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.