Being at home with a 2 month old after you move to the other end of the world from family and friends (or so it seemed), especially when your husband was at school all day and then swamped with studying all night, is harder than I thought it would be. Sam takes the commuter rail into Boston each day. There is actually a stop right here at our apartment complex, but despite this convenience, we still live far away, and his school is no where near a train station. After he catches the train here he takes it to South Station, and then has to wait for a bus which takes him to the school. So after all that it takes about an hour to get to and from school each day. Which means he is gone from about 7 in the morning until 6 at night, and that is on a lucky day when the buses are running on time.
I have been filling my days with trying to unpack just the necessitities (since this place is just short-term), trying to finish my last few college classes over the internet, re-learning my daily routine in this new environment, and trying to figure out this little daughter of mine. Rachel seems to want to eat about every hour, aren't they supposed to go at least a couple hours? Sometimes I try and distract her and make her wait, but most of the time it is easier to just feed her so I don't have to listen to her fussing. After all, I am just sitting here all day anyway.
Things like figuring out how to do the laundry have taken probably more thought than they should. The problem is, the laundry room is two floors down. How do you carry a basket full of clothes, quarters, laundry soap, fabric softener, and a infant down two flights of stairs without dropping the most important item? Could I leave Rachel in the apartment while I run down there real quick? What if she is sleeping safely in her crib? What if I even lock the apartment door? Maybe it is because I am new here and not completely comfortable, but I can't seem to justify it. So the method I have went with is putting some laundry soap and softner in baggies and putting them in the basket of clothes and then setting Rachel right on top. For now, as long as I don't run into any neighbors that work for child protective services I think it will be alright.
After a few weeks, I am finally feeling settled and ready to venture out on my own. Last Saturday we drove to a place downtown called Quincy Market. A place with lots of shopping, restaurants, and on the weekends there are street performers that are entertaining to watch. One thing I learned on this outing was how easy it is to get lost here. Adios to streets that were designed with the grid system in mind. Whoever designed these streets had to have been on crack! There are so many times that you aren't exactly lost, because you can see where you want to go, but you can't figure out how to get there. So after experiencing this it made me a little hesitant to venture out on the roads. But our 3 month lease is expiring quickly so we need to find a place to move soon.
I had found some apartments online. I thought I could narrow them down by making some phone calls first, but I am learning yet another way the east coast differs from the west. I have been trying to compare places and one thing I have been trying to figure out is how big the apartments are. I didn't think that "How many square feet is it?" was a difficult question to ask an owner...but appartantly I am mistaken. 'It is a two bedroom' or 'It is a 4 room apartment' is about the most descriptive they will get. I am not sure if they really don't know how big it is, or if they just don't want to reveal exactly how small it is. Whatever the case, it appears that narrowing them down over the phone is not an option, and I will need to check them all out in person.
........
FYI trying to find any address in this town is IMPOSSIBLE! I spent the whole day trying to see three apartments. There are hardly any street signs in this town, and if there does happen to be a street sign it is probably 10 yards from the corner, hidden behind a tree! After spending an hour trying to find one house, I pulled up to this run down place on a super busy street. I just sat there in the car staring at it and decided, 'I don't care what the inside looks like, I don't want to live here.' The realtor I was meeting was waiting outside and waved to me, and I bolted. I just drove off. Hasta la vista. Hopefully she isn't the realtor in charge of any other apartments I want to see because I probably just burned that bridge.
Also, apparently any apartment with two bedrooms feels entitled to charge the same amount of rent. It doesn't matter if it is run down, falling apart, has the washer and dryer down in a dingy cellar with a dirt floor, it is still $1100. In Arizona if you are willing to live without a nice view, you save $100, go without a fireplace, save another $150. Not the case here. You get what you get, and you pay an arm and a leg for it.
One of Sam's classmates recommended we look in the city of Quincy. This friend, Dave, and his wife Christine, live there say it is way closer to the school but far enough away that it is safe and still inexpensive (relatively of course). So we decided to check it out. Of course, "we" means it is me who spent another miserable day driving around getting lost, trying to keep Rachel happy in the car for hours on end, having to stop and feed her, change her diapers, oh and see some apartments while I am at it. I hate that everything is so complicated with a baby. Of course I should be the one to find apartments, because I am the one who is home all day, but this is definitely not as enjoyable, or as easy, as shopping for an apartment in college with my soon-to-be roommates. Today there was some hideous places: red shag carpet, hideous wanna-be-wood floors, so much for east coast character and brownstones with wood mouldings.
I was almost ready to give up, when I finally found the perfect place. After the place with the red shag carpet I told the realtor I was calling it a day. She said she had one more place, it wasn't as close to the T (the subway), and it was in North Quincy, but it was a nice place. I told her thanks, but no thanks, but I was worn out and just wanted to go home. If I didn't leave soon I would get stuck in rush hour traffic and it would take me more like 2 hours to get back to Norwood. I put Rachel in her carseat, buckled her up, then got in and sat down. I took a deep breath and was happy to be done for the day, but when I realized that I still didn't have a place, which meant there would probably be many more days like this, I almost had a panic attack. I jumped out of the car and ran over to the realtor's car before she drove off. I tapped on the window and she rolled it down, "I guess I have time to see one more place." I followed her to the final apartment and we pulled up to a beautiful house. It was an actual house, with a patio, maroon shutters, and a front yard with grass. It was what they call a two family house, the owners lived upstairs and they were renting the first floor. The inside was even better. Dark wood floors, that were in good shape, wood moulding around all the windows and on the ceiling, two bedrooms, and a large kitchen with normal sized appliances (including a dishwasher) and even a cupboard with room for a washer and dryer. True, it was kind of wierd for it to be in the kitchen, but way better than down in a dingy cellar. And what do you know, this place was way better than everything else we looked out, but it still carried the standard two bedroom price, $1100. Sold!
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