Not Itchy

Funnydad and I have been married seven years today. And, I counted. Since we started living together we've lived in seven places. (More if you count my apartment in grad school when we had a commuter marriage.) One a year, essentially. No wonder I'm anxious to put down roots. We've been in our new Boulder house for two nights now, and it feels very comfortable. It's a good layout, easy to live in, easy to live in with kids. The girls like it. There are, as expected, idiosyncrasies. The kitchen doesn't have as much storage space as we'd like. The box spring for the guest bed couldn't fit down the stairs to the guest room. The girls' room is quite warm for this time of year. Our bedroom door sticks and is loud to open. But there are unexpected cool things as well. Turns out I love our freezer-on-the-bottom fridge. Our dishwasher is super silent. Who knew two sinks in the master bath would be so wonderful? Our garden is beautiful, really lovely. Having a mud room is already great, and it's not even mud season. (Do they have mud season here?)

As I ease (jump?) into our new home, I've been thinking, what makes a community have a certain reputation? Do I expect Boulder to be out-there athletic and liberal, and so I see those things? Honestly, I knew tons of liberal folks in Minneapolis (and Brooklyn) and saw plenty of athletes in Minneapolis, including some who play truly "different" sports (anyone heard of dirt bike polo? -- like polo on horses, only on dirt bikes, on grass, right there at Lake Calhoun). But here I laugh when I see odd things, as if I can't believe what else this town has to offer in the way of a sporting life -- an outdoor racquetball game played on a tennis-like court with chicken wire over the chain link; balls seem to be allowed to hit the sides. We watched a juggler in a park juggle four juggling pins; funny dad even tried his hand at it. We've seen hot-air balloons in the morning and parachuters at sunset too many to count. We've seen single-engine planes, gliders, and a gyroscopter (like a hang-glider, only with a motor). People are really into cycling here -- to commute, for exercise, for fun, for transportation, but then two people from my office in the Twin Cities regularly biked more than an hour home from work for fun and a workout. So is there more here, or am I looking for it? Today I saw two twenty-something guys tight rope walking in a park. No joke. The line was just several feet off the ground and it looked to be the width of nylon tie-downs for pick-up trucks. It had a lot of give and wobbled a lot, but they WALKED on it. From a standing position in the grass they jumped up to the rope like it were a balance beam and walked on it. Stayed up longer than I had interest in watching. I'm not saying I couldn't have seen that in Prospect Park or along Lake Harriet, but I didn't.

Anyway, here we are, seven years after you danced at our wedding sitting in our seventh house doing our best to make it home. We're already more active, though neither of us plans to tightrope walk anytime soon. Let's hope you can write this address in your address book in ink. I think we're going to like it here. By the way, neither of us feels itchy.