Ice Cream and Moving Day

Sea Salt Caramel Truffle ice cream.  Yes, I said Sea. Salt. Caramel. Truffle. ice cream!!! That is what I am eating at this very moment, from my very own refrigerator. It is 10:35 PM in Memphis, Tennessee. People who live on land can eat ice cream pretty much whenever they want. It is one of the many luxuries of terrestrial life. (Freezers on sailboats can never get quite cold enough to keep ice cream hard.) I did miss having ice cream in our water-based life.

Our new home

Two days ago, we moved into our new apartment in Midtown Memphis. Midtown is an area that is reviving. It had fallen onto hard times and is now coming back with charm and great restaurants and cultural things like the Memphis Zoo and Overton Park, the Botanical Gardens, Pink Palace, and Elmwood Cemetery (ß where the “dead” come alive to offer theatric performances once every year). We are on the edge of the historic Central Gardens neighborhood. That and many other historic neighborhoods have big old beautiful homes and enormous trees. One of my favorite features of Memphis—the enormous trees! 

Sewing room on L; MBR on R

Trees get a chance to grow bigger here. It’s just the right climate for a longer growing season and the plant life really shows that off. Annuals have been replanted recently. Perennials have a long bloom season. Fall colors are at their peak. Daytime temperatures have been in the 50’s. Tonight it will dip down to 27 F for the first time. We will have to wear our warm outerwear at last. I have seen some of the natives wearing down jackets, prematurely, I might add.

A loft apartment overlooking downtown park has
one window.

I reported earlier that I thought that I might like to live in a loft apartment without walls.  In the last 10 days, we have explored those loft apartments and several other types of apartments in various neighborhoods of Memphis. Although I rather liked the polished concrete floors and high ceilings, I could not go with the loft apartments. 
The only window is the one that covers the entire wall overlooking the street. It felt just plain weird to have no windows in bedrooms and bath, for which there are walls. I just couldn’t do it.

north side of our apartment building, Midtown

In the end, we found a newly renovated ‘50s era apartment building and a 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment with a large living area/kitchen combined. The big selling point for me was the natural light. Two sets of glass doors face south and one set faces west. Two balconies! The downside? We overlook a busy 4-lane boulevard. My priority is the natural light, and I am told that I will probably become so accustomed to the background traffic noise, that I will not even notice it. That might be true. At least I was willing to bet on it. There is no substitute for natural lighting for sewing. Most folks would have probably used the second bedroom for a bedroom. Not me. It will be a sewing room.

South-facing traffic side. First time ever living
in a big apartment building. 

Although our car was packed to the gills driving to Memphis, there were many essentials that we had to leave behind in Annapolis. Three days ago we went out and bought a pair of pillows, sheets and a wastebasket. Two days ago it was a toaster and a router and TV so that we can get Wi-Fi and stream movies. No cable TV for us. Just the antennae and whatever we can get on the Internet. 

This is almost everything we crammed into
our Honda CRV

Yesterday was a major shopping extravaganza…exciting things like a toilet bowl brush and other bathroom essentials, dish drainer, extension cord, hangars, broom and dustpan, etc. If someone else were paying, it would have been a lot of fun. And today, the piece de resistance…a hamper, a large bowl for popcorn, and enough groceries to cook several meals. Yes, we can eat at home now. Eating out lost its’ appeal a couple weeks back, somewhere between Annapolis and Memphis.

First meal at home. (My hairdresser and I had some
unfortunate miscommunication about what a
"short" cut meant.)

One of my husband’s two sisters and her husband are, conveniently for us, in the process of moving from their family’s home to a new smaller house. Therefore they had furniture to dispose of. We were glad to help them out by having some of it hauled away. A pair of hardy moving guys came by on moving day, undaunted by the pouring rain and moved the furniture for us. The Richards’ family members like to offer furniture ample opportunities for second, third, and even fourth lives of usefulness. The moving guys schlepped it all up the elevator to the fourth floor to our apartment.

"Second-hand hats, second-hat clothes;
All the girls call me Second-Hand Rose."

The old leather couch and ottoman are on their 3nd lives along with the dining table and chairs. The lamps and barstools are on their second lives, and the dresser is somewhere between its’ fourth and sixth life. The wrought iron chairs for the balconies were a wedding gift to Carl’s sister some 30+ years ago! This is all consistent with one of my little known, but common mantras, “Nothing goes to the landfill before its’ time.”

So, here we are. Figuring out land life again in a different state from the one we left when we moved aboard. We have some ideas about what we’ll do with our lives while we’re here. But time will tell. Right now, my most pressing need is to remember which streets will take me back to my apartment building.