5 Months in Posh Ass Connecticut {July - Nov 2021}
Holy hell wow this year has been so whack fuck. I can’t believe we started this year in Perth, Scotland. That seems like a lifetime ago. And then we lived on a goddamn bus in Maine and shat in a shared bucket and bought a Porsche (!!!) and got vaxed and I got bit by a tick and fuckin A. I haven’t written much in the last few months so I wanted to sort of capture the last half of the year.
Perth was January and February, the bus was March and April and then we actually found a furnished rental in Connecticut, but it wasn’t ready until July 1. So May/June we went to Maryland and I don’t know - that doesn’t really warrant its own post. We were in Laurel, which is about half way between Baltimore and D.C. We stayed in a furnished rental we found on Furnished Finder that was a cottage attached to a home, but it ended up being a home with a Trump flag staked in the front yard and a confederate flag on the neighbors side and oh also - we were there for 6 weeks perfectly coinciding with a cicada invasion that happens once every 17 years. Literally billions of cicadas. So yeah. It was a mixed bag.
Maryland itself was nice though - incredibly fucking lush and there was a creekside park near our place and we got in a good week or so before the cicadas really descended in early June:
Seriously though, they were so thick that weather radars were picking them up as clouds and rainfall. And the sound, my gawd the sound…they are so fucking loud…it sorta just felt like we were on house arrest. You literally could not go outside or you’d be swarmed.
One morning I handed him a bowl of something and he scoffed. I asked, “What?”
And he said, “Nothing. Just seeing if you had a bigger spoon than me.”
I said, “I don't….. Oh, shit - do you want me to get you a bigger spoon?”
And he’s all, “No. But also i never want a small spoon ever. I can barely hold this fucking thing in my hand.”
Another day he was talking to his crypto friends and said, “You guys. Four channel is the swampy asshole of the internet….. Fucking get a grip. Nothing good ever comes from there.” I don’t even know what four channel is, but I was fucking dying.
Another day he was looking at the map just seeing what was what in the area and he said, “What's with all these bullshit health food store names? The Common Bond? Nature’s Basket? I'm gonna call all of ‘em Earth Fart.” And thus marked the day of a new running joke.
And then I heard him muttering to himself pacing around the kitchen saying, “Shit man shit…. There's no cookies left except those shitter fucks.” - shitter fucks meaning these sub par ones from this weird store that we didn’t really like.
We did get in a nice D.C. day though since we weren’t staying too far from there, and driving to and from allowed us to see some of the really amazing houses around there:
Also randomly there was a bangin authentic taqueria of all things near our house and we went to a Ross that looked like a Ross might look after an apocalypse. So it wasn’t all bad. But mostly we just stayed inside this uncomfortable tiny box with no dishwasher watching a fuck ton of Survivor and I was still working for that wellness influencer cunt and yeah. Things have improved mightily since then.
But anyway - finally on July 1 we were able to head back to Connecticut and into our longer term rental house. It was in Monroe, which was a really beautiful and super quiet suburb about 30 minutes east of New Haven. We had the first two months on paper and then agreed to go month to month after that with the landlord who didn’t know what the fuck she was doing with her life any more than we did.
And the house was mostly really great. It was a split level and we had the main floor, but the master bedroom was blocked off. The landlord’s sister and her reject middle aged loser asshat boyfriend lived on the basement level and that was….mostly fine. They had a few loud arguments and also they both smoked on the patio, so that fucked us out of our patio more than a few times and was super fucking annoying. BUT the plus side was they worked regular jobs so we had a drama free deck during the week and a gigantic kitchen that was super fucking stacked being that it was a house that had been actually lived in for decades, it wasn’t just an Airbnb sparsely stocked with just the basics. The living room was also roomy and had large windows and there was room for our yoga mats.
We spent a lot of time on the deck and there was a little family of deer that frequented the yard. It was hot as hell those first couple of months, but unlike fucking horrifying Arizona where we came from - it is cool in the mornings and in the evenings and it isn’t raging hot every day - we got plenty of reprieve with temps low enough to have the windows open. Such a different summer experience.
