When Life Gives You Muck...

As I mentioned in my last post, upon moving in we had quite a bit of work cut out for us.  I remember going to bed the night we moved in and thinking: ‘Are we ever going to get this place put together??’  Well, after giving ourselves a day to refresh and sightsee with Aaron’s dad, we grit our teeth—and dove in.  Then, little by little, like a 1,000 piece jigsaw, we began piecing this crazy puzzle together. 

I’ll pick back up where I left off in a minute.  First, to introduce you to somebody…His name is Einstein.  He is Aaron’s cat.  I can’t totally call him mine, but I will claim him as my step-cat.  Let me provide you with a little profile of this guy...

Color: Black with white paws and a white belly (like he’s wearing a tux) 

Traits: Smart (sometimes), mischievous (especially when he has his crazy eyes on)

Likes: Eating plants, having his belly rubbed, bunny-kicking his stuffed mouse, sitting on oddly shaped items, and being within a foot of you at all times.

I call this his owl position

Dislikes: Traveling, getting squirted with the squirt bottle (when he eats plants)

Even though he did totally devour the flowers I brought home from the farmer’s market this past Friday, and he once knocked the cord out of my computer while I was typing some really important job stuff, I can’t help but love the little guy.  Since I am still on the job hunt, it has just been Einstein and me manning down the fort at home. Therefore, we keep each other company during the day while Aaron is at work.  In fact, since he has kind of become my lazy motivator I like to call him my “Mews”.  Yes, I know it’s cheesy…but also clever, you have to admit. 

Alright.  Picking up where we left off.

10. When starting over, any tiny bit of progress is worth celebrating.

First meal in the apartment.

Before

One of the trickiest things was just figuring out how to move our stuff into place when there just wasn’t that much space to begin with.  Boxes were stored on and under the dining room table, on the deck, in the closets—just to get them out of the way.  Slowly but surely, though, we began to see signs of progress.  The succession kind of happened like this: The family room was the first to get put in place, just to have somewhere to sit down—oh, and so we actually had a place to eat.  Next, the kitchen—make-shift self-assembled pantry and all.  Then, after one weekend of hard work and lots of brainstorming on space-saving techniques, our bedroom came together.  Finally, after a productive few afternoons and a cleaning frenzy-Saturday, we could actually eat at our dining room table, and just about every box that once cluttered our apartment was unpacked.  I can’t even explain to you how good this felt. 

After

Of course life’s little victories have also manifested themselves in other ways.  For instance, in obtaining a residency parking permit.  Who knew receiving this coveted sticker and placing it on our car (in the correct location) would end up feeling like we had just climbed Mount Everest.  This brings me to number 11…

11. Moving to Boston in the next year?  Work on getting your parking permit now.

Oye…Just thinking about this whole process all over again gives me a headache.  Let me explain.  So, in order to park on the streets in Boston, you have to obtain a parking permit for your neighborhood.  Sounds easy, right?  Waaay wrong.  Of course before obtaining this permit, one must also do A, B, C, and D.  But before doing A, one must also do a.) and b.) and receive x form and bring this to B, also bearing in mind that one can only do C after doing B, and the locations at which one brings forms B and C close at an hour that is inconvenient to any person who has a job—oh and you only have 7 days to complete D after completing A.  Meanwhile, you are receiving $40 parking ticket after $40 parking ticket because they’ve made it so difficult to obtain that stupid sticker.

Aaron playing the Blues on

his harmonica during our trying times. 

Now, I know you’re asking…“Oh, but, Elise, what if you get a flat tire throughout this whole process and can’t move your car right away?  What if you get your residency sticker and celebrate because you think you’ve defeated all odds, but then accidently put your sticker on the wrong window?  And, for goodness sakes, what if you if you happen to forget that there is street cleaning on the third Monday of the month...??”  Well, let me tell you the answer to all three of these questions: You get ticketed.  Oh except in the case of the street cleaning, your car gets towed and you get ticketed.  Don’t worry; we’ve tested out all three of these scenarios for you—just in case there were any doubts...

