October 6th:  we moved into our own place today.  There has been a gap of three weeks between my signing a contract for the property and our move-in day.  During that time the place was painted to cover over damp patches in several ceilings and some grotty walls and the source of a mildewy smell in the utility (i.e., laundry) room was supposedly identified and eradicated.

Although Mike didn’t say anything to the effect that we were wearing out our welcome (in fact, he said we could stay through Christmas!) I can’t imagine he was enjoying hearing the occasional teenage screams of my older daughter and the crying fits of homesickness of my younger daughter.

As they say, fish, and guests, start to stink after three days, and Mike had had us for a month.  Such fortitude on his part!

When I entered the house with my newly received key, I felt depressed that we would be living here;  it certainly wasn’t what I expected.  When I imagined living in Cambridge, based on what I’d seen in early August on the various Cambridge rental websites, we’d be living in a gracious old house made of softly glowing yellow brick or stone, with four or five bedrooms, beautifully and usefully furnished, in the midst of an enclave of witty Cambridge academics who would invite us over for tea/dinner/drinks every night.  That wasn’t what we got.

I haven’t lived in such an uninspiring place since my graduate student days in the other Cambridge, that is, in Massachusetts, when I lived in a two-bedroom, 1960s apartment with the charm of . . . well, this place.  On the positive side, at least I don’t have people above me or the albino cockroaches that coated the kitchen in my apartment in the U.S. Cambridge.

Now to get it furnished and turned into a home.