We drove around a lot just looking at different areas and one day he said, “This place looks b-fucking-dig.” and I asked, “B-fucking-dig?” and he very dryly replied, “Yeah - bomb fucking diggidy.”
We made some amazing food in that giant kitchen and one day he was squatting down checking something in the oven and I said, “I wish i could see your butthole and balls right now” and he said, “Ohmygawd, fuck, just....fuck.” Another day he said, “I need some more yogurts. Those key lime units are fucked. They taste like soap.”
It was nice to just settle in and really get to know an area. There was a nice big grocery store in town and a really nice walking trail (Indian Ledge Park) plus a super nice gigantic park with a lake (William Wolfe Park) - so we had two baller outdoor areas that were almost fully shaded so we could enjoy the outdoors even during the heat - another huge difference as Phoenix is desert with almost no shade cover.
And the town was so small that there were no stop lights, only stop signs. It was seriously quaint. One day we were walking out the door at my insistence sorta late to take our walk and he was lamenting that he hadn’t recorded his latest crypto transaction in his rush to get ready and I said, “It sounds like it's my fuckin fault, and i don't suck cock, so why don't you just throw me down the fuckin stairs.” Sometimes I wonder if other people talk to each other like that. I mean - it’s mostly me, I like to say really outrageous stuff to just make him wince.
About six weeks in to our stay in Connecticut, we planned a weekend away in NYC for Kris’ birthday. On his birthday last year it was the literal height of covid and we were literally moving out of the goddamn country on Augut 31 (two weeks after his birthday) so that was fuckin bonkers, and the year prior (2019) we were literally moving out of our beloved downtown house and into our shithole condo on the actual fucking day of his birth and it sucked ass and he got nearly zero birthday fun times for two years and it was super lame. So this was obviously the complete opposite. We took the train in and booked a nice (for us) room at Bryant Park Hotel, which was super novel. We’ve been to NYC a ton, but only ever on an extreme budget, which meant staying in crappy Airbnbs or out of the way hotels. Being on a budget is actually fine for NYC, aside from the accommodation bit, as the parks are amazing and the street food is delicious and delis are cheap and half the thrill of NYC is simply just walking around taking in the sights and the architecture and the people. But it was so fucking much fun to, you know - not have a budget.
We checked into our hotel, got some sandwiches at a nearby deli and then freshened up to go out for the evening. We walked up to Central Park and I got the most amazing lemonade at a Le Pain in the park. It was hot as fucking balls though and we each ended up getting coconut popsicles and not even being hungry for dinner before the show. The show being The Queen, Ali Wong. They checked vax cards at the door and most people were wearing masks and all in all it felt relatively “safe”. It was funny though - she was absolutely amazing and funny as hell but I was like….did I really need to go to the all this trouble to essentially see her Netflix special live? Hahahahaha. The walk home was super charming and quintessentially New York - walking in the dark through the lights of the city straight through midtown. It was amazing. I was still hot and not super hungry, but I bought a big bowl of fruit just to get something for when we were back at the hotel. Kris got pizza from this place advertising $1 slices and it was actually really fucking good. New York man, there’s just nowhere else in the world like it.
The next day we went to a Korean fried chicken place I had read about in the New Yorker K-Jun. It was almost like a speak easy in that there was nearly no signage and we had to walk down stairs into a dank basement and through swinging doors straight into the kitchen and just say - oh hey, hi - uh, we’re here for your chicken?? It was so fucking funny. Apparently you can order online if you’ve got your shit together, but we surely did not. The lady was super duper nice and had such a cool story about meshing Korean food with her time spent learning from chefs in New Orleans. She now has a proper brick and mortar restaurant in NYC that’s doing really well.
