Contrary to Popular Belief

This will be short thanks to a sprained right wrist that is still healing. I'm typing this all left handedly. You can thank me later. 

Life is fine, we're all surviving, but sometimes I admit to giving in and saying,
"I knew this was going to be hard, but why does this have to be SO HARD!!!!!"

We will now take you back to your regularly planned postings from other people not currently living out of boxes in a lockout building with the deck stacked a bit against them.  :)

Pictures of What We've Seen

I am a Stranger in a Distant Land

The view out our front room/kitchen window.  Hasn't stopped snowing all day!

Perspective.  

Life in Idaho has a different, slower pace than life here in Worcester.

This state, city, and people are different. And keep in mind, different doesn't mean bad.

Take for example the city's name. Worcester.

Looks like Worcester. It's said like Wuss-ter. Unless you're born and raised here.

Then you say it like Wuss-tuh.

Life here is the same. I've learned not to take anything for granted.

Especially when driving.  

When we first got here, Reed and I couldn't believe how aggressive and rude drivers were.

Every opportunity to drive left us both mad and saying all kinds of words we never used to say back in Idaho while driving. Idiot. Stupid. Crap. 

After a week and a half, it just is what it is. 

Drivers here do what needs to be done to get where they need to get.

Does that mean if you slow them down a bit, they won't honk at you? Better not believe that.

These are the honking-est drivers I have ever met. 

They pull out into traffic should they need to turn left from a parking lot. 

Doesn't seem to matter if they have the right of way. 

Pedestrians walk right out into moving traffic to cross the street. It's crazy.

EVERYONE here has the right of way. No matter if they actually do.

You know those left turn lights that are green and

mean that those who want to turn must yield to oncoming traffic?

Seems as if the TURNERS have the right of way here, and the oncoming traffic just waits.

In fact, this very phenomenon has a name. It's called the Worcester Left. 

Glad one of the our ward members turned me on to this fact.

Shockingly after a week and a half, Reed and I have just started to drive like them. 

You just do what you need to do and make sure you don't hit anybody. 

Surprisingly we haven't seen a whole lot of people pulled over 

in spite of all the illegal things we have seen these drivers do. 

Perspective wise, this way of driving isn't bad, well maybe just a little, but it's really just different.

It really kind of gives you a feel for the people here as well.  

They do what they need to do to live their lives and they try not to get in each others way.

There are exceptions to this. 

We've somehow managed to find quite a few people who are exceptions.

All of our ward members. The U-haul people. The man who hooked up our cable.

Kind. Considerate. Caring. In spite of the way they drive. :)

The other side of it is also a blessing.

The drug dealers outside. We don't get in their way, and they don't get in ours.

Our lives just go on separately, and yet somehow exist in the same area. 

We just stay in our separate circles.

Living our lives, thankful for the plethera of police officers who frequent the area in front of our building, keeping the riffraff down and making us feel just that much better.

Have I mentioned there is a homeless shelter kiddy corner to our building?

I think that's most of the problem.  It's moving in November. Hopefully.

Until then, Heavenly Father will keep us safe 

as long as we keep doing our part to keep ourselves safe.

Massachusetts Welcomes You, Sort of

I feel the need to get all of these first initial experiences here in Massachusetts written down as I am afraid I will forget them all too soon.

Before moving here, in our hurry to pack up our house, get our house ready for renting, and deciding what to take and what to sell or get rid of, we also managed to start looking for an apartment.  I began to notice a trend anytime I looked. Most apartments here have hardwood floors, a lot of the houses here have 3 floors with one apartment on each floor, and many of the ads I saw on craigslist were littered with a word I have come to know the meaning of: deleaded.

We have had quite the adventure looking for apartments here, due to the problem I mentioned in my prior post aka scary neighborhood. Gratefully, we didn't know about this problem until we got here.
Also gratefully, I called on an apartment on one of our first days here that was listed on craigslist. Mona* called me back.
Mona was sent by Heavenly Father, no doubt about that. Here was a lady with access to LOADS of apartments and was forthright and honest about what we could expect in the neighborhoods and in the apartments we were looking at. She is the only reason we finally got the apartment we're currently living in.
 Mona showed us initially 2 apartments and only told us about the 3rd, which is the one we now live in. The first apartment had black grout between sickly orange tiles in the bathroom, and the smell of cigarettes the whole flight of steps up.
The second apartment smelled of Indian food and stale urine on the way up the stairs.  I instantly decided there was no way I could live with that combination everyday. Mona, clearly used to this kind of thing, only mentioned that it smelled like someone was making dinner as we ascended the stairs. The second apartment was being completely updated and so it was torn apart with only a few cupboards up in the kitchen.
Neither apartment would be ready for at least a few weeks. And was well over the budget we set for ourselves.