 Wow.  I’m sitting here in the beautiful Boston Public library rereading what I just wrote, and I’ve just got to say: despite all set-backs, I think we have come a long way in a short amount of time.  I mean, it seems like only yesterday that we were just realizing (in horror, after already receiving two of what would be eight total tickets) that we still had steps A, B,C, and D to go through before we were able to obtain that glorious residency sticker (we didn’t even know about sub-steps a.) and b.) yet)…It feels like just yesterday that I was resorting to parking in the Stop and Shop parking lot despite the warning that ‘THESE LOTS ARE CLOSELY MONITORED’ so I best not park there for more than 50 MINUTES...And it seems like yesterday that mounds of boxes stared us in the face throughout our apartment.  Though I am glad to have all of that muck behind us, I will say, all that muck does make you appreciate all the un-muckiness that much more.  I don’t think I will ever forget how accomplished we felt when a spunky Hispanic woman placed that  Massachusetts license plate in our hands, or how we were driven to giddy celebration at a nearby Irish pub after receiving our residency sticker.  I can tell you one thing: I will never under-appreciate a parking spot again. 

Oh, and what do you do when life gives you muck??  I say squish it between your toes.

Move-in Mahem

Alright.  Before I continue, I probably need to clear one thing up...

Aaron reminded me upon reading the last post, that, The Teriyaki Incident of 2011 actually occurred during a hand-off exchange between the fridge and the counter.  Being on the other end of this exchange, I may have had a hand in this incident.  So, just to get things straightened out, I may not be completely free from accusation--though I do not take full blame.  Don’t worry, you won’t find us on Judge Judy any time soon…

Anyway, I have a lot to fill you in on, so let’s jump right in. 

6. Beginning of September move-in is a zoo in Boston.

After doing our time in Braintree we were set to move-in to our apartment in Roxbury Crossing come Friday, September 2^nd.  We had the keys, movers were hired, Penske truck and Aaron’s car were loaded and ready to go.  Bright and early we said farewell to our Braintree hotel and caravanned over to the apartment. 

We had witnessed the zoo-like madness that was ensuing in our neighborhood the day before when we had come over to get our keys from the realtors.  To paint a little picture: The turn-over for most apartment complexes in Boston occurs on the first of every month.  Since the Boston area is home to over 100 colleges and universities, the beginning of September is the craziest…Aand of course we just happened to be moving into an area in which we would be surrounded by students from Northeastern, Mass Art, Boston College…So picture narrow streets (that are crowded on a normal basis) crammed with moving trucks, parent and student cars, as well as the cars of your long-time residents.  Now picture movers, parents, and students moving in and out of tiny apartments with boxes, lamps, tables, chairs, stereos at the same time as other movers, parents, and students are moving in and out of tiny apartments with boxes, lamps, tables, chairs, and stereos…Finally, picture a hobo’s paradise: perfectly good dressers, lamps, speakers, Tupperware, shoes, hangers--just about any random item you could ever want or need—piling up out on the curbs for trash and recycling pick-up.  It was nuts.  At least we had received a taste of it all a day ahead of time so we knew what we were getting ourselves into...Or did we??  (Duh duh duh...)      

One thing I must mention is the state of our apartment when we showed up that Friday morning…When we had peeked in the day before (around 5:30 pm or so), our realty company was just beginning to do some cleaning.  Great that they were cleaning.  Not so great that it was 5:30pm, the evening before we were suppose to move in, and it looked like a pig sty: dirty walls and counters, stuff still left in cupboards and closets…We hoped for the best and prayed that these cleaners would work some extreme magic. 

7. Upon hurriedly exiting an apartment, apparently it’s okay to leave things in complete filth and disarray.    

   Well, when we showed up at 6 or so AM that Friday morning, it was still a sty.  Yes, it was evident they had done some cleaning—but it was also evident that we had more work ahead of us than we had ever dreamed.  As I did a walk-through inspection, and documented the mess in pictures, my heart sank deep into my chest.  Cupboards: full of half-used boxes of food and ingredients.  Drawers still full of dishes and utensils.Fridge: extremely gross.  Still full of leftovers, wilted produce, used condiments, beer.  Possibly blood from raw meat dried and incrusted on the bottom?  (I still shutter at the thought of this image…) Stove and oven: rusted, food and grease splatters from the dark ages.  Counters: evidently used to open beer bottles, home to food in plastic bags and stacked dishes that were thoughtfully left by the cleaners for us to sort through.  Closets: orphan hangers, as well as abandoned cleaning supplies, paper towels, plastic cups, and toilet paper.  Back porch: beer bottles scattered everywhere, along with other random pieces of junk.  Oh and there were also the  maintenance issues, such as: the fist-sized hole in the entry way closet door, snagged carpet that bares nails underneath, cracked kitchen tiles, crumbling walls, baseboard heating in which the baseboard had pulled itself away from the wall…

 
I could have cried.

