I’m sitting here at my newly configured desk in our joint study in Sioux Falls that looks out on grass and trees—at least three evergreens and some maples, I think. I will learn more about the terrain as I go along. For now, I see green; no more skyscrapers, Lake Michigan or Millennium Park.

Green is good.

Our study here is smaller than in Chicago, but even though we have an extra bedroom, we’ve elected to stay together. Marv has cut down the desks he made for us in Chicago from six to five feet and, instead of sitting back to back like we did, we now sit side by side with a large window separating our computer screens. This arrangement will work if he doesn’t think I’m his secretary when we’re both working here at the same time. He might say the same about me.

Marv arrived here three days before I did to be here when the movers unloaded. I stayed back to oversee repainting and carpeting our condo; I arrived last week Sunday, June 26, after two days of leisurely driving I-90. I listened to NPR when I could or a book on tape, but mostly I sang to myself: Oh what a beautiful morning…because the weather was indeed perfect for my solo trip to our new home—clear, sunny, warm but not hot. I sang also because, with the acoustics in my Beetle, I sounded good enough to be on stage, so I pretended I was. I pictured the headliner: Seventy-four-year-old Sings Her Way, Solo, from Chicago to Sioux Falls.

It was good to get here to see how restful and striking the new paint and carpeting in shades of blue and gray looked in our new-to-us, five-year-old home. It was good to see what Marv had accomplished box-wise in his short time here. It was good to see the red and yellow and green flowers at our front door that our daughter had bought to welcome us, along with meat and cheese and eggs and milk in the refrigerator and bread and sweet rolls and granola bars in the cupboard.

And that evening a surprising thing happened. I glanced at my phone before going to bed, and we had two offers on our Chicago condo. By morning, it was sold. I was happy to have left it smelling of new carpeting and looking neat and clean with its newly painted pale blue walls. The rooms—living room, dining room, study, and bedroom—appeared to waft right out of their floor-to-ceiling windows and merge with the horizon hovering over the deeper blue lake.

So, along with attending four baseball games and one birthday party involving our grandchildren, we had a very happy and fun-filled start in our new home. Now we hope that all goes well with the selling process and that the soon-to-be new owners of our condo will love it and the Heritage building community as much as we did.

Meanwhile, Marv has found the right boxes for me to unpack and be able to work at my desk. He almost has his kitchen up and running. Before long, we’ll no longer feel like newcomers to Sioux Falls.

Thanks for following this The Move series. Note that I’ve already changed my header from Ramblings from a Retired Nurse (in Chicago) to Ramblings from a Retired Nurse (in Sioux Falls). And my photo is no longer a Chicago scene, but one of an open highway here with its long open vista revealing miles of gently rolling hills and the biggest sky ever filled with elegant gray and white puffy clouds.

I look forward to learning more about clouds too; I’m going to love being surrounded by nature once again. And by my friendly new neighbors.