Anyway, we took our take out and ate it in Washington Square entertained by people watching. Then we went back to the hotel for a rest and a shower and got our boners back up to go out again for dinner - we had made a reservation at Peak at Hudson Yards. The entrance was inside of a mall so it makes a bad first impression and the ride up in the elevator and actually getting into the restaurant was also super unpleasant, but once we were in - it was cool. Crazy views over the Hudson River and the city and the food was excellent. We had a yellow fin appetizer and amazing popover style bread with fresh butter. I had a fried stuffed squash blossom and Kris had a $75 steak, which he concluded was in fact worth the $75. He said to me, “Please don’t take the leftovers, that’s a pleb move.” So I didn’t. Ha. At one point they actually moved our table to one with a better view so that was super nice. And that was that - the next morning we were quite happy to get back to the quiet peace of Connecticut.
Kris’ birthday is on the 15th and the rest of August took a really fucking interesting turn. We had reached a point in crypto where Kris had felt comfortable fully quitting his day job back in February. He had already way scaled back and gone down to 10 hours a week when we left Phoenix for Europe in August of 2020. But this February he quit for good as it got the point where obviously and most importantly - we felt comfortable enough financially for him to do so. And secondly was just that - who fucking wants a day job, I mean honestly though. But also it just started to get in the way of crypto and seemed insane that he was trading an hour of his time for some shitting wage when he could invest that same hour into crypto and receive infinite returns.
But anyway - factoring into that was the fact that I still worked for the wellness wanker and while that was very much living paycheck to paycheck, we had certainly been in far worse positions financially and felt comfortable enough that my work with her would stay steady long enough until I could quit on my own terms as well. Slow and steady, planned and thoughtful it all was. SO! That’s what we had started talking about around that trip to NYC in August - me finally quitting. And let me just tell you what a holy shit mindfuck that was. I had struggled so hard for years to sustain myself with graphic design work, web design stuff, I had fantasized about being a virtual assistant and here I was with a solid client making a steady paycheck….and I was just going to….let that client go? I mean it’s freelancer suicide and as a freelancer it’s the most insane thing you could possibly imagine - letting your best client go. But at the same time - I knew it was always only temporary. Still though. It was just whack fucking ass.
So anyway - we were talking about it.
Was now the time? Should I milk it a bit longer? When would we know? Crypto was going so well and following the trajectory it was projected to, so in a sense - everything was going “to plan”. And one thing not in the plan was staking and rewards and defi and capitalizing on all of that, but capitalize we did and Kris was doing some insanely clever shit and that was sort of what tipped us over the edge - that we were staking and generating passive income without having to touch our principle. Because that’s where the “should I quit now” hesitation lied - was it worth having to take money out of crypto yet? Were we actually fully there yet? But in a sense - we sort of were, so we decided I would just sort of disengage from my work and maybe it would just naturally sort of fall away. And that’s exactly what happened, though it wasn’t without its fucking drama because that lady I worked for was such a fucking nightmare of a person and I can’t believe I shoveled her shit into my mouth every day for two entire years, but fuck me right up the ass if it wasn’t what needed to be done, you know?
And so, that’s how - on August 31st, 2021 - I quit my fucking job.
By choice. I quit. Like, what the fuck is even happening?
What a sigh of relief that was. What a weight lifted. And within weeks - I didn’t think about her at all anymore. I wasn’t carrying any anger, I even stopped feeling vindictive within a couple of weeks and I was so happy to see I didn’t even have to work at it, it just naturally happened. Because obviously much cooler shit was going on. Which made me think a lot about how miserable people are in general when they are going out of their way to make someone else suffer. I wanted her to suffer, but I was too distracted by my own joy and success to give a shit. I couldn’t possibly have devoted even another second of time or energy to letting her run my life. And goddamn that was refreshing.
So yeah, September was a fucking dream. I was finally free and New England was in its full Autumn glory and just fuck. It was so fun. One day he was talking to his friend Greg and said, “I got some really cool pictures of foggy woodsy spooky misty woods and shit.” It’s so beautiful here! And the heat had broken and it was fucking sweater weather and we were just taking long windy drives to cute little Connecticut towns and walking down the main streets and exploring all the nature and it was just fun. I mean, in terms of short-term things, literally most days our biggest decision was if we wanted to go out to lunch or not, and if so - where. Like. What even is life? Two years ago I was dating my rent check the 3rd of the month, but sending it on the 7th (or whenever the money came in) just blaming “slow mail” and banking on our sweet landlord to not say anything and living in constant anxiety and fear of not meeting my basic needs like food and shelter and never having steady income ever and just. Like I said. Mind fuck.
