October

I’m sure glad I take photos with my phone—it helps me remember what the heck I did.

In October, Kent and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We had dinner at Freshwater, which is in Midtown. We opted for their tasting menu with wine pairing, and enjoyed it very much.

Also in October, I did what I do every few years and got a make up do over. I like to do that periodically because I think it’s easy to fall in a rut and then look dated. If you’re going to wear make up (and I am), then why not stay current?

Toward the end of October, Kent and I went to Choir Bar with a friend. He and I had dinner first at Le Fou Frog, which was good but too rich for my tummy. If you’re not familiar with Choir Bar, you can read about it here.

Since that session was the Friday before Halloween, people were encouraged to wear costumes. Kent went as a cow, and I went as Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction sans the hypodermic needle in the chest. Much to our surprise, we had a ton of fun. Here’s the video from that evening. Honestly the only downside was that we both had that song in our heads for weeks.

Then on the actual day of Halloween, a co-worker and I dressed the same on purpose. Even though we don’t really look like each other all that much, we get called by each other’s names, so we thought it would be hilarious to dress alike.

Kent made an amazing butternut squash recipe for dinner—the butternut squash “steak” is sautéed in butter, sage and a little bit of garlic and is absolutely incredible.

I resolutely did not observe the 9th anniversary of us getting flooded in Boston. But I remembered.

Finally, we both voted early and (yay!) some of our candidates won.

By the numbers

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary. I thought it might be interesting to see the time we’ve spent unemployed or on short term disability expressed as a percentage of our total amount of time married.

We’ve been married 520 weeks now, so I totaled up the amount of weeks for the various categories and then figured out what percentage of 520 they each were. Obviously the percentages add up to more than 100%.

No matter how much of our time together was spent on some not fun stuff, I’m just amazed and happy that it sort of doesn’t matter. Yes, those bad times happened and yes, they were fairly wretched – especially the ones I didn’t put in there like number of times we flooded or the number of dry wall holes we had or things like that. Those don’t bear thinking of, not today.

So here’s to us. Here’s to the best 10 years of my life and here’s hoping we grow really old together before it’s all over.

It's really weird that we've lived the longest in Boston.

Nine years isn't nearly enough

I'm not sure if 90 would be either.

It's our anniversary today and I'm a lucky, lucky woman.

Photo by Rob James.

I will tell you more about London later this week.

Two years

Eddie in the crack house hotel
the night we flooded

Two years ago that 35-inch water main ruptured and our apartment flooded, along with about another 50 or so apartments. I wrote about it in 2009 and 2010 and I guess I’ll keep writing about it as long as it affects me the way that it does.

That was the start of a really long stretch of awfulness for us. We flooded on October 28 and had to find temporary quarters to live in. Then after returning from visiting our younger son and his family for Thanksgiving, Kent was told he would be getting laid off (I still didn’t have a job). Our trifecta of awfulness concluded a week later with us receiving notice of the condominium lawsuit that continues to prevent us from selling our place (no, the suit has nothing to do with the water stuff, and the reason we can’t sell is that banks won’t lend money for condos involved in lawsuits because of the potential liability).

Today, Kent has a job but I got laid off this summer. The lawsuit looks to be done but the arbitration that should conclude this whole nasty mess won’t even be scheduled until January or February. And I’m still jumpy when I hear unexpected water noises.

I think Wally was affected the most. He was never what you’d called a mellow cat even before the flood, and that day only made things worse. I wrote about how he ran into the rising waters to try to get to his safe spot and came tearing back into the bedroom absolutely terrified. Today he remains far more high strung than the other two cats. He’s really skittish and hides in inaccessible places when people come over.

As for me, I keep a charger near my phone which is near my handbag. My passport is easily accessibly (and well above a potential water line). The cat carriers are not stored under anything, they are very easy to get to in a closet that doesn’t have a door. If there were a next time, I wouldn’t waste a moment throwing towels at the back door as I did two years ago, and I wouldn’t call 911 until after I got the cats in their carriers and out the door. But I would still remember to get the Scotch.

An anniversary

I am the family historian; significant dates in the family tend to mean a lot to me and I remember those events each year. So it's not surprising that I'm marking this anniversary too. One year ago today, I took this picture after I'd wrangled cats into their carriers and hauled them up the front stairs to the foyer.



My mom has asked me how I thought to take that picture (which I took from the bottom step because as you can see, the apartment was already pretty flooded). I took it because somewhere in my chaotic thoughts, I feared that the insurance company might not believe we had gotten flooded. I know that sounds silly now but that's why I took it--to prove we'd sustained water damage.

I wrote a lot about the flood over the course of reconstruction; if you search on the word flood, you'll find those posts.

What happened on October 28, 2009 sure opened my eyes to how devastating water damage can be, and how pervasive it is. Today I find myself identifying with people whose homes get flooded in a way I never did before.

I'd love to say this whole thing is behind us, but it's not. I am still jumpy when I hear unexpected water sounds. and Wally is far more skittish than he was prior to the flood.

I think I wrote about what he did that day. I was in the bedroom trying desperately to stuff unwilling cats into their carriers. He got free of his and ran out to the office area which is right by the back door. I know he wanted to get to his safe spot, our cat perch. But it was out in the deepest parts of the water near the door, which meant he ran ran through the rising water. (Quick aside, yeah that sounds like a cliche but honestly our house was filling like a bathtub.) He came tearing back into the bedroom with wet legs and tummy, all wide eyed and freaked out. I have never seen a more terrified animal than Wally was that minute.

So the event is over but the effects linger on. It's that way with any significant event, I guess; over time the immediate intensity of emotion fades but it probably never goes away entirely.

My mother will be so proud

Last night Kent and I celebrated our anniversary by having dinner at Tremont 647. We opted for the Chef’s Tastings (five course) with the wine pairing. As Kent said, there was remarkable freedom in not deciding what we were going to eat or drink. All we had to do was inform the chef of any allergies. Given my recent throat closing experience with shrimp and my previous, known, issues with scallops, shellfish aren’t in my diet anymore. Otherwise we didn’t put any restrictions on what we were served.

My mother (and to be honest, my husband) will tell you I’m a picky eater. It’s true, I’ll own that label, although I do my best not to inflict my pickiness on anyone else. So I put a lot of trust in the chef's selections and to be honest, I wondered if I would regret it.

I’m pleased to say I ate—and liked—almost everything we were served. I gently pushed the braised spinach with garlic aside (I cannot abide spinach in any form or at any stage in the growing process). I also gave Kent all the bananas in the banana cream pie—I grudgingly eat bananas but they have to have a fair amount of green on each end and not taste like bananas. Honestly the only reason I do eat them is because they are a cheap, readily available source of potassium. Otherwise I find them vile and can’t understand why anyone would eat them or put them in banana bread.

Anyway.

The best part of the meal, aside from being with Kent (and I mean that so don’t roll your eyes), was the wine pairings. We are not particularly good at pairing wine with food; we tend to drink big, bold reds with everything even after reading Food & Wine for years. The pairings worked for me for all five courses although Kent didn’t think the port with the banana cream pie worked. It’s probably because he actually ate those bananas, silly man.