopping wood until his heart's content. And seriously, he's looking forward to this. I got him a hatchet for his birthday. It's also got a yard for Roo, a spare bedroom for guests (I'm looking at you, reader), and an office where I'll be able to close the door and look out the window.
And Trevor has assured me that he doesn't mind the commute, as long as he can take the train and not have to drive. I believe him; I didn't really mind commuting, myself. It's a time for quiet, decompression, and anonymity, a time for working or reading or listening to music and staring out the window at the landscape rolling by. We're only two miles from the CL train station, so I'll give him a lift or he'll ride his bicycle or motorcycle.
So, essentially, we'll have a lake house lifestyle all year round. And after fifteen years of living in Chicago, I'm ready for that. Once we decided to move and we knew that it was really happening, I started to notice the noise, the litter, the smell of garbage in the alley next to our building, the crowds, the traffic...the city. Now, will I miss the city? Of course. A lot. But I'm really excited about this new adventure. And we're expecting that all of you will come visit us (not at the same time; the house really isn't very big).
Chocolate
The Blommer Chocolate Company is about a mile from our place and the cocoa powder frequently makes the neighborhood smell like baking brownies. Some people--lunatics all of them--don't like the smell, but it's one of my favorite things about living in West Town.
Bloomer Chocolate: the reason West Town is the best smelling neighborhood in the city
Police Officers
This might seem like an odd thing to list, but I really will miss walking the dog past clumps of cops hanging out on the street corner outside of Nini's Deli next store before they go in for sandwiches (this happened earlier today), or passing Oggi Cafe on the corner and seeing a table full of police officers eating spaghetti. They're always smiling and sweet to Roo (or, in the past, Henry), and there's just something about police being all prosaic that makes me happy.
Henry
Henry was only six months old when we moved to this loft in 2005, and he was just three months shy of his seventh birthday when he passed away in March, 2012. He explored every inch of this neighborhood in that time, and we have a lot of memories of him here. About three years ago, Trevor and Henry were on a walk and they passed a square of wet sidewalk cement. And Henry couldn't resist signing his name. He'll always be a part of West Town.
Roo having a moment of silence in honor of the older brother she never met
Kids
You'd think I'd get enough of teenagers and young adults during the day at school. Day in, day out. Every day for weeks, months at a time. Lots and lots of kids. But I actually enjoy seeing all the kids in our neighborhood. It's different when they're a part of the scene and I know I don't have to stand in front of them in a classroom.
We live next to Rauner College Prep and the kids from the school--dressed in their navy blue polo shirts and khaki slacks--wander the neighborhood in the morning on their way to school, at lunchtime when they're filing in and out of Candy's corner shop with bags of Cheetos and giant cans of energy drinks (god bless their own teachers and another silent prayer that I'm not one of them), and in the afternoons when they're going from school to football practice, or home from band practice, waiting at the bus stop, using their instrument cases as seats. And the band room is actually right on Ohio, just off the street, so I hear them practicing on my walks with Roo. They're not usually that great, but there's something so wonderful about listening to a high school band practice.
Sandwiches
We have seven (or more; I'm probably forgetting one or two) sandwich places within a four block radius of our place. And, well, you see, I love sandwiches. I love them. I love bread. I love cheese. I love other things that accompany bread and cheese, like tomatoes, a nice crispy leaf of lettuce, and a blob of mustard. And maybe even more cheese. Who knows? So this abundance of sandwich shops is something I will miss. Tremendously. Like, probably a lot more than a normal person would miss sandwiches.
A delicious sandwich from D'Amato's on Grand, a mere four block walk from our front door
There are approximately 1 million other things that I will miss about living in my neighborhood, and in Chicago generally: the transportation, the culture, the fact that my entire nuclear family lives within a 6 mile radius--a radius of which Trevor, Roo, and I are the geographical center. It takes me twenty minutes on the CTA to get to the corner of Michigan & Adams, or another twenty to go north and get to Lakeview. And what's in either of these locations? More of anything I would ever want.
Except, that is, quiet. And a yard next to a little cottage off the lake. And the smell of flowers on the breeze through our open windows. That's what we're gaining, and it's going to be worth it. But I will really, really miss those sandwiches.
Last month we did a Mother's Day post, and today, it's time to give props to the pops!
So Happy Father's Day, to all the fathers out there!