We had a great time exploring the town of Washington, which is the town Stars Hollow is based off of:
We also explored Woodbury (a town referenced as being 20 minutes over from Stars Hollow) and was also cute as shit. Apparently Woodbury is like the antique capital of New England and we wandered into a helluva shop and had an experience right out of a Nancy Meyers movie. The owner invited us into her private kitchen, which was decked out to the goddamn nines and had literally the most beautiful robin’s egg blue range I have ever seen and she gave us drinks and we chatted about fancy people stuff like mid century modern design and European travel and told her about our plans and it was nuts to just fit right into this extremely fancy atmosphere with these very fancy people. It was fucking great. When we left though, Kris said that was “the whitest experience” he’d ever had. LOLOLOLOLOL.
And then our 11 year anniversary was September 11th and Kris ordered a couple of wagyu steaks and he ate his entire steak and ended up puking and shitting a few hours later, so that was hiarious. Happy Anniversary, amirite? Thankfully my body had naturally put me off the wagyu when I had eaten about a third of mine.
One day we were trying to get the T.V situation set up so we could watch some F1 stuff and he had pulled out an old laptop to try and connect it to the T.V. and started muttering to the computer, “Fuckin piece of shit bitch… Where's the fucking remotes?! Where the fucks ESPN?! Oh it ain't gonna scrub? What a bunch of bullshit.”
We also had a couple of fun days exploring New Haven, and we went to Zeneli’s a couple of times and just had the best food.
Also we were able to do fun things like go into Whole Foods and buy literally whatever we wanted without caring how much it cost. Which is still a fucking crazy thought. It’s funny too because “anything we wanted” ended up being like $150 worth of stuff, but still. That was half our monthly grocery budget for years. We never bought snacks, we never bought treats, we stretched everything as far as we possibly could at all times. It’s a mind fuck, but fuck it’s so fun. We also were eating a fuck ton of sushi at this little Japanese place and leaving huge tips and I was also buying a lot of skincare products. So many fun times.
At the same time, we were in the thick of researching how to get back to Europe and what we were going to do next. Months of research had shown us that it is extremely difficult to obtain residency over there if you are not a student, or a person with a work visa or you have family lineage. Even the digital nomad visas or other freelance visas did not cover our situation as they require you to have either an actual registered business or verifiable, regular income. It was a bit disheartening to just once again feel like we were such outsiders and feel almost like we were being punished for living what is still considered very on the fringes. Another deterrent to moving abroad is that completely separately from a visa, you have to figure out tax laws as the U.S. is one of only two countries in the entire world that taxes you regardless of where you live. Yes, there are tax treaties, and yes there are sometimes things in place to avoid double taxation, but nevertheless - it introduced another epic layer of complication - particularly when you’re talking about sorting far more than just a dipshit weekly paycheck.
Essentially what we determined was okay - we’re sort of still in the middle. We are not your “average” person with a “normal” situation i.e. a work visa, pay stubs, etc. But also - we are not yet rich enough to do rich people stuff. But that’s sort of our goal now - to get to the point where we can take advantage of the rich people stuff. There are a handful of countries that offer investment visas where you either buy government bonds or invest in a local company, and a handful of countries offer investment visas where the ($250k or more) investment can be in real estate - the Golden Visa. So ultimately we probably will do something like that. But in the meantime - we can own homes anywhere and just stick to the tourist allotted time. So for example we could own a house in France (a Schengen country) and stay there 90 days on, 90 days off - the standard tourist allotment that is automatic. We could then also own a house in Croatia or other non-Schengen country and stay there 90 days on, 90 days off, etc. and do what’s referred to as The Schengen Shuffle and we wouldn’t have to mess with any kind of visa anything. Which is highly appealing in its own way.
