Working late

Today was the first day I felt really stressed at my job. I have to give a presentation at 7am tomorrow morning to a group of pediatricians (7am! Damn these hardy New Englanders, up with the sun and all that) and have been wrestling with a massive data set that simply refuses to make any sense. I was at work until 7pm--though that's much easier to palate, knowing I have a 15-minute drive home, not a 1-hour subway commute--and was feeling completely frazzled and overwhelmed when I left. But I noticed that I'm able to unwind a lot more quickly here. It was warm tonight, almost 80 degrees, and I when I got home I changed into shorts and sat on the deck with the animals, took in the color of the moon from behind some clouds, and within minutes I was feeling so appreciative of our view and the soft air that I realized that I'd been spending years not knowing how to unwind from one day to the next.

On the other hand, this has also been the week that my I-miss-New-York feeling has truly kicked in for the first time. Six months ago I was single, living in one of the largest cities in the world, and had only myself and the occasional Rufus snuggles to answer to. Now I'm coupled off, with three animals to feed and pick up after, and I can't even drop my garbage down the hallway chute anymore. I have to carry it downstairs and to the curb, like a responsible adult. I have a "drinks" date Thursday, the first one in weeks, which feels like a special treat rather than yet another obligation, like they so often did in New York, when I had so many more of them.

But everything is fine. It's just a period of adjustment. It's just a whole new world, is all.

Pea Soup

When we woke up yesterday morning, the fog was so thick we could barely see across the street. The day before, it had been completely sunny on the West End, while I was at work, and I almost didn't believe Nick when he said he couldn't see the water from our apartment on the East End. He picked me up at work a few hours later, and sure enough, as soon as we crossed Franklin Arterial, in the middle of the city, we went from pure sunshine to a wall of fog. By Saturday morning, the fog still hadn't lifted. We woke up, Nick made coffee, then we fed the animals. Foghorns sounded every so often, and we wrapped ourselves in blankets to drink hot coffee on the deck. If it was sunny across town, I didn't want to know about it. I wanted to stay in our cocoon, oblivious to the outside world.

Zoo

You'd think that moving into a nice, big apartment with your boyfriend and joining your animal families together would be peaceful and joyous. Well, I've found that a bigger apartment plus three animals equals a lot more cleaning and a lot more drama.

To start, Wiley (Nick's cat) terrorizes Thumbelina (Thumbs for short, my cat). He stalks her, attacks her when he can, and I think he's even trying to prevent her from using the litter box (someone has been going outside the box, and neither of them ever did when they lived separately). Ting-Tong (Nick's chihuahua) has learned to defend herself already, but even still, Wiley still likes to get in her business. He'll sometimes stretch out on the floor near TT's food bowl and casually drape a long paw right into the food as if to lay claim to it. He's a terror! One night, swift as a shark attack, he pounced on poor Thumbs, leaving behind a whole puddle of blood. We called the emergency animal clinic and got a busy signal, but luckily Thumbs was okay. The next day at the vet's office we were told to just keep an eye out for the formation of an abcess, which luckily never occurred.

Another time Thumbs climbed up our roof and then got too scared to come back down. So I had to rescue her myself. (Pic above.) Another time, Ting Tong started making a weird huffing sound, and after a frantic web search for "pet Heimlich maneuver" and some well-placed squeezes on her tiny ribcage, she calmed down, though we suspect she wasn't actually choking. This all happened while Nick was still scraping poop out of his slipper soles from his early morning "surprise." It never ends around here with these guys. But, we figure it will be good preparation for child-rearing, when that day comes.

Photos!

Moonrise from front windows
The Portland Head Light--far right twinkling light
The living room, unpacked
The kitchen.

Here are a few pictures taken over the last few weeks. Some are of the apartment just a few days after we moved in. We hope to post photos of our tricked-out place once we get it all set up. I would write more, but Nick needs to get up at 4am to catch an early flight to New York tomorrow and we're both already tired just thinking about it.

August hiatus

August passed by both incredibly slowly and much too fast. Slowly, as I was waiting for N to move up here permanently and once and for all. And too fast because August always slips by without enough long days at the beach.

Much has changed. I moved out of the apartment with the turquoise floors on Waterville Street, and N and I moved into "thee" apartment on the Eastern Promenade, which is as lovely as it sounds. We are completely in love with the new place, though I'm sure we'll love it even more when we finally unpack everything. (Photos to come.) The story of our moving is not a pretty one. It was a long, arduous process that still feels unfinished. I didn't realize that moving two people out of their apartments in the same week (especially a week in August, in New York City) would be so complicated, tiring, and stressful. The day we moved N out, it was 95 degrees and humid. Actually, the entire weekend was nothing but tiring and stressful.

I drove a rented cargo van to New York on a Friday, saw a dying woman splayed out on the side of the highway in Massachusetts, having just been ejected from her speeding car, got lost in White Plains (somehow) on the way, and got pulled over by bridge cops on the Triborough for having commercial plates. The drive was harrowing--especially since I was driving a huge rental van, don't forget--but the interaction I had with the cop on the bridge reminded me of an aspect of New York I've always appreciated and now miss, and that is the succinctness with which New Yorkers communicate. After driving for hours and finding I didn't have enough money for the bridge toll, I plaintively wailed to the cop who was about to write me a ticket, "Just tell me how to get to freakin' Brooklyn!" In about 9 words he matter-of-factly gave me the best, most easy to follow directions I've ever gotten from anyone, as if answering a crazed woman was something he did every day (and in fact it I guess it probably is). I miss that about New York--the ease with which people talk to each other, get what they want, and get it over with. There's a lack of pomp and circumstance there that you don't find as often in New England. To the New Englander's ear, that kind of mainlining conversation might come across as curt, but anyone who lives in New York knows that this style of communicating is the opposite of rude: it's a kind of shorthand that signals that you understand the rules of engagement in the city, and that you won't waste someone else's time if they don't waste yours.

Here in Maine, people just kind of move a lot slower, though I think it's like that pretty much anywhere outside of New York. I would bet that ordering a coffee in the morning in Maine takes an average of 4 times longer than in New York, though I do remember feeling really impatient almost every time I left the city to go anywhere else. I'll never forget the utter disbelief I felt when I stayed at a hotel in North Carolina for a wedding, and discovered that they'd stop serving brunch by 10am on a Sunday. There was no food to be had for miles, so I couldn't even walk down the street for coffee or a bagel. One of the things I love about Portland is that I would never be similarly stuck (as long as you're on the peninsula, you're most likely no more than 5 minutes from a cup of coffee.) And of course, if I completed all my transactions as quickly in Portland as I did in New York, people would think I was rude, stressed out. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how I felt a lot of the time in the city.