Me and the best dad ever (my dad)
Dad and another great dad, my Uncle Jim
John "Pop" Power and his four amazing kids
Pop Power with his first born, Sean, and both of them looking very young
Greg and his newly born Bosco (who'll be three next month! holy crap!)
That kid doesn't have much neck control, does he?
Sean and Angi with their newly born Sadie (a total schmuchenbachen)
She's growing up pretty darn nice!
He might not be an official dad (yet...), but he's a great dad-type person.
Dog dads count, right? We're going to say that they count.
Paula and her big dad, Anthony
Trevor and a great step-dad, Jim...
Jim with Letty & Rae, and Grandma & Grandpa Madel
Jeremy and Julie, taken days before Jeremy officially became a father
Andy next to his lovely pregnant wife, Mary, about to become a father
Three amazing fathers back when they were fresh out of college: Nate (L), Ben (C), and Jim (R), with their lovely wives
Dan, father of the amazing Maya
This is the amazing Maya
To the rest of the wonderful, wise, and wacky dads out there, we applaud you and encourage you to drink a few beers today and forget about the college tuition that's still in your future.
I went through my files today, trying to weed through some of the papers and get rid of things before I packed them for the move. I ended up spending a couple of hours feeling sentimental about all of the old cards, papers, and photos. Here are a handful of the gems.
Grandma Bosco and my cousin Carly, circa 1999
One of the earliest pictures of Henry, taken at John & Fran's house, Summer 2005
Henry's first time meeting Lake Michigan, and the first time we saw his "running" face
Me and my college roommates, as the Solid Gold Dancers for Halloween, 1997
An amazing wedding card from Fran, Neill, and--of course--Destiny, 2007
My college friend Andre and the potbelly pig, Otis, that he and his roommates adopted
Me (a bookmark in the middle of CITR) and my friend Tiffany (Daphne from Scooby Doo), Halloween circa 2001
My second trip to NYC, to visit my friend Taco, who snapped this picture
My vintage Barbarino folder signed by John Travolta
There were many, many more snapshots of history I sorted through, and I might post a few more as time goes on. But now, back to the packing. And the sentimental day dreaming.
We've lived in our building for seven and a half years, but it was only about a year ago that we started to make friends with the neighbors in our hallway. We were hello! and how ya doin'? neighbors, and they all seemed quite nice. But one afternoon--after having said to each other, one of these days we should hang out... for months and months and months--we had a barbeque.
And we found out that they're pretty amazing.
Every Sunday for the past couple-two-three months, we've gotten together for dinner and Game of Thrones viewing. And for the past couple of weeks, we've also gotten together for Blackhawks games. GOT's
season ended tonight (when can I watch Geoffrey get his ass kicked?
please tell me it's soon), but we've still got the Hawks (go HAWKS!), so
we'll make the most of that for the Stanley Cup Finals.
And here are our amazing neighbors:
This is Poppy (L) and Shannon (R), the two lovely hallway ladies
This is Jason (L--husband of Poppy) and John (R--boyfriend of Shannon), the handsome hallway fellows
This is Wally, the cat. She lives with Shannon & John. She loves pudding.
Roo loves our hallway friends, too. In fact, she frequently stops in front of Shannon & John or Poppy & Jason's door, waiting for us to take her inside. And it's awkward when they're not home. She just waits and waits.
And, no surprise, Roo has charmed the neighbors, too, and has even become pen-pals with Jason's friend Kevin.
He wrote her a note for Thursday's Hawks game:
And over the weekend, she wrote him back:
We're really sad that we'll have to leave our excellent hallway friends when we move. Our plan is to invite them up to Crystal Lake so much that they'll want to move up there. And if they're not open to that, we'll just sic Roo on them.
If you say "No" to Roo...
She'll be soooooo sad. You don't want to make her sad, do you? DO YOU?
Yesterday I recapped our first-day-in-Austin activities, but I have to do a couple of follow-up posts, since our adventures didn't stop on South Congress Avenue.
Our second day in Austin, Saturday, was our art day. We couldn't leave the city without exploring a bit of culture, so we visited a few museums and one tiny gallery.
The downtown Driskill Hotel where we stayed our first three nights was the perfect place for museum-ing; the museum furthest away from us was only a three block walk. We started, however, with the closest: the Austin Museum of Art "Arthouse" space at the Jones Center on Congress Avenue.
