Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Every month a group of six bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and more!

This month’s theme is one I have been looking forward to…maybe because THIS is not my favorite home and I like to think back on spaces that were more appealing to me.

WARNING: This is LONG. Sorry. I feel pretty strongly about houses and I just couldn’t leave any of these out. You won’t hurt my feelings if you just look at the pictures. I wish I had more pictures.

I will not go over ALL the places I’ve lived because I have lived in 17 different homes in five different states (California, Florida, New York, Delaware, and Virginia). Is that a lot? It seems like a lot to me. I know people who have lived like five places in their entire lives.

The first place I have Real Complete Memories of is our little house in Newark, Delaware. The house was nothing great, but it’s the first place I’d ever lived with AIR CONDITIONING and that was a game-changer for me, ha ha. It was just a little brick ranch on a big corner lot, but it was the location that so impacted me. It was down the road from some sort of horse farm. Being only five years old I don’t know what sort of farm it was, but there were large fenced grassy paddocks each dedicated to one horse…whose name was painted on a sign on the gate. Speedy. My favorite (and first love) was a black horse named Speedy. And Newark in the mid-60s was a time and place when a five-year-old could walk up a main road alone to visit the horses…or walk with a friend in the other direction to visit Staffords, sort of a country convenience store where I would buy things like rock candy on a stick or chocolate-covered ants in a little plastic box.

Right across the street from my house was Rittenhouse Park, a kid’s dream of a park. More like a nature preserve, with woods and rocks and hills and a wonderful stream. A great place to hang out with friends, or run away to with a suitcase holding only a phone book and a carton of malted milk balls, or to float your bra down when you went back for a visit (I canNOT remember the back story on that, but I remember it happening).

Newark is where I made my First Best Friend (say hello to The People, Suzy!). I won’t go into too much detail here cuz there’s a future post…but suffice it to say that when, at 8 years old, my parents moved us to Long Island…I was heart-broken. Leaving my partner in crime, the horses, the park, the very small elementary school, friends – just did me in.

Massapequa Park, NY. It did NOT look like this when I lived there, haha!

I resented the move…and the PLACE, Massapequa Park, NY for So Many Years. I hated the way people talked, I hated the expressions they used (standing ON line instead of IN line…There’s No Line! You’re Not Standing ON a Line! THERE’S NO LINE!), I hated the giant elementary school (going from a school with like one class per grade and knowing EVERYONE, to one with 5 or 6 classes per grade and every day you were amongst strangers, was a major culture shock to me). There were SO many people…and it was just so BUSY. And we lived in the SUBURBS. But it was still way more…EVERYTHING than Delaware had been. And I essentially refused to participate, ha ha. I did not call myself a “New Yorker” for like another 16 years. I LIVED here, but I was NOT One of Them.

This is when my hair pulling started. From the anxiety of All That.

The house was a big split level…where we could all stay far away from one another. My mother in her bed, my father in the basement with his ball games on tv…and me…wherever. My room, I guess. This was the house where, for the first time, I thought – we are not like other families, ha ha. With all the Japanese furnishings and decorative accessories my mother had brought back from their time living in Japan, it never LOOKED like my friends’ houses. And I realized we didn’t behave like my friends’ families. Friends had chores, families ate dinner together and TALKED (whoo whatta concept). We all just sort of…hid in our own spaces. I don’t really know how or why that started. But even like dinnertime. My mother would yell, “Dinner!” and we’d all go to the kitchen and fix a plate…and my parents would go to their bedroom to lay on the bed and watch the evening news…and I would go to the basement to watch I Love Lucy or Petticoat Junction reruns.

Anyway. The best part of living there for me was…the library was just like half a mile up the road and I could go there almost every day. Sometimes I’d take my pet mouse, Buggy, with me. She’d sit inside the collar of my shirt and hide in my hair…and I don’t remember anyone ever noticing her. I think this is where my real love of reading started. It was the first time I’d ever belonged to a library. Of course, it was also the start of my life of library crime, but that’s another time.

I eventually made new, good friends…and life went on. I lived in that house from age 9 (1969) to age 25 (1985), when it was time to go.

I moved in with a girlfriend to a house in a $$FANCY$$ area. We could only afford it because part of our rent was in trade for taking care of the barn, horses, goats, and mini horses. I feel like I just talked about this recently so I won’t repeat myself. But it was interesting.

A couple moves later and my ex (then boyfriend) and I bought a sweet little railroad bungalow in a meth lab/horsey combination area. It was So Cute…but it was REALLY a wreck when we first bought it. The first time my mother came to see it (prior to us buying it), with the big old stinky disabled Great Danes laying in the living room and for some reason a life-size inflatable Gumby in the corner (?), she literally cried. With tears. “I can’t let my baby live here!’ Ha. In the end, her baby lived there. And even her baby’s baby…but she was gone before that.