Aaron’s dad and I knew Aaron wasn’t going to be able to help us out much that day because, being a Friday, he had to work.  We also knew the movers wouldn’t be coming until around 5, due to the high number of people moving.  But this didn’t keep Aaron’s dad and me from tackling the apartment bright and early that morning…It was tough figuring out where to start, but as soon as Aaron left for work, his dad and I dug in. 

As his dad began cleaning off the porch and bringing in boxes, I began cleaning inside.  I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me that day, but I had no I idea how extensive a cleaning task I was taking on right then and there.  Vacuuming the floors and the heating vents was enough to gross anybody out.  Then there was the kitchen.  As you already are aware, it was pretty disgusting--and it became my nemesis that whole entire day.  One thing I did learn for certain through this process:

8. I hate putting up shelf paper. 

I’m not good at it.  The whole process makes me edgy and frustrated, and it never turns out how I want it to.  Out of all of my least favorite things to do in the world, I’ve decided this is a big one on the charts.  I hate it.  Thanks for letting me get that out there...

       
Oh and also,

9. Grease has a way of caking itself to places you would never expect in a kitchen.

Like…the top of the cabinets above the stove.  Who knew?  And who knew it would be SO TOUGH to remove!?  I didn’t…until I worked up a sweat after 45 minutes of elbow-greasing it.

 All in all, I’d say Aaron’s dad and I were a pretty good team that day.  I mean, we covered a pretty vast chunk of ground.  By the time Aaron got home (lucky guy), about half of the boxes from the truck were in the family room, the porch was clean, the floors and vents and baseboards were vacuumed, the old food had been thrown out, the fridge and freezer were clean emptied and spotless, the stove was coming along, and just about all the counters, cupboards, shelves, and drawers in the kitchen had been gutted and cleaned out.  It was a start.

From there, things picked up pretty quickly.  Once Aaron arrived, the movers arrived not long after, and no later than an hour and a half after the movers had arrived, they were gone.  Finally, we were able to stop, take a drink of water, and take a look at our apartment.  Everything that had once been 3D puzzle-pieced into our Penske truck was now surrounding us in our family/dining room.  Not going to lie, it was a little bit of an overwhelming feeling.  One hurtle down, the next stared us in the face.  One thing we knew for sure: it was going to be like a game of Tetris trying to figure out where to start in on those boxes. 

First step, we figured, would just be to clear enough space for us to sleep for the night.

     






A Teriyaki Interlude

Alright, let’s just put a pause on my list so I can confess:

Our shower smells like teriyaki sauce.  Yes, I said teriyaki sauce...

Why, you ask?  Well let me fill you in:

So last night Aaron and I are cooking a nice meal of hamburger, macaroni, and stir-fry (I know, kind of a strange combo…).  Things are going well; we’re about ready to eat—when all of a sudden, I hear a ‘CRACK!’ and then an “Oh no…”  I look behind me into the kitchen only to see a lake of teriyaki sauce creeping towards me, and Aaron standing over it muttering words of frustration to himself.  Not only was teriyaki goop surrounding us on the floor, but when Aaron had dropped and cracked the bottle, teriyaki had also exploded all over the walls, cupboards, cookbooks, fridge, and a little bit of our entry-way…I’ll tell you right now: this hadn’t been just any old bottle of teriyaki.  This was an economy-sized bottle that we had picked up at BJ’s, the whole-sale store.  Therefore, it looked like a teriyaki bomb had just gone off in our kitchen.

This is where it all went down...

 Aaron’s first reaction was to quickly scoop up the broken (plastic) teriyaki bottle and dump the remains that hadn’t touched the floor into our stir-fry. “At least we can still have a little bit…”, he said quietly, as he solemnly dripped the remains into our pan and set the broken bottle into the sink.  Coming out of a stun from watching this all unfold, the first thing I could do was...laugh.  I couldn’t help it.  “How are we going to get this up, Elise?!”, Aaron asked in desperation as he stared at the mess.  The teriyaki was slowly creeping towards the outer-skirts of our kitchen.  I snapped out of my amusement of the whole situation and quickly started brainstorming… Unfortunately, we had recently given away our mop.  When would our small kitchen get so dirty that we would need to do anything other than Swiffer-mop?  Famous last words… A sponge?, I wondered.  My mom had gotten up some pretty big spills from the floor with a sponge before.  They’re small, but mighty…Though, apparently not quite mighty enough for a spill of this magnitude.  It helped, but didn’t do the trick.

 

“You know what we need?” I finally said.  “…A towel!”.   Aaron dashed into the bathroom and came out with a nice big bath towel.  I’ll admit, I was actually thinking an old hand or dish towel, but if he was willing to sacrifice an old unraveling bath towel, this would work too.  So we went to work—and I’m proud to say, between the towel, the sponge, the Lysol wipes, and the Swiffer-mop, the mess was cleaned up. 

