I wanna go back to Egypt

It’s no secret that Boston hasn’t been a particularly good place for me to live, mostly because I can’t find a job. And even though I lived in a similar climate for three years while in Germany, last winter was tough. Between the heavier-than-normal snow plus us living in a basement apartment, I felt like I lived in a pretty solitary cave.

Mostly though I miss my friends, and I miss the tribal knowledge I have about Kansas City. Even though I’ve been gone for 18 months, if I were suddenly dropped back in KC, I’d still know where to go or who to call to get what I need. That includes things like doctors, dentists, good grocery stores, plumbers, electricians, and even volunteer opportunities. I don’t have that knowledge in Boston yet, that sort of thing takes time.

Oddly enough, I find myself longing to be back in Boston. Don’t get me wrong—I like Providence a lot. I just don’t know a soul here, and since we aren’t staying, I don’t really have the motivation to meet people. Plus I know more about Boston than I realized. And while I haven’t developed the extensive circle of friends I had in Kansas City, I do have friends—good ones, who have been so kind during this mess.

When I lived in Columbus, my friends from church had an expression they used whenever any of us would miss how we lived in the past: I wanna go back to EEEEEEEEEEgypt. You may recall that in the Old Testament, the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years before God allowed them to enter the Promised Land. And even though they’d lived in slavery under horrific conditions, they would regularly complain to Moses that they wanted to go back to Egypt. Now I won’t say Boston is as bad as living in slavery under a crazy Pharaoh, not by a long shot. It's also not the Promised Land. I still want to go back.

I'll close with a picture of where the boys like to spend their days when they aren't crying at me. It's not a big window but they manage to squeeze in there anyway.

The effect of stress on cats

I’m not one to humanize animals, but Wally is one stressed kitty. He wanders around down here in the basement, crying and crying. When I go upstairs even for a moment, he cries at the top of the stairs. He roams all night long crying and getting into things, and he’s inconsolable.

I’m not surprised, he’s always been more sensitive to change than the other two cats. And he’s the one who ran into the rising water—I’m pretty sure he was trying to get to his safe spot, the top of our cat perch. I’ve never seen such a terrified cat when he came scrambling back into the bedroom, and getting him into his carrier was really tough.

We have a soft carrier that’s pretty much worthless, it’s too small for any of the cats and it’s difficult to close and to carry. But Wally has used it before as a safe hidey hole so I am hoping he will do so again. I sprinkled some cat nip in the carrier and put in one of his favorite toys. Then I just sat by the carrier for a bit.

Temporary housing

Yesterday Kent filled out the necessary paperwork to get us moved into temporary housing. While we have been very thankful to be here in Providence, the additional commute time plus our total isolation has just made the last couple of weeks pretty tough. Winter is coming and even though Kent takes the train, I still have to get him there and Providence is pretty hilly. And at some point construction will start on our apartment, and we'll need to be closer to hand as questions come up.

We'll be living at 221 Mass Ave which is in Back Bay and less than half a mile to our apartment. Use the minus sign (-) to get both places in view if they don't show already.


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Here's the distance from our apartment to the house in Providence:


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I don't look forward to getting moved but I do look forward to actually being there and getting settled.

53 East Manning Street

My mother lived in Providence as a little girl, and she gave me the address. We drove there today to check it out and wow, it's a cool neighborhood full of historic houses in great shape. It looks as though the house was like the neighbors and was an upstairs/downstairs duplex, but it's been combined into one single family home. So there's a 51 East Manning Street but no 53 East Manning Street.

We took a short video plus a couple of pictures.

Edited to add that after conferring with my uncle, my mother says their address was indeed 51 East Manning Street. What a very cool neighborhood.

Demolition is mostly done

I took these four short videos yesterday that show what's left.

Videos!

I posted a couple of these on Facebook but I'm still going to post them here. I took three videos so they wouldn't be too large to upload. The noise you hear are the huge fans and dehumidifiers going non-stop.





You'll hear me laugh in this one because I tripped over a trash can. I thought maybe I'd stumbled onto a Three Stooges movie.

More water feature pictures

Your eyes are not deceiving you, the rug is floating. It protected the coffee table because while the legs got wet, the rest of the table stayed dry. The high water mark was between 18 and 24 inches, although that's not what you see in these pictures. We have or rather we had very tall baseboards, about a foot tall, and the water was way over the top of the baseboards. These pictures were all taken after the water had started receding.


Kent took this and the following picture while it was still somewhat light outside. The water got to the top of the bottom stair, which is an abnormally tall stair (the rest of the stairs are normal, it's just the last step that's a doozy).

This is looking in from our back door.

You can see how much dry wall has been removed. It's this way throughout the entire apartment, and of course the flooring is gone, also any insulation plus all the baseboards.