In the meantime though, we are going to set up a base here in the U.S. because of the nature of travel right now and not wanting to put any pressure on ourselves to find houses in foreign countries and also just to have a backup plan since getting booted out of the U.K. and back to the U.S. was pretty much the worst thing ever. So until we are in the clear on that front, it makes sense to have a house here just in case.
ANYWAY. All of that was swirling around in our minds as we were also feeling the anxiety of simply just not being in control of our situation - as in at any moment we could get a text from our landlord saying we had to be out and just sort of living suspended in that gray area really sucks and we both hate it so much. And then wouldn’t ya know it - in the middle of October we got “the text” from the landlord that we had to be out by the end of November. Thus triggering another round of manic Airbnb / Furnished Finder / Zillow searching to map out the next steps. We were looking all over the east coast and at one point I mentioned a city and he said, “Oh, my friend xxxx lives in that city.
And I said, “Oh yeah? Do you like still know her? Does she know you?”
And he’s all, “Well - she's had my penis in her mouth, so I mean....”
It took a few days and lots of hemming and hawing, but we worked it out and decided to head to Rockford to explore the northern Illinois / southern Wisconsin are and we are actually going to stay in a really baller ass place starting in January 2022 - a swanky mid century modern house that Kris found and was like - holy shit that’s way too expensive, but upon further investigation ended up getting it for about half the price for committing to a two month reservation. So that was sort of surreal. It will by far be the nicest place we have ever stayed. And in the meantime, for the month of December, we found a little cottage in northwestern New Jersey, which will give us time to explore NJ and Pennsylvania.
After we got that sorted, we will had another month and a half to enjoy autumn in Connecticut so we did just that. We found a beautiful little waterfall park - Southford Falls State Park:
And spent another glorious fall day in New Haven:
And we found this really awesome spot that was a bit more of a hike than we normally would consider, but it had the most epic viewpoint - Lovers Leap State Park:
At one point he pissed on the trail and I said, “Did you enjoy dumping out your cock in the woods?
Him: Yes.
Me: You fertilized the forest with your uric acid and shit?
Him: Yeah. A 9 foot tree is gonna grow there.
Me: You shoulda shot a load too and given it everything.
Him: I know right. That shit would grow a fuckin redwood.
I’ve also had this funny thing happen recently where I’ll have a shit sneak up on me. Like I’ll just sit down to pee thinking it’s nothing and all the sudden have to take a massive shit. Which sometimes is a problem because you can’t reach the bathroom door from the toilet, so there’s been a handful of times I’ve had to call for him to come and shut the door for me and it’s just so goddamn funny. One day he was in the bathroom in the middle of full on trimming his entire beard and hair, which is a huge to-do. I came in to pee and while I was peeing I telling him about this amazing event at Highclere Castle where the give you a tour and show the Downton Abbey movie and it just looks so fantastic. And then I said, “Oh shit."
And he said "Goddammit, are you kidding me?? Fuck off."
Because he just knew I had to take a surprise shit and he had to get the fuck out, all covered in hair. At least I shit really quickly though so I mean….
There was a little pub that had great food that we went to a few times and we found a little cafe near our house that made amazing butterfly pea flower lattes that I was getting into the habit of getting to take to the park and sip during our walks around the lake. One day there was a group of piece of shit kids that took over the path around the lake for some sanctioned run and Kris whisper-yelled to me, “C'mon pussies!! Let’s go!!"
I also completely randomly met this girl online while looking for a therapist / life coach / I don’t even know what the fuck and it turned out she lived in Connecticut. Way far from us, but we decided to meet in the middle at this spectacular beach park - Hammonasset— that neither of us had been to but that ended up being seriously amazing. That shit was also right out of a Nancy Meyers movie. And after our beach meetup, we walked thru the local town center, which was downtown Madison, and ended up wandering thru possibly the cutest book store I’ve ever been to in my life, and having the most delicious lunch outside at their cafe:
And yeah. Connecticut has treated us well! I guess westward we go and just hope we can find a home soon because we’ve now been living out of our car / random rentals for nearly a year and half and we’re both fuckin over it.