When we first lost Footprint and came back to the U.S. to start putting our lives back together, our loss gave us the opportunity to make a fresh start almost anywhere of our choosing. Several of our wonderful friends and family made a case for us coming to their neck of the woods to live while we figured out what we would do next. We heard many good arguments, but eventually decided the best solution was to live in Elizabeth. Our friend Angie, who lived at the same marina with us in Portsmouth, VA, and her new husband Mauricio were late into the process of buying a three-unit house as rental property in Elizabeth. One unit was already occupied. They offered us a choice between the other two. Having little in the way of needs and even less in the way of possessions, we chose the smaller, cheaper unit. They would occupy the larger, whose current occupants were planning on leaving at the completion of the sale.
I have to admit that initially, this offer made me groan a bit. Elizabeth was not high on my list of places to live or visit, but it is the location of the Newark Airport, where I am based and it is convenient to Manhattan, which is a good source of unusually high paying jobs for Maryanne.
Maryanne’s arrival in the U.S. followed mine by a couple of weeks. We stayed in hotels near the airport for a few days while we waited for the closing date on the house. Once the date was set, Angie and Mauricio, knowing we needed a place to stay as soon as possible, got permission from the current owner to move into the vacant unit until then in exchange for paying her closing costs. This unit was the one that was to be ours once the transfer was complete. Angie and Mauricio would be staying with us for a couple of days until the sale was finished and the bigger unit became available for them.
Angie and Mauricio, having more stuff, moved into the big room of the apartment. They bought us a bed and set it up in the other room for us. Maryanne and I spent a long day searching in vain for hand-me-down furniture with Mauricio’s truck before we finally gave up and bought a few basics at IKEA. By the end of the day, we at least had a kitchen table with four chairs, a couple of more comfy chairs for lounging, a coffee table and a lamp.
The apartment itself was in a real state. The previous occupant (the second floor guy) hadn’t cleaned it before he left, or likely for several months prior. The electricity and water were on, but the gas was not. We had no heat, cooking gas or hot water. Mauricio disappeared into the basement with a tool bag and we soon had heat and hot water. The gas company told us it would be three weeks for them to come out and begin service. We bought an electric kettle, a toaster oven, and ate out a lot.
The entire building is also in need of major structural and electrical repairs, which Angie and Mauricio plan to begin the minute the building is theirs. This means that absolutely nothing in the place is plumb or square, giving it a certain funhouse feel. The floors at the center of the building are about six inches lower than at the edges. The Toaster oven makes all of the lights go dim.
Our room had no door or blinds. Mauricio tried to install a door he found in the basement, but it didn’t fit, so as an alternative, he installed a plastic accordion partition across the gap. It wasn’t quite as high as the doorway, so we ended up with about four inches between the bottom of the divider and the floor. We now had about as much privacy as an American bathroom stall. No worries, we were resilient and it was only for a couple of days. Then we would move into the big room and the little room would be for our salvaged stuff, still on a ship somewhere between Italy and us.
Kyle enjoys a happy Christmas Traveller at work, while our bedroom door is clearly not up to the task of privacy!
The closing did not go as planned. Three and a half hours before the appointment, the realtor called and said there was a “problem” that had to be dealt with before closing. There would be no closing that day. Once that was cleared up, something else would crop up to slow down the process, putting the closing off for another day and then another day. It seems that buying a house in New Jersey comes with an endless list of “problems”. The current owner got upset that we were living in her building more than the agreed “couple of days” before the closing and started demanding rent in return for not going to the cops and charging us with trespassing.
It has now been almost three months of this and there has still been no sale. When we first moved in, Angie and Mauricio, in anticipation of their impending move to the big apartment downstairs, quickly filled the big room with too much stuff for them to be able to switch rooms with us so that we could have most of “our” apartment. The extra days turned into weeks, and then months. We had just lost our boat, our beloved way of life, our plans for at least the next year and nearly everything we owned and we still didn’t have a private place to call our own.
At the same time, Maryanne’s mother was becoming progressively ill from a chronic lung disease, and was eventually rushed to hospital with breathing difficulties due to a chest infection that added to her struggle. Maryanne visited her mother and family in the UK for a few days, and returned worried. Within the week her mother was out of hospital and being transported home in an ambulance, but inexplicably passed away on that ride home. The whole family was stunned and devastated, and Maryanne spent most of December, including Christmas, back in the UK, relieved that she hadn’t yet started a job, and happy to spend that time with her family.
As the delivery date for our shipment of recovered possessions from Italy approached, we realized there wasn’t enough space left in the apartment to accommodate our salvaged belongings. Angie offered us space in the basement of a friend’s building a few blocks away. I didn’t like the idea. That stuff had made the cut to get aboard the limited space in Footprint to begin with. When she was wrecked, we carried it out, dripping, on our backs on the long walk between the wreck site and our temporary apartment in Agropoli. We then washed and dried it and after I left, Maryanne packed it up for the long ship voyage to America. In the meantime, we have been making do on the carry on bag of clothes each we brought over with us initially. I was really looking forward to a change in outfits. It was our stuff and I wasn’t about to have a separate address from it.
As time went on it became increasingly apparent that nothing was going to be happening soon with the building sale. I started looking for other apartments in the area. I eventually found a nice place a few blocks away. It was bigger, cheaper, had new floors and paint and, best of all, no building sale drama. Angie and Mauricio would be able to spread out properly. The big unit will bring more rent for them once they finally do get the building.
We spent last weekend moving into our new apartment. A couple of days after we had finished bringing our stuff over from Angie and Mauricio’s, our shipment from Italy arrived. We finally had our own place with all of our own possessions in it. It’s the first time that’s happened since we were anchored off the beach in Agropoli three and a half months ago.
It feels strange being here. Although I have stayed in lots of hotels and guest rooms between being at home on the boat, I haven’t been the primary resident of anywhere ashore for over a decade. It’s hard to get used to the idea that this place is ours. I would never think of arbitrarily rearranging the furniture at Mom’s or at Kate and Mark’s to see how it looks a different way, but I can totally do that here. Elizabeth’s still not my favorite place, but I must say, it’s really nice being so close to work. Last night I was home less than an hour after I set the brake on my last flight. That process has taken me up to a day and a half in the past, longer when the weather is bad.
Settling into our new home in Elizabeth, NJ
Maryanne got a job as a contractor for the New York Times at their main office near Times Square. I’m still not really sure what she does there. She can’t explain it to me in less than twenty minutes. It seems to be heavily jargon based. The important thing is that they think they need her and they’re paying her for it. She loves being in the middle of the Big Apple and feels like a tourist as she wanders around during her lunch breaks.
I’ve been occupying most of my free time searching for the next Footprint. We went with Kate and Mark to see a boat near them. It was in okay condition, but I really didn’t like the layout. I made another trip on a different weekend to see a different boat in the same area. It had a beautiful layout, but had clearly been neglected for several years by the most recent owners. We decided the cost of bringing it back into condition would put it out of our budget. I’ve got a couple of other candidates on my short list, but they are a long way away and are going to require a whole weekend to see.
The New York area got its first real snow last night. The neighborhood outside is busy shovelling walks and digging out cars. Maryanne and I are enjoying our first quiet weekend in our own place watching movies while eating delicious bowls of hot soup. We are still dreaming of tropical evenings aboard. I’m sure we’ll get back there as soon as we can. For now, it’s good to have a cosy weekend together, and a place to call home.
