One year ago we made the official move from the place I had lived at since 1996. We had been packing for months, and then after signing the lease for the new place, started bringing car loads of boxes and small things for three weeks. We had a bunch of friends help us move many boxes on two Saturdays, but hired professional movers to move all the heavy furniture and similar big awkward things on May 4. Since that’s when the bed moved, that was the first night we slept at the new place, and officially that was the first day that I no longer lived within the Seattle city limits. For thirty-two years I lived in Seattle—a few different places in the Queen Anne neighborhood, a couple in Fremont, and then 21 years in Ballard. I wasn’t happy about the move (no one likes to move, right?) but I wasn’t exactly happy about how much stuff I found squirreled away in the back of closets and such that we never used and I’d forgotten we ever owned.

I expected that moving from a residential neighborhood in the city to a suburb to be a bit of an adjustment. I wasn’t quite prepared for how quickly the new neighborhood became familiar.

There are lots of things that I love about the new place, and I’ve babbled about those things probably too much on this blog. For instance, the new place is bigger. We got rid of a lot of stuff before, during, and after the move, which helps make most of the rooms feel even larger than they were.

A few of the surprises are how quickly some of my driving habits changed. One of the major thoroughfares in the region is state highway 99, which is known as Aurora Avenue in Seattle, Shoreline, and Edmonds. Several of the other suburbs of Seattle label it Pacific Highway (which is nearly the same as old federal name for the highway as it existed before the founding of the Interstate System). Within the Seattle city limits, no U-turns are permitted on Highway 99. During the 32 years that I lived in Seattle, I always thought it was weird when I drove into suburbs either north or south of the city, to suddenly see “U-turn Permitted” signs at every intersection. It seemed like a quaint throwback to a bygone era. I’m not sure why. Maybe because so many places I’ve lived (not just Seattle) banned U-turns.

But in the city I now live in, most of the highway has a median with trees running down the middle of the road, rather than a turn lane that can be used to get to a business on the other side of the road. The u-turn becomes a necessity in that case, and since almost all the intersections where u-turns are permitted have stop lights, it isn’t a particularly risky maneuver. Now I find myself deeply affronted when I cross the city limit and start seeing the “No U-turn” signs.

I keep being a bit amazed at just how much I love the veranda. We had a small yard and were allowed to plant whatever we wanted in two flower beds, but the lawn was so small and right next to the sidewalk in a neighborhood that had a lot of foot traffic, I just always felt a little weird if I set up a chair and tried to read or something. Also, having no patio limited furniture options. Our veranda, a 38-foot long deck, is completely different. I have a lot more flowerpots and planters than I had before, and I’m growing a lot of flowers. We have more comfortable lawn chairs and a really cool folding wood table my hubby found at Ikea. So I can do things such as sit out on the veranda, enjoy the cool breeze, and watch the trees and squirrels while I type up this blog post on my laptop.

Then there’s cooking summer dinners on the stand-up George Foreman electric grill. A lot easier to deal with than digging out a grill from the basement, trying to set it up so it was level on the lawn, and having to clean it and pack away at the end. I can clean the smaller electric grill quickly and leave it out on the veranda each night. And yeah, in the summer grilling outside is very preferable to heating up the house further by cooking inside.

We have a lot more windows. And when I open a couple we get an immediate and very pleasant breeze running through the house. That’s not just about the number of windows, but also the open floor plan of the apartment and the fact that every window has mini blinds rather than very heavy curtains.

I was disappointed during the move when I found we would have to give up the sweet deal we had on internet and TV service with the CenturyLink fibre-optic service and Prism TV and have to switch back to Comcast. Funny thing, though, two years of having actual competition in many markets once it was ruled that the streaming services over internet, including Prism, didn’t violate the monopoly deals that the traditional cable companies have with many cities brought Comcast prices way down. I’m paying even less for internet and the parts of cable TV that I kept after the move that I was with Century Link/Prism — and Century Link/Prism had been literally half of what I had had to pay Comcast four years ago for comparable service. So that was a win!

Yeah, the package I have now has fewer channels… but I’m using Netflix and Hulu for a lot more shows, and their subscription rates added to the cable bill adds up to less than the previous price.

Another surprise was the refrigerator situation. I won’t bore you (further) with the story of how Ray and I wound up with our own fridge plus the one provided by the landlord at the old place (which Michael and I upgraded a few years after Ray died), but since there wasn’t really a good place for the second fridge in the new apartment (and it was getting old enough that it was going to need replacing soon) we were going to have to get by with just the one. I’d had two fridges for 22 years, and wasn’t sure how I’d adjust. Turns out the problem wasn’t fridge space, but freezer space. It was easy to adopt habits about the sorts of things kept in the non-freezer compartment, but we were constantly chafing at the lack of adequate space to hold the stuff I wanted to freeze.

There was an obvious solution, but we had to wait. When we were securing the new place, the property manager emphasized that the first lease period was considered probationary. So we decided that certain purchases would have to wait until we were offered a second lease. Those were: extra large planters suitable for planting my grandma’s irises in, a storage cabinet for the veranda, and a small chest freezer for that one spot in the kitchen.

Just how much relatively each of those things felt like a burden to both Michael and me? Well, while we were walking back from the property manager’s office a few months ago with a copy of our just sighed new lease, we said almost simultaneously to each other, “So, which freezer do we want to buy and when?” Less than 5 days later we had the 5.5 cubic foot freezer in the kitchen, and less than a week after that between us running on separate shopping trips we had filled it up. Now I have to check the freezer each time I leave the house to go to the grocery store to get a good picture in my head of what we could fit in there if I happen to find something on sale at a really good price.

I should also mention how much I loved, loved, loved being able to host the Christmas party at our place this year. There were a lot of things I liked about renting the suite at the hotel the last three years, but dang, I so love having my best friends under my roof at that time of year.

I can’t believe I’ve gone nearly 1500 words on this and not mentioned our library. Having a space to set aside and call The Library (though it is only most of the non-fiction books) and having enough room to re-arrange all the books and get them sorted in a way that we can find books without digging through piles of books in front of some of the cases is just wonderful. It doesn’t hurt that being able to geek out about book sorting with my husband fills me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

There are things I miss about the old neighborhood, to be sure. We haven’t found replacements for all of our old fave restaurants, for instance. And I’m still a little miffed at just how far apart the various grocery stores I shop at are now, compared to the old place. But, moving was good for many reasons. And I feel very lucky we found a place that we both like so much.