24 Hours in our New (temporary) Home

 

We had two good days of travel but the long trip from Princeton to South Bend (700 miles)  made me thankful that we are not making that trip regularly to see our children and grandchildren.  From Princeton, we travel 10 minutes, one hour, or 2 1/2 hours to see the three families and that is wonderful!

We arrived on the Notre Dame campus around 1 pm.  Jim popped into the theology departmental office to get our house key and welcome packet.  We quickly found the white house set back from Juniper Road down a long driveway.  All good until we tried to open the front door.  The key went in but the door would not open.  Fortunately we had a garage door opener and were able to get in that way.

First impressions were that the house was clean.  We were happy to have a bathroom available but there was no toilet paper.  Or soap.  There was a standing room air conditioner going full blast in the living room to cool the entire house and it was very, very noisy.  We quickly checked to see if we could get wifi and were told our password was incorrect.  We were not off to a good start!  We called Steffany, our Bradley Rental contact, and she put in a maintenance order and said she would come by later to check the password.

Steve, the maintenance person, came within a few hours and saw that the door needed to be sanded in order to open.  He said he would come back in the morning with tools and to make a list of anything else we needed.  It didn't take long to come up with a list.

Steffany also came by within a few hours and determined that she had given us a wrong password--by one number.  So we were connected with her apologies!  She was unable to decipher our TV remote access so told us to ask Steve about that too.

It was 83 in the bedrooms and the a/c unit was too loud for me to sleep through the noise.  The windows were stuck and impossible to open.  But we made it through our first night and Steve came in the morning and fixed the front door.  He also fixed the ceiling fan in the living room to get us some moving air and with difficulty he opened the bedroom windows so at least when it cools off at night we can open windows.  He and his helper Jack were very jolly about our needs and commiserated with us as to why Notre Dame cannot afford to put central a/c in their rental units.  We expressed our appreciation to him for his quick response to our requests.  Jim figured out the remote last night so we were able to watch the Cubs on their own network-and their win with a walk-off home run.

So this morning I am more optimistic about spending six weeks in this house on the edge of campus.  It is clean and it is quiet--at least with windows shut the traffic sounds are not disturbing.  I could hear some motorcycles in the midnight hour but not later. We lived for the first 30 years of our lives without air conditioning and soon it will be cooler--maybe in another week or so.  

We have been to "our Martin's" grocery store twice already and found it spacious and bright--unlike our rather crowded McCaffrey's in Princeton.  We got Jim's watch battery replaced easily at the nearby and familiar Batteries Plus location--a problem for us in Princeton. 

It's our 54th wedding anniversary today and I have a sense of our being newly weds starting over in a new place.  We have done that many times and even if this house is less than ideal, it is temporary and we will go back to our lovely, luxurious apartment in Princeton in several weeks.