So why does our shower smell like teriyaki?  Well, we had to rinse the towel out somewhere, and this seemed to be the best place at the time.  Unfortunately we didn’t stop to think about the lasting repercussions…On a positive note, the stir-fry was delicious, and now our kitchen floor is the cleanest it’s been since we moved in.

Number 5: Don't give away your mop.

Lessons from a week in Braintree

Okay.  Let's clear the air with this statement first and foremost: I realize that moving to Boston is not exactly like moving to another country, climbing a big mountain, or being on a big global mission to raise awareness about a cause (Though these things may not be out of the question for the future…).  I’m sure Aaron and I could be seen as just another Joe-shmo couple moving  into a different time zone together—I mean, let’s face it.  Many have found themselves taking on far greater moves than this, either out of necessity or out of their own free will... 

But I am not writing this blog to compete with the overseas travelers and mountain climbers of the world.  If you know me well, you know I believe there is something to be learned from just about every new situation we put ourselves into.  Aaand you also know I like to reflect on new situations…Thus, my justification for this blog—aand for these next few entries in which I provide you with a laundry list of little lessons I have learned since I've gotten here.  Let’s begin, shall we?

1.      Driving in Boston is scary.

Holy cow.  After visiting Boston and having our realtors zip us around its maze-like, crowded streets (apparently they are based off old cattle paths), I swore I would only drive if absolutely necessary once we got here…Well, that time came quickly.  The day after we got here, to be exact.

During our first week in the Boston area we stayed at an extended-stay hotel in an area called Braintree.  This area was farther away from the heart of the city, so I was going to need to take Aaron to the subway stop (or the ‘T’ as they call it) each morning in order for him to get to work.   According to our GPS, the T stop didn’t seem too far away from our hotel.  So I thought: Okay, driving around here won’t be so bad.  Plus, I would be taking Aaron to the T at a pretty ungodly hour...Not many people would be out on the streets this early, right? 

Totally wrong.  Not only were there plenty of cars on the street, I failed to account for the aftermath of the hurricane that had just passed through the day before.  Down power lines and trees, and non-working stop-lights had to be included in the picture…And of course about the time I had to pick Aaron up, this put us right in the thick of rush-hour.  Nothing like trial by fire.  This leads me to my next lesson…

2.      Be smarter than your GPS. 

So somehow I never got lost while taking Aaron to the T-stop that week, but the trip to go pick him up--for whatever reason--became my nemeses.  Was I more awake and attentive at 6 in the morning?  I didn’t get it....  But three or four days in a row, with Aaron’s poor dad in the passenger seat, I managed to get us everywhere but the T-stop while attempting to pick up Aaron.  I never knew if it was me that was confused, or the GPS that we usually ended up plugging in--but we were messing up somewhere.  Finally, on the third or fourth day, after the GPS took us on a nice big loop back to our hotel because the hotel address had unknowingly gotten plugged-in instead of the address to the T-stop (yes, it was a head-slap moment…), we slowly retraced our steps and found out where we had gone wrong: one of the streets wasn’t labeled.  All I can say to this is: Why, Braintree?  Why!??  Probably so they can make fun of confused out-of-towners like me…

The other GPS moment happened when we decided to stop at a Target for food after picking up Aaron from the T.  Aaron’s dad and I both knew full well that there was a Target close to the hotel.  But after Aaron punched Target into the GPS, of course we senselessly let it become our guide.  Aaand of course it led us to the Target that was much farther away from our hotel.  Once again, it was trial by fire as I dodged cars that cut in without a signal, and attempted quick curvy merges on the highway.  Well, we made it there--only to find out that there was a lack of refrigerated/frozen/fresh food items in the store…In other words, all of these shelves were bare.  Noooooooo!,   I screamed in my head.  All we wanted to do was make dinner for the next few nights.  It was already getting late.  Was food that didn’t come in a box or can too much to ask??  I knew there had just been a hurricane, but people couldn’t have been so freaked out that they bought all the refrigerated/frozen/fresh food items in the store, right? Why would they want to stock up on refrigerated items when they were more than likely going to have a power-outage, anyway?—And that’s when it clicked: Duh, Elise.  Target can have power outages too.  And, after talking with a store worker, it was confirmed that a power outage (due to a car that hit a powerline) was, indeed, the cause of the lack of food .  So we stocked up on dry goods and headed all the way back to the Target near our hotel--which of course was the one we had intended on going to in the first place...Ironically, once we got there (and realized that this Target was inside a shopping mall) we were so hungry that we decided to eat at the food-court that night.  There would be plenty of time for making dinner the rest of the week in our little hotel kitchen.

