Walking around village a little while ago - every store we walked into was packed! Spot, Treehouse, Spoiled Rotten. Sitting in Spot, enjoying iced coffee (overdue, to fight headache, surely not because we just saw "Ratatouille"), sharing the s'mores with G (verdict: hard chewy, sweet), and it occurred to me that our moving to Clarence is ... (analogies follow, please substitute local equivalent)

- moving from Morningside Heights in "the city" to Queens
- sure you can come shop and such in the city, but then make sure you plan out the bathroom locations and commute time, like right now I would be stuck on on the LIE
- you're happy to be part of the special hustle and bustle in the city, but then you have to slink away to your quiet home
- I bet, eventually, the hustle and bustle feels crowded and noisy, and the quiet expanse of lawns feels liberating, and I morph into THAT thing, the suburbanite (G asked me last night, what is the sub-parb?).

Japanese Garden, Historical Society, July 2007

6 years in our almost-ex-house and 4 years in rental apartments in the Elmwood neighborhood - now we're packing it up, purging the rest, and moving to the 'burbs. The only Elmwood THING I refuse to give up is East West Yoga, so I'll make "city Saturdays" - come to class, shop, drink coffee.

Why - we live too far from my in-laws to be able to help them - their health is declining. So we're cramming in our stuff into the 2 upstairs bedrooms of their 41 year old house and chucking the rest (which is crap anyway).

When - now, as soon as I stop procrastinating, no later than this weekend. It'll take longer to really clear out all our junk, but we'll move all the need-to-live junk with us by Sunday night. Seriously.

A real estate agent called us today, a friend of our neighbor. I'm sure she's being friendly and kind to help us MOVE along in the process, but really we're not ready to face the market. First of all, there's no financial incentive since we'll have no housing costs in the 'burbs. Second, we're lazy. It's just so much work to make the house look presentable. We are getting fix-up work done right now, so we're not totally HGTV ignorant, but I don't want to hear the agent say, why didn't you put in a second bathroom? Seriously, just let me get my new life under way, live with my in-laws, one of whom has Alzheimer's, commute twice as long to work when the school year starts, help my 6 year old adjust to a new neighborhood and school (ok, I confess this is no work at all, the next 12 years of her education will be a vacation compared to our 3 years in Buffalo public schools), and when that's all squared away, I still refuse to worry about buyers who won't love what I love about this house.

We will find someone who loves this house and the history of the house and the families who lived here, just like we did.