It'll be just like starting over

I've been in New York for five months and in that time, I've had my hair cut once. The haircut I got was great, but it was also 85 bucks and I'm paralyzed trying to figure out if I should suck it up and pay that kind of money or find another salon.

This is just one of the zillions of decisions vexing me as we establish ourselves in a new city.

John and I had owned our house for six and a half years in Ann Arbor. Before that, we'd both been renters in A2, and before that, John was an undergrad at U of M. When friends wanted the name of a handyman, or plumber, or dentist, they often asked us.

Now we're in this huge city, where the choices are limitless, and it's daunting to imagine how to select from the zillions of choices. The valet in our building offers dry cleaning service but it's outrageously expensive. How to choose a new dry cleaner when there's one on every corner? How many doctors do you imagine do business in Manhattan, or even on the upper west side?

I'm embarrassed to keep asking our same circle of friends and acquaintences here in the city every time we have another need. Do you have a good shoe repair shop, ob/gyn, tailor, travel agent? I imagine their eye rolls as they wonder if we can't just Google our way out of whatever the latest quandry is.

Whole businesses are built around problems like ours -- angieslist.com, insiderpages.com, etc etc -- so I know we aren't alone. There was even a NY Times article earlier this summer about them. (Here it is, for you TimesSelect crowd) But getting a recommendation from a web site, no matter how well orchestrated, still highlights the fact that most of these are questions we haven't had to ask for a very long time.

I loved our doctor in Ann Arbor. Phil Rodgers at Briarwood Family Practice, if you're interested.
My dentist, Doug Hock, has the most gentle, wonderful hygienist ever. If you go, tell Judy I said hi.
We were blessed to be friends with a talented seamstress, Heather Phillips, who designed two of our friends' wedding dresses but would still take the time to put buttons back on shirts, and with Steve whoselastnameIcanneverspell, a hell of a cook and also the most conscientious handyman we could have ever hoped to have paint our house.
I could go on and on, and that's before we even get talking about restaurants.

I think this is part of what makes people homesick. There's such a comfort and ease to knowing who you call to make your life work, and it's exhausting to move from that autopilot mode to putting energy into basic things like learning the layout of a new grocery store or figuring out where the nearest ATM is to your office. Every time something like that comes up, it's yet another reminder that you're new here, and you're no longer in the safe, comfortable, easy place you used to call home.

Anyone got a recommendation on a New York stylist who charges less than $85?