......I'd Be Rich

If I had a nickel for every conversation I had, exactly like this one:

Person: "So, how are you guys settling into Lakeville?"
Me: (politely, if unenthusiastically) "Well, thanks."
Person: "you guys are right in town, right? Do you LOVE it?!"
Me: "We're settling in. Getting the house in order. Starting to come together."
Person: (visibly consternated that I am not singing loudly the praises of the eden that is Lakeville) "wait, you guys haven't been here for a summer yet, right? you came in the fall."
Me: "right. well, technically we got out here mid august last year, but we were in a rental far from campus while we sold our house and got our bearings and figured out where we wanted to live. We didn't move to Lakeville until November."
Person: "Ahhhh. that explains it. Just wait till the grove opens and you're here for a summer. You'll love it. Especially where you are."
Me: (inwardly rolling eyes, outwardly polite.) "So I've heard. Can't wait! thanks!"

....I'd be rich.


Everyone told us to buy a house in Lakeville. Despite this, we started our house search in Great Barrington and Egremont, MA. I was dead set on living over the MA border. Our realtor gamely showed us houses, but kept hinting that if we were working in the Lakeville/Sharon area, we really should consider looking at properties in CT, because we'd really hate the winter commute and she was sure we were just going to want to be in Lakeville in the summer anyways. It's so great! So we looked at places in Lakeville and Sharon. We saw a huge house in Sharon that I was in love with, 2 miles from the hospital I work at, 5 bedrooms, being sold by an elderly couple who needed to go into nursing care and so priced lower than it was worth. We almost moved on it, but we kept getting nudged by well meaning locals in our house search back into Lakeville, to a house near the lake. We ended up in this little house in the middle of town 1/2 mile from the town beach, which everyone calls "the grove". It was really small, and didn't have a huge yard, which we assumed we would get since we were moving to the country. It was a little oddly laid out. The space definitely could have been used better in the original floor plan, and it would take more money than we want to put into it to make those changes now. It needs some updating. And yet, everyone - including our realtor, who would have made twice as big of a commission on the sharon house - kept telling us that if we were considering getting a place on Prospect St. we'd be crazy not to grab it, and so we did. I've been tepid on the house from the get go. I figured it would be passable once we did the necessary improvements, but I definitely didn't LOVE it and there were aspects of it I really didn't like. However, despite the fact that I come from a long line of people who are constitutionally incapable of admitting they were wrong under any circumstance, a character trait which I definitely inherited more than a touch of - I hereby announce to the great wide internets, everyone was right. Lakeville IS great in the summer. Today was the opening weekend for the town lake, so I put the kids in the stroller and rolled on down to see what this vaunted grove was all about. It's a great little beach - tons of sand, tons of grassy area, the requisite fries n' soft serve hut, docks for boating and swimming, grills for grilling, etc. There are lifeguards, a little kid section (blocked in by docks, supervised by a lifeguard, with water that only goes up to about Owen's waist) so you really can just let the littles go play. And the best part is that the grove is only open to people who either live here or rent a house for more than a month (and can prove it with a utility bill or a lease), and because the town is so small, it's always people you know and never crowded. Most of Owen's preschool class and their families were there - this is a small town, so that's about 9 kids - and the kids had such a blast that Elias went missing around 5:40 this afternoon, and after a frantic search we found that he had literally fallen asleep in a corner. All the summer people are here this weekend opening up their summer homes, the restaurants all opened up their outdoor seating, and there starts this weekend a series of festivals, fairs, and town/region celebrations that happen every weekend all summer to entertain the weekenders.

I 100% recant on wondering at times if this house was a bad idea. What I didn't realize about living in a town that is primarily a vacation town is that we now have a vacation house. Sure, it's a bit smaller than would be ideal, and needs some updating, but I definitely made a 180 on the whole Lakeville experience today. There are worse things than having a weekend house that you don't even need to pack the car and drive to on the weekend because you're already there.