I loved a lot of things about that little house, but the BEST thing was the 4-stall barn in the backyard…where I was able to keep my two horses, a pony for Katie, and a boarder (who pretty much paid everyone else’s expenses). I loved having the horses at home. They were just like big dogs. I do miss that.

However, once Katie was born I started looking at the area from a different perspective, and the meth lab/passed out drunk lying in the doorway of the market/shooting at McDonalds/poor school district, convinced us to move on when she was about two.

And that’s when we moved to The Wonderful House. An 1877 Victorian farmhouse with wrap-around porch, two staircases, potting shed, and two-story carriage house garage. I loved that house SO MUCH. It just felt like me. However…it didn’t work out for long and so after just 14 months (aka two Christmases…this house had The Best Christmas Tree Spot!!!)…

That time I didn’t trim the hedges.

This house had The Best Icicles EVER.

I had a lovely large walk-in pantry

Sweet built-ins

Teeny but cozy living room

There was wonderful light everywhere

Back deck. I’m a little prone to letting things get overgrown. I like it that way

There were spots for all my collections

…I found our next house, a sweet little 1907 Craftsman-style bungalow…also a fixer-upper (seeing potential is my special gift. I know someone who considers it more of a curse, but whatever). Front porch, built-in window seat in the dining room, charming diamond-paned windows in the bedroom, cozy spaces…I loved living there for the next 14 years. Which is the second-longest I’ve lived anywhere.

That neighborhood and our block in particular was a great place to raise kids. It was safe, there were tons of kids of all ages on the street and they’d all play or ride bikes together, the school district was good. I’m grateful that’s where we lived for Katie’s growing up/school years. That’s where I lived when I got Caleb, that’s where I lived when I got divorced. That’s where Katie left me for college.

And THEN I moved to Brooklyn. Bettye’s Big Brooklyn Adventure. I’d been waiting for like five years because I’d spent ONE AFTERNOON in Park Slope while I was waiting for a $$ decision on some vintage clothes I was trading in at Beacon’s Closet…and I was blown away by the ENERGY! I had never experienced anything like that and I was like I GOTTA LIVE HERE. I gotta be around THESE people and THIS energy. Those few hours made SUCH an impact on me…and I think I decided then and there that when Katie left for college I would sell my sweet little house and move to Brooklyn.

Before moving in. Back bedroom that I used as office/ebay room/photo studio

Before moving in. Living room.

Before moving in. bedroom, between living room and second bedroom.

 

Kitchen

And I did. And after getting through some nightmare hell in the beginning (three moves in one year and LOTS of money lost), I finally settled in The Best Apartment Ever, a gracious, high-ceilinged, large-windowed parlour-level floor-through with two bedrooms, original details, large closet, best landlady ever (until she wasn’t), late 1800s brownstone. It was a dream. WITH a backyard (pretty uncommon in Brooklyn or city apartments) AND washer and dryer. AND great stoop for sitting outside and watching the goings-on in the neighborhood. And there were ALWAYS goings-on(s)! It was So Fun. And entertaining. And interesting. I did tons of things on my own, well, me and Caleb…there were great parks and places to take him…and I would happily drive us to an ice cream or coffee shop, get something yummy, and sit outside with him and just watch the world go by. People would stop to admire him, so I got just the tiniest bit of human interaction (which is just the right amount for me).

I love being in a more urban environment like that, with lots of people around me, but I am not actually with them. It’s like…I can be alone…without being ALONE. If that makes sense. It’s the first time I’d ever lived anywhere like that, so I didn’t even know that was something I wanted. But now that I know…I WANT THAT.

Sadly, due to…ecch, life…I ended up back on Long Island after too short a time in heaven…and three apartments and 12 years later, I’m still here. NY rents skyrocketed since I was there and I really can’t touch anything. Well, Covid brought things down a LITTLE bit, but I don’t think that will last too long…and I’m just not in the position to be moving back there while I’m still working out here.

But someday.

You’ve all seen/heard about where I live now because of, well, this blog series, so I won’t go into much detail. It’s fine. It’s FINE. Sigh. It’s fine for now. But I’m already looking ahead to the next move in a few years. And one way or another it’s gonna be a good one!

Sorry this was So Long…I honestly could write an entire blog post about Every Place I’ve Ever Lived, but…who wants to read that!? I just don’t know when to shut up. And EVERYTHING is something to me. Did I ever tell you about the crack in the sidewalk outside the house in Massapequa Park? No? That’s a whole story! EVERYTHING’S a story.

Okay, someone stop me. I still have to find the pictures to put in here. Sadly, SOMEONE “borrowed” the pictures of Married Houses 1 & 2, so I don’t have much to show for them, which is a shame cuz they were lovely. Well, in my mind’s eye they were lovely. In reality, they were falling apart, but I only saw the potential.

Make sure to check out the other ladies’ homes! I can pretty much promise their posts will be shorter!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Em at Dust and Doghair