While I do have more to say about Targets in Boston, this is just going to have to appear in a later post...

3.       Don’t expect a bus to come for you every 15 minutes at a bus stop.

This may happen in the heart of Boston, but in a town on the outer skirts, like Braintree...don’t hold your breath.  Let’s just say Aaron’s dad and I waited a good half-hour or so at a bus stop one day and finally gave up--only to find out later that we had missed the bus by a mere few minutes.  Not to mention, we would have been waiting at least another half-hour for the next one to come, had we stuck with it.  This would explain why no one else was waiting with us at the bus-stop--or why people kept giving us strange and amused looks out their car windows…

4.      Finding scrubs for a man is like finding a wrestling unitard for a woman.

Aaron trying to be just like his black and white cat, Einstein.

 

As it turned out, Aaron needed scrubs for work.  Little did I know how difficult a task obtaining scrubs for a male, would actually be.  Every place we went there were more scrubs for females than males…Why??  Admittedly, I guess I had a hard time actually distinguishing female from male scrubs if they weren’t flowery or didn’t have cutesy designs all over them.  However, Aaron assured me there were distinct differences: flared legs, fancy pockets, cinched in tops…Apparently, these were all tell-tale signs of lady-scrubs.  It finally took a visit to a store that specialized in work-attire to actually find a decent variety of man-scrubs—which, might I add, were actually labeled “uni-sex”.  And even then, these scrubs took up only one tiny corner of a whole half-a-store of scrubs…Here’s my question: Does Boston have something against male-scrubs, or is this an everywhere phenomenon??  Somebody needs to give me some feedback on this one…

To sum up, these were just a few things I learned during this first week in Braintree.  Little did I know that many more lessons would be on their way as we made the big move into our apartment... 

Stay tuned. 

Why Boston?

Here is my answer to the question posed in this post's title:

Why not??

This was the question my boyfriend, Aaron, and I reckoned with this past spring when all at once we began considering a big move to somewhere outside of Nebraska--a state we had both called home for all 20 plus years of our lives.  Initially all we could feel was excitement about this new possibility.  Though, as we sat on this idea and really looked at what it would take to get us there, doubt crept in…Why go some place different when we both had such established lives right where we were? 

Finally, we both came to the conclusion: Now’s the time.  Now’s the time to do something a little crazy.  What did we have to lose?  If it ended up being a detrimental decision, we’d change our course of direction.  At least we’d be in it together…         

  

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                                                               The beautiful Boston Harbor walk

Celebrating the signing of our apartment lease at a free
concert in Brookline (during our first ever visit to Boston)



After doing a little job research and rolling around a few location options, Boston became our destination of choice.  This is how it played out from here: Several months later we visited Boston for the first time.  Several hours into this trip, Aaron was offered a job in the area in which we hoped to live.  A 48 hour whirlwind later, we actually had a place to live.  It had become official!  Within weeks we were on the road to Boston with all of our possessions, dodging hurricane Irene, and making this dream happen. 

 Just like that.

(So this is the part when I get a little philosophical and reflect on this whole decision.  You’ll find I tend to do this quite often, so you better just get used to it…)





So often I think our society does what is logical, does what is comfortable, does what everybody else seems to be doing…Well, I will admit, practicality does have its place and the voices of reason cannot be discounted.  However, I’d like to pose the question:  Why not go out on a limb, take a chance, try something new--just simply because you feel, deep down, that it is the right course of action for you at that point in time...?



Here are four reasons not to: 1. Because it’s not easy.  2. Because things may not “work out”.  3. Because the unknown is scary 4. Because you don’t have a very practical explanation to back up your decision

But why let these things get in the way of experiencing a great adventure?  As my high school track coach recently advised me in an email: Live for no regrets.  And two weeks into this Bostonian adventure, despite the difficulty of moving away from family and friends, I don’t regret this decision for a minute.

So, I know I have failed to fill you in on all of the little things that you are actually interested in like: How’s public transportation?  Are the people actually grumpy all the time?  Is your apartment a crumbling piece of junk the size of a dorm room?  And how are those gosh darn baked beans??



Well, prepare yourself to get filled in on all of these questions--and more--as I walk you through the life of a Midwesterner gone East…. 



Slick Rick follows close behind
 in Adelle, his Ford Fusion



The Yellow Hornet leads the charge to Boston