And evidently these were our 2 best options.

Luckily, Reed and I had not been scared off by Mona's description of our present apartment, which did/does indeed have drug dealing going on out front, but also is only a few minutes walk to Reed's University and is centrally located to a lot of things.
We had to wait a few days to even see our apartment due to the property manager having the flu but maybe it was necessary for us to even consider it a possibility. After 6 days in a motel, we were desperate to have a place to live that included more than 1 room! We showed up on Monday, only to be informed of the property managers illness but we decided to walk around the property a little bit to get a feel for the area. With our 2 little girls in tow. Nobody bothered us, and of course we weren't going to be bothering them.
The next day we finally saw the property. In spite of the scary neighborhood, the apartment was clean. New. No funny smells. So we looked past the neighborhood and got ourselves an apartment!
I think the thing that sums up the whole apartment finding experience here is a telephone call that I had with someone who was looking to rent me an apartment.
She returned my call, asking if I was the one looking to rent her apartment. I responded in the positive and listed off the things I was looking for. She responded by asking again if I was wanting to rent an apartment on HER street. I answered yes. She then said to me "You sound like a wholesome person" and then proceeded to tell me that her street wasn't exactly safe for people like me and told me all the reasons I may or may not want to live on that street in her apartment. That is exactly what I feel like we've found again and again.
Here in the middle of urban living, people live differently.
And that's all I can say about that.




 *Her name has been changed to protect her from weirdos.  Unless you move here and need an apartment too, then you can call me and I will get you in touch with this amazing realtor.*

Life is Just a Chair of Bowlies, Sometimes

When we started this journey about a month ago, figuratively, I thought I knew exactly how it would turn out.
 We would drive out to Massachusetts.  We would find an apartment within a few days in this fabulous new city that we live in.
We would be experiencing this fantastically friendly, welcoming great new community that we live in.



Not all of that has been true.  Not all of that has been untrue.  A whole lot of it has ended up that way, but not started out that way at all.

Take for example our excitement as we FINALLY approached our new city home.  Excitement was written all over Reed's face as he drove the freeway, seeing all the signs announcing our new home.
He was so excited to see his new campus! We took the exit to his school and within a few minutes were driving through some of the scariest looking roads we had ever seen. Scary in a "rundown buildings, graffiti on the walls, broken windows, lots of people who looked like they belonged there in the ghetto".   Worse than Caldwell, even down by the railroad tracks of Nampa.
*(I'm laughing right now.  We clearly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.)*

