Upon reading this, keep in mind that I wrote it around December 14, 2011, but just never published. Why? I'll explain in the next post...
I know, I know…I’ve been gone for a while. I’ll just say this: It’s amazing how quickly life can get ahead of you. Good thing is, I’m back—and ready to share more lessons learned in Boston.
12. Want an adventure in Boston? Go to Target.
Earlier in my blog I spoke of our first visit to Target not long after our arrival from Nebraska. This was Target adventure #1. Target adventure #2 happened soon after Aaron and I moved into our apartment. Upon moving in, we soon realized that we needed storage and organizational devices…stat. Target seemed to be the answer. Since our initial Target visit had been in Braintree, and we were now living in Mission Hill, we needed to find one closer to the heart of the city (as well as one that was fairly accessible by public transportation, since Aaron’s car was wearing the doughnut at this point…). Well, turns out there aren’t many Targets in Boston. In fact, without a car, the closest one requires a subway line change, as well as about an 8-minute walk. So just in travel alone, we found this to be about an 80 minute operation. The good thing was, once we got there we realized, not only was there a Target in this shopping district, but there was also a Best Buy, a Bed Bath and Beyond, and a Home Depot. Now, I am all for supporting the little guy, but it was really nice to stumble across an area where we could get things taken care of in one fell swoop.
Keep in mind, this particular Target visit took place at the beginning of the college school year. And remember when I talked about how crazy it was when we moved in with all of the college kids? Yeah…it was just about as crazy inside this Target. Description: clothes strewn, kitchen items in places they shouldn’t be, shelves once full of home décor and organizational mechanisms--now empty. At least the workers were having fun. A snippet of a conversation we overheard between some coworkers:
Worker #1- “Hey man, what if you changed your name to G. Vanni. Like a rapper name. You know, like, G. Vanni….??”
Worker #2- “No man, then you might as well say my whole name, Giovanni”
Worker #1- “Or what about a hyphen in the middle: Gio-vanni…? Or just Gio??”Then there was the part when Aaron and I decided that we were super hungry and there was no way we were going to be able to wait to eat until we got home since it was already getting late…
I knew exactly what I wanted from the little Target food stand: a soft pretzel and a yogurt parfait. Had my heart set on it, in fact…Well, Aaron went up to get our food while I watched our stuff. Disappointedly, he came back empty handed. He reported back that they had been out of just about everything in the kitchen. In fact, the guy at the register had been so nonchalant about it all that Aaron actually had a hard time believing him at first. But after the cashier even pulled out the pretzels from the display case to show him that they weren’t edible, Aaron was assured (apparently this cashier even told Aaron a story about how a new worker accidently sold a display pretzel to a customer, who ended up leaving a bite mark in the plastic display). Bummer. Guess it just wasn’t a soft pretzel and yogurt parfait kinda’ night…
And this wasn’t the last of our wild trips to this shopping area. Two others involved pouring rain, missing a bus, and drenching ourselves and our bags of stuff on the walk back to the subway station.
13. Sometimes the things that take the most time and effort are also the things that bring us together.Aaron and I began to find joy in daily time-consuming tasks such as cooking and doing the dishes. Now, keep in mind, in this apartment our dishwasher runs on man-power, and our kitchen/oven/fridge are pretty much “fun-sized”, so this whole process is far from convenient, and I can disclose with full honesty that every dish-washing experience has not been speckled with rainbows and bunny-fluff…Yet, there is something about working with another to complete a task in a small confined space under less than desirable conditions that leads to a sense of togetherness. I could get into this topic farther in a discussion about how I think everybody would be better off if we all went back to churning butter and tending to our own gardens—but I may save that for a later post…
Doing dishes and cooking together basically became a time for us to decompress, vent, share about our days, hold serious and non-serious conversations, goof around, and/or dance around our tiny kitchen together. Not to mention, we have had a pretty great time experimenting with different recipes and ingredients. Whether attempting a legendary heirloom family recipe or envisioning up our own dishes, we have produced some pretty knock-out meals (and some that aren’t so knock-out, but this is part of the learning process, right?). Both of us dream of a day when people from near and far come to sample our famous food and drink items. For now, through, we’re just working on getting through the dinner and dishes process in a timely manner (like, before 9pm), and not setting off the fire alarm in our entry-way. In time, in time…
14. Look up the hours of a laundry-mat before hiking the half mile with four bags of laundry in the rain
So…when we first moved in to our apartment the laundry-room that existed underneath our apartment complex could be described as an extremely musty and sketchy room that could serve a dual purpose as a dungeon. Therefore, Aaron and I decided that it would be a good idea for us to search elsewhere for our laundry needs. Luckily, a Laundromat happened to be located right down the street—or at least it seemed to be located right down the street from what we could remember. Well, we had put off laundry to the point when we were getting pretty desperate (yes, I had just about used up my last-resort underwear…), when finally we just decided to “get ‘er done”. Of course we made this decision at a less than ideal time…after dark, while it’s raining—but desperate times call for desperate measures. We were goin for it.
I remember asking Aaron before we left our apartment with hands filled with heavy laundry bags, if the Laundromat was still open. “Oh yeah”, he had replied.
Famous last words…
After trudging down the street (about an 800 meter stretch), lugging our full bags of dirty clothing items through the splattering rain, we finally arrived at our destination—only to have our hopes crashed to the ground with the words, “We’re closed”. Since we had enjoyed the trip to the Laundromat so much, we got to do it all over again—with not a single piece of clean clothes to show for it. You can bet Aaron was given a little grief for that one—though, I guess we both could have done better research…At least now we know: 8pm laundry deadline.
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