Reporting from Hamana Street
It's a beautiful Sunday morning in Ewa Beach, Hawaiʻi, and I'm sitting in the living room of our new house, looking out the window at the green way and the beautiful yards of our neighbors. We officially moved in yesterday, though technically we're renting from the owners for the next week before closing on the 22nd. We brought lunch with us and had our first meal in the house, sitting on the floor of our new lanai (that's a patio for all you mainlanders).
The view from our lanai
Compared to other moves, this has been a breeze. It turns out it's really easy to move all your stuff into a new house when you don't own anything anymore - who knew? We rolled up and got into our new house, walked in, and realized "Hrm, this place is empty." A beach chair ended up being my recliner (and is still, as I type this) for the day while Caroline searched for and picked up a surprisingly nice but inexpensive (temporary) dining table online somewhere. While I was waiting for her to return, the internet guy came and hooked up our service - a CRITICAL service appointment for me! - and FedEx delivered our new mattress in a surprisingly small box. It was kind of cool watching the mattress expand to three times its size once we opened the vacuum-sealed packing and let the air back in.
The current furnishings in our living room.
Pretty much everything we own is in this picture.
We immediately met two of our neighbors, James and Larry, from the two houses across the green way from our front door. This is the first place I've ever lived as an adult where the neighbors came out to say hello our first day. Everyone has been ridiculously friendly since we got here to Hawaiʻi. We've seen several folks walking down the green way yesterday afternoon and this morning, too. I am looking forward to meeting people and getting to know folks in the community here.
My writing partner for the morning
This morning, the sun rose and shone beautifully into the house through the front windows, and this is what I'm enjoying as I write today. I have some coffee, and my laptop, and Calli is laying next to me (in my beach chair). Rigsbee is restless, and exploring every room in the house still. Both dogs were very excited when we brought them in last night. They ran from room to room looking at everything, seeing the new sights and smelling the new smells. Unfortunately, the back yard here is *very* tiny, so they won't get to spend quite as much time just hanging out and enjoying it, but I think the trade-off of going to the beach every evening for a walk probably evens things out a bit, don't you?
He looks pretty happy, yeah?
I won't lie - I was somewhat apprehensive when we first put an offer on this place. Buying a house again after all that went into owning the house in Durham felt like rushing it a bit, and I was kind of burned out. I felt the same in the hours leading up to us moving in yesterday. All morning I was kind of anxious: is this what we really wanted? Was this a big mistake? Pretty quickly after getting into the new place, though, that all evaporated. It's a nice house, and with Caroline and the dogs here, it's home. Having nothing here just fills the house with potential rather than things, and that's exciting to me.
Pretty nice spot to write from, isn’t it?
And you know, if we ever need to get away for a bit, the beach is just five miles from our front door!