The AMOA had three exhibits up while we were there, and I was thrilled to see that all three artists were women (one artist--the Brazilian video artist Cinthia Marcelle--worked in collaboration with her countryman filmmaker Tiago Mata Machado). In addition to the video exhibit, which was thoughtful and serious in idea, though almost whimsical and balletic in execution [and mesmerizing in its entirety], the museum had an exhibit by Seher Shah, a Pakistani born artist now living in Brooklyn. Shah's exhibit was mixed media--some aerial photographs and drawings--and terrifically architectural in subject matter and design, which isn't surprising since Shah has a bachelor of architecture. Her side-by-side pieces Geometric Landscapes and the Spectacle of Force, and The Mirror Spectacle were works that I could have spent hours upon hours looking at, and, most likely, finding something new with each blink of my eyes.
The third of the three terrific exhibits was by Pinaree Sanpitak and entitled "Temporary Insanity." Sanpitak's was an installation of fruit-like silk poufs packed with small motors and noise devices. Each adorable pouf moved rhythmically and made quiet noises that were, at first glance, so subtle we didn't notice them. Then, after walking among the field of bulbous art, we realized that they were each doing a sort of dance. It was soothing and sinister all at once.
Trevor and some silky pods
The space itself was fantastic...
...but I had one minor complaint. And it was about grammar, because I simply cannot turn off that portion of my brain.
I always feel a special kind of pain in my heart when I see grammatical errors in places that are meant to be cultural beacons. I know it's a minor mistake, but I just hated that it was the first thing I saw, even before looking at the art.
Otherwise, it was a perfect museum experience.
We walked a couple of blocks south to the Mexic-Arte Museum, which was showing the last weekend of its "masks" exhibits. The first exhibit, "Masked: Changing Identities," explored the tradition of masks in Mexican religious and cultural dance ceremonies. The masks on display were hand carved wood depicting specific mythical and historical characters, animals, and demons. They were all absolutely amazing.
They had some replicas on sale in the gift shop, and we were hoping to get one of the bearded gentlemen for the new house, but no dice. Only fish-faces and horned demons. No thank you, sir.
The second exhibit, "Unmasked: Lucha Libre," focused on the history and costumes of Mexican wrestling. In addition to dozens of wrestling masks and costumes on display, the gallery was also equipped with two films on loop: one of a lucha libre documentary and the other of the feature film Santo en El Museo de Cera starring the Mexican wrestling icon El Santo (obviously--his name is right there in the title...). The movie, made in 1963, starred a fully masked and costumed El Santo, and it was pretty amazing. Bizarre, yes. But amazing.
My favorite scenes depicted El Santo in regular clothes except for, of course, the mask. (Photo still courtesy of superradnow.wordpress.com)
We then made our way over to the Museum of the Weird on 6th Street, and weird it was. And fun. And shocking. Literally: Trevor volunteered during the freak show portion of our tour to get shocked by the self-described human freak acting as an electrical conduit. I was too nervous to get a picture of that in action, but we did take some pictures before that happened.
T. doesn't seem worried about that small wolfman who's about to attack.
Said wolfman
A mummy
Hey, komodo dragon. You're not so scary.
Now you're scary.
Finally, we made our way to East Austin, a quiet, artsy neighborhood we ended up spending a bit of time in over our trip. There were a few art galleries we'd have liked to visit, but we only had time for one, the Tiny Park Gallery. The show currently up, "Not How It Happened," was small but affecting. The artists used text and photography (the prints were really beautiful, but really [really] out of our price range) and reminded me a bit of a low-tech Jenny Holzer.
If we'd had more time in the day or more energy left in our museum-weary legs, we'd have visited the other gallery still open that night. But instead, we wandered into the Blue Dahlia Bistro for a delicious early dinner. "How delicious was it?" you may ask. Well, so delicious that by the end of our smoked trout (not as good as what we ate at La Trucha in Madrid [on our honeymoon], but still well above average. great, even), bouillabaisse, and ravioli dinners, we had room for salted caramel gelato that was good enough to swipe off the table with my finger (Trevor did not approve. I did not care. I was damn good gelato).
We left the Blue Dahlia in search of after-dinner cocktails, and came upon the East Side Show Room, a dark, speakeasy feeling lounge fitted with a very dapper waitstaff and mouth watering cocktails.
We eventually wandered back to the Driskill, our feet tired, but our bellies full of good food and drink, and our brains full of good ideas.
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