A house, a dog and a white picket fence
Matilda in all her glory
Shortly after Covid hit, we packed up our dark shoebox apartment in Brooklyn and moved to Montclair, NJ (apparently along with the rest of Brooklyn). Pre-Covid Caroline would have said moving to the suburbs would happen over her cold dead body. Post-Covid Caroline thinks it’s the best thing she’s ever done. Having called Brooklyn my home for over 25 years, I’ll admit it took some adjusting to, but I’ve finally reached the point where I’ll never look back. Sure, there are some things I miss, but the good parts of living here far outweigh them. Here are some of the things:
1. Plant Mom-ing
I learned early on that anything green I brought into the aforementioned dark Brooklyn shoebox apartment would die a quick death and accepted the fact I had a black thumb. Then I moved to a house with lots of light and an actual yard, and fell in love with all things green. The yard had been woefully ignored for years so I spent the first year here chopping down trees, ripping out English Ivy and learning about Native Plants. I even joined the freaking Montclair gardening group on Facebook. My love of horticulture borders on obsession, I’m hooked. The Garden Center is my crack house, which I’m okay with because it’s probably a lot healthier than actual crack.
2. Being part of a Dog crew
We not only had Covid when we moved here, it was also during Covid. It took months to finally get my husband to agree to get a dog. Enter Ziggy aka Zig-zag, aka the Ziggler, aka lots of other names depending on my mood. We live close to a big park that we’d walk Ziggy to and it was there that we met what’s now known as the Presby Iris Gardens Dog Crew. Though I’m not exactly a shy person, it’s not every day that you move to a place where you know no one, leaving your dear friends behind in your mid-40s. Our kids grew up together, they still loved me despite the fact that when I have too much wine I tell inappropriate jokes (hell, I do it sober too). As I got closer to the dog crew, I got more comfortable letting my Caroline freak flag fly and met new friends - our dogs have grown up together, and they laugh at my inappropriate jokes (at least I like to think they do).
3. Becoming a handy-woman
To say that moving into a 3-story Victorian house (aka Matilda) with double the square footage from our apartment was daunting is a mild understatement. Sure I could hang shelves and stuff like that, but I didn’t know the first thing about how to actually build one. There are always projects I have on my long list of to-dos - you can only outsource so much before you have to take them on. It’s scary - I’m always afraid of hurting Matilda - and I don’t always get them right, but I’m learning. My YouTube history quickly went from viral videos to “How to install new track lighting”. Full disclosure, that one I ended up having to outsource because I royally fucked it up, but now I know to do it for the next time thanks to my good friends at Watt’s Up.
5. Chasing my dreams
I’ve saved the best for last. After over 20 years of the corporate world, I’ve had enough of being glued in front of the computer talking about benchmarks and KPIs and I have decided to chase my dream to use my creative talents on something other than PowerPoint presentations. It was, and is, the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it is also the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m able to tap into the good parts of my previous career - Project Management, technical chops, creating my own branding - without having to “hop on a call” or getting pinged on Slack at all hours of the night or actually using the word “Ping”. I always hated that word. Though it’s nice to know I always have something to fall back on, I hope I never have to.
…the list goes on and I’m sure I’ll continue to add to it.
