Beginning in Connecticut
So, Jac and I have made it safely to Connecticut, and are enjoying our third full day here. Some rambling, disconnected impressions of things thus far:
- The U-Haul in Tuscaloosa is so bad at what they do that other U-Haul stores make fun of them and charge them fees for incompetence. The U-Haul store where we deposited our truck up here was flabbergasted that the Tuscaloosa branch had actually told us we needed to drive several hours to pick up the truck we had reserved and only relented under pressure; the Tuscaloosa branch also failed to put oil in the truck, which Jac and I were able to fix but shouldn't have had to; they had (rather than changing it) just added transmission fluid until the transmission fluid reservoir was overfull of tobacco-juice brown sludge; and they'd underestimated our driving distance by 400 miles. Thankfully, the store up here did not charge us for anything, reimbursed us for our trouble with the oil, and encouraged us to write as scathing a letter as we wished to the home office. However, the 20+ hours of driving were relatively uneventful, and more importantly they are done.
- CT is really beautiful. It's got the rolling hills, old forests, clear rivers and streams thing down pat. It also has actual forest, as opposed to Alabama, which has a lot more jungle (trees, but with thick undergrowth) rather than forest (thick canopy layer consumes most of the sunlight, so the ground-level understory is actually clear and walkable.)
- Monday night, while walking the dogs, I found a group of teenagers in the lot next to ours freaking out about a skunk. This skunk, it seems, had somehow (?) in its skunkish curiosity been investigating one of those large votive-type Virgin Mary candles, and had managed to get its head stuck in the glass container, and had spent about half an hour banging around this empty lot trying to get free. The teenagers didn't want to leave it (it might suffocate or something!) but were also frightened of breaking the glass (its head might get crushed!) Being civic-minded and well equipped for this kind of problem, I returned shortly with a broom and a length of thin metal pipe. Striding through the semicircle of teens, who stood well back from the whole thing, still trying to get animal control on the phone, I trapped the skunk with the broom (preventing it from lifting its tail and spraying) and dispensed with the glass via a few short "cut the apple without cutting the hand holding it" style strikes of the pipe. The skunk scurried off into the forested area behind the houses, dribbling skunk stank as it ran. The broom caught a little bit of the smell, but even that was enough to make me appreciate what I'd always read about skunk smell - it truly is unbelievably foul. The best description I can give is a mix of burning rubber, burning plastic, and burning hair, delivered at a potency that makes the inside of your nostrils feel scrubbed out, kind of like high-strength ammonia fumes. Luckily, the odor is pretty well neutralizable with a mix of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap, so now the broom can be used around , human beings again. So that's nice.
- Our house is in a fascinating little microcosm of a neighborhood, and sits literally at an equilibrium point along the street - if you go one way, the population density increases, the number of overflowing garbage bins and wandering children increases, and the amount of staring you get as you drive through increases. Not a terrible place, by any stretch - but definitely fitting the descriptions given to us by the former tenants, our neighbors, the cable guy, and the bike police that stopped to chat while we were unloading the truck. Comments all said essentially the same thing - we're in a neighborhood in transition, and whether it transitions into full-on falling apart ghetto, or into full-on well-kept hardworking blue collar neighborhood, remains to been seen and depends on the actions of the people there now. The way it was said varied, however - from "just so you know, this isn't a good neighborhood" (from an older white cable installer) all the way to "down that way [towards the less desirable end] the neighborhood gets...'spicier' might be a way to put it, I guess; just be careful - but on this end, it is quiet and peaceful." (from a middle-aged Puerto Rican neighbor, who lives further up the "good" end of the street, and is seen walking the streets and picking up litter.) Regardless, however, the former tenants spoke truthfully - you probably don't want to leave a car parked out front with obvious valuables, but the neighborhood is quiet after sunset, the people are friendly, and the risks seem more of the "bored teenagers do stupid things" rather than the "crack addicts will jack you up" kind. It has been an interesting education already, however, in the racial and class lines in our nation. Willimantic has almost no African-American population, but a large contingent of Hispanics, especially Puerto Ricans. Spanglish is pretty much the common language of our area. It is interesting to walk the dogs, and be able to hear salsa music and arguments in Spanish from the nearby apartment buildings.
On the whole, I feel actually much safer here than in many places I've been in Alabama - the neighborhood has some rough edges, but lacks the terrifying stench of desperation I smell in most of the places where I actually feel physically at-risk.
- We are doing most of our grocery shopping at the co-op here in town - it is a straight up organic foods co-op, with mismatched reused egg containers in the fridge area with little labels telling you what local farm the eggs came from and what conditions the hens were under (and the real eggs, the ones that vary some in color and size); milks and cheeses and yogurts from organic national brands as well as local dairies, bulk granola and dry beans and such - I've got a really good general purpose orange-based cleaner I've been using all over the house, purchased at a grand price of $1.50 (the plastic reusable 4oz bottle was 75 cents) that made enough stuff that I'll be using it for weeks. You can fill a paper sack with non-petroleum laundry detergent at $1.50 a pound, or get soy sauce / vinegar / olive oil in your own containers for low cost. It's totally awesome, and if I work there a little, we can get a discount - if I do 16 hours a month for my two-person household, we can cut 20% off of our prices!
- Stairs do wear out my knees, but I really like having a basement. Eventually, as boxes are unpacked, the former coal cellar area will become our root cellar, which makes me ludicrously excited. Also, clothes line! And it works, because it's warm and sunny without 100% humidity! Related to that, not sweating constantly is kind of a new thing for me. Still adjusting.