Reed tells me now, 5 days later that he was so disappointed when we drove into town to his campus so he could check in that first day. I stayed in the car. (With our kids so tightly packed into their car seats with whatever we could pack around them so that we could bring those last few "important" items with us. Poor kids.  Completely broken to the idea that they had to be buckled into their seats at all times, stuck in the car driving driving driving. Every day. With very few complaints. Have I said how much I love our little girls? They have endured this all so well.) Back to the story.  So I stayed in the car with the girls, looking at the people walking by, taking in all the sights around me. Reed's campus was nice.  The neighborhoods surrounding his campus, the neighborhoods we wanted to move right into with our girls were not so nice. In fact so not nice that we questioned the safety of moving anywhere NEAR Reed's campus. 
As I sat in the car, I thought of all the tender mercies we had experienced in the last few days.  No snow on any of the roads, kids who (mostly) very patiently sat and sat all day while we drove. Our ability to drive large lengths of time and miles with 2 kids in the car.  I thought of them all and came to the conclusion that Heavenly Father got us this far and it would be better as soon as we got an apartment to live in.  And as soon as we got to go to church.  Going to church is a great commonality because the gospel ties us together no matter our life experiences.  So I gathered up my courage and decided I would just suck it up and we would be fine.
When Reed got back to the car, I unlocked the door for him and he opened it.  And our car alarm that we have never used went off.  Loudly. For at least 3 minutes. We scrambled to know what to do.  Luckily we had our car's handbook to try to help us.  We sat there for 25 minutes, trying one thing after another, unable to actually drive anywhere because the car wouldn't start even though the alarm had stopped honking, it was still armed and thought we were stealing it. We finally figured it out, thanks I'm sure to the Spirit, and called my sister to set up a motel for the night through one of those hotel-deal websites.  Which suckered us out of a good chunk of money, sending us to a little known local motel that sounded a bit underwhelming. Long story short, we had made our bid, so we were stuck with their reservation. So, we sucked it up and found a closer motel and spent the night there instead.
The next morning, we woke up to falling wet snow, and *luckily* we were still pulling a VERY heavy trailer. *Please sense my sarcasm.*   I was glad that Reed was the one who drove us all to his school for his orientation, and VERY scared at the prospect of driving the girls back to our motel. On the drive to the school, our GPS sent us up the steepest, scariest hill I had only seen in my nightmares. Or while jeeping. And better yet we were pulling a trailer to boot! Reed gave it his best, leaving a little rubber on the road as he tried to get our car to pull its heavy load up this hill, but finally and luckily was able to back down safely.  We safely arrived at his school, but I was terrified of my turn to drive. I had glimpsed now that we were living in a land of hills. Steep steep hills. It took me an hour to get back to the motel, but I managed to avoid steep hills and kept to the not so steep ones and in spite of the falling snow, also managed not to slide into anyone! :)
Our next hardship came that afternoon when I picked Reed up at the school.  I had managed to call the U-Haul rental place and arranged for our free storage unit rental so that we could unload our dangerous load and get back to driving just our car around in all this snow.  After too many minutes in the car with crying Bronwyn, I went in to see what was taking so long.  They were going to have to drill out the lock Reed had put on our trailer because he had lost the key to it. They finally accomplished that and we went to the storage unit area. Where Reed proceeded to pull up into this VERY steep parking lot and parked in front of this INCREDIBLY steep snow covered hill. He walked up there and opened the door for me, and I asked him if this is where we were supposed to unload our things. He answered in the affirmative. I gritted my teeth and tried to think of it as an adventure. As I slid back down this hill, (seriously this would have been a great sledding hill), and climbed back up this precarious hill with a few things, I pondered how this would someday make a good story. Luckily within a few minutes some employees showed up. And took pity on our plight.  Showed us another entrance, farther away from our storage unit, but not up a scary snow covered hill.  Then they proceeded to help us load everything into our storage unit for the next 45 minutes. Incredible people.  I hugged the only lady among them, and we thanked them all over and over.

I could go on and on.   Essentially, people, this whole experience has so far not been anything like I expected. We still have nowhere to live. The place we're considering living in has a fenced in parking area and a lockout building, with drug dealing going on in the front and prostitution as well.  And this is one of the better options we have close to Reed's university.

I find myself, in times like these, trying to remember the feelings we had as we prepared for this move back in Idaho. We felt like we were needed here. That's a great feeling. I wish it would have come with a little explanation. But that's not how Heavenly Father works. And I know someday I will look back at these things that are so trying now and I will laugh.  Laugh and laugh and laugh.  And be glad that I'm not going through this all again. I do know that Heavenly Father is here and helping us and that it will all be okay.

I Was Wrong

I actually only have 369 Posts. Sorry.


Carry On.

I'll shoot for that all elusive 400 posts some other year.

Maybe next year if you're feeling lucky.  Ha!

Moving: It is what it is

Well, as of today, we have about another week until we are climbing in the car and driving away from our home.

Our house is full of boxes that Aftyn likes to run around. Full of boxes almost entirely thanks to Alyson. Thanks Alyson!

There are bare spots where once there was furniture. I've had to say goodbye to pieces I never thought much of but once they're gone I miss them.

It's a little sad to pack up what was your life and know that when you arrive at your new destination you will create a new way of life. Good thing we have so many pictures to remember our good life here.

We have had a bit of a melancholy week here but we just keep reminding ourselves how excited we will be once we get to our new city and see all the exciting new things we will get to explore and discover.

More than anything we will be taking with us, the most important are the 4 of us. I love my family. And each of our own sides of the family as well. And I love my ward family. What a lot of support we have gotten from you all. Thank you for it. Sincerely.