Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Island Living

We are living on an island.

To say that it has been an adjustment would be a bit of an understatement....the least of these being the nearly irresistible urge to start belting Lonely Island's "I'm On A Boat" every time I take the ferry. (Just to warn you, the video is completely NSFW).

In all seriousness, I've discovered that life runs by the ferry schedule. Island wisdom dictates that "there is always another ferry" so if you happen to miss one, it's best to have a list of errands you can get done before the next boat. However, it does restrict what you can do on the mainland. No more late night movies unless you have a friend willing to let you crash on their couch. Lunch dates end with "Oh crap, I have to catch the boat" and a mad dash up I-295, ending with running from the parking lot with a huge pack of toilet paper in your arms (because, of course, batching errands is important) and sliding into a seat right before the engines engage. (No...that situation was completely hypothetical...really...)

This means planning has become a lot more important - because emergency ice cream isn't always available at 7 PM from the grocery store (not unless you want to drag yourself to the Yarmouth Hannaford on the 8 PM boat and not get home until 9:45 at night). Fortunately, I haven't hit the pregnancy cravings...yet. We did buy some frozen pizzas and dumplings from Trader Joe's just in case though. Buying in bulk has become a life-saver, as has Amazon Prime (thank you dog food deliveries...because I really don't want to be lugging a 30 lb bag on the ferry...although with your recent reports about your company, I sadly may have to reconsider our Prime membership). Fortuntely, we do live in the kind of place where, if you run out of sugar, you can, in fact, borrow a cup from a neighbor (which we did earlier this summer).

I'm still figuring a lot of stuff out. Moving here in the middle of the summer was a bit like drinking from the firehose of people, places, events, faces, names, and connections (oh, *you're* so-and-so's daughter, married to another-so-and-so's son...and are you here year round or for the summer?). Add starting a new job to settling in to a completely different way of life (not to mention the minutiae of moving to another state) to being in the middle of huge life changes and...yeah. Life's been intense this summer. Good, but intense. Things start to quiet down around Labor Day, and then again around Colombus Day, as I am told. I'm looking forward to getting more settled in the fall.