Snowmageddon!

            Snowmageddon 2012 has hit Seattle, and I can’t help but think about the massive snow storm that attacked Seattle my first winter here.  Today as the snow continues to fall and coat everything, I am sitting on my couch, drinking coffee, and thinking about getting a head start on my packing for my big move in a couple weeks.  3 years ago when the snowstorm hit, things were very different.  So, in honor of Snowmageddon, I am skipping ahead a few months in the story to tell the story of Snowmageddon 2008.  Don’t worry, I’ll go back and fill in the blanks later.

            When snow started falling the week before Christmas break 3 years ago, it may be a bit of an exaggeration to say this (but very close to the truth), I was happier than I could remember ever being.  Sierra and I had gotten an apartment together with Lucy and her cat Bob in the neighborhood of Magnolia in Seattle. 

Magnolia is an interesting place.  The neighborhood is a peninsula composed of 2 large hills stacked behind each other.  There are only 3 entrances into the neighborhood: 1) the Magnolia Bridge, which takes you directly to the top of the 1^st hill, 2) Fisherman’s Terminal, which takes you through a marina full of docked fishing boats to the bottom of the first hill, and 3) Dravus St., which is a small bridge at the bottom of the first hill that goes over the train tracks that divide Magnolia from the rest of the world.

If you enter Magnolia from Dravus or Fishermans Terminal, and look up the hill, there are cities of apartment complexes towards the top.  This is where Sierra and I had our apartment.  We were about 2 blocks down from the top of the hill, 4 blocks up from the bottom. 

If you were to continue traveling up this hill, you’d see more houses, less apartments—giving the neighborhood the feel of a suburb that accidently found itself marooned in the center of a large city.  Continue up and over the hill, and the houses get a bit bigger.  At the bottom of the first hill, in the valley between the two hills, you find Magnolia Village.  This 4 block radius “Village” is composed of one bar, a couple restaurants, and a few shops.

Travel through the village and start your ascent up the 2^nd hill, and you’ll notice that the houses are getting bigger and bigger.  Once you reach the crest of that hill, you are looking at mansions.  Magnolia is where rich people go to retire.  The back hill ends in a cliff that drops off into the Puget Sound.  This hill is filled with huge mansions overlooking the water.  On a clear day, you can see the entire skyline of the Olympic Mountains above the water from the oversized decks and windows of these homes.

Magnolia was a unique place for me to begin my Seattle experience.  It is removed from the rest of the city, far from highways, disconnected from the main stream of Seattle life.  Living on the face of the first hill was like being in a college dorm.  There was one bar at the bottom of the hill that many of the apartment dwellers frequented.  The more Sierra and I and our friend Cristin frequented this bar, the more we got to know the apartment residents of Magnolia, and the more we realized that we all lived, if not in the same apartment complex, then at least a block or 2 away.

By the time Snowmageddon 2008 hit that December, I had gotten to know my Magnolia crew fairly well, had found myself a boyfriend, and had sprained my ankle.  My first 4 months in Seattle were eventful to say the least.  As I said, Magnolia is already cut off from the rest of the world, but then imagine Seattle getting hit with half a foot of snow.  We were truly cut off.  There was no getting in or out of Magnolia.  Remember how I mentioned we lived 2 blocks from the top of the hill and 4 from the bottom?  This isn’t just a normal hill…I swear the roads go up at 45 degree angles.  The sidewalks are grooved so that you don’t slip backwards as you hike up them.  When the snow finally dumped there was no driving up this hill, for fear of slipping backwards (I saw few cars attempt this unsuccessfully) and no driving down the hill for fear of not being able to stop (saw this too). 

We were stranded.  Time had stopped, no one was working or even thinking about working.  So what else was there to do but hike down the hill to the bar and enjoy our temporarily suspended lives?  But remember—I had a sprained ankle, which made “hiking” not so easy.  I decided to take off the boot I’d been wearing for 6 weeks and put on a small ace bandage instead. 

I have snippets of memories during the days of this snowstorm.  Walking down the hill, beers in hand, stumbling upon sledders who told us we could sled to the bottom on their sleds as long as we could do it without spilling our beers.  Walking up the hill, completely out of breath by the time we got to the top, feeling my ankle swell with every step.  I have an image coming down the hill again of Sierra, Cristin and I—we hit an icy patch and suddenly both Cristin and Sierra are simultaneously flat on their backs on the ground—I can’t still hear the “boom, boom” of them both hitting the ground in my mind.  I remember seeing cars strewn along the hill, left abandoned after attempts at escaping.  Then there’s me crying in the middle of the grocery store because I found out I wouldn’t be making it home to New York in time for Christmas.  There’s 20 of us at one person’s apartment, cooking a huge spaghetti dinner, staring out the windows to announce that it’s “STILL SNOWING!” which made me temporarily forget that I wouldn’t be seeing my family as soon as I’d thought.  I remember laughing and smiling so much that my face hurt. 

It’s funny how snow days as “adults” (if that’s what we could have been called at the time) can be just as much, if not more, fun than snow days as kids.  I’d lived in a city where 3 feet of snow didn’t shut down school, so my first Seattle snowstorm was a wonderful surprise.  I felt like a kid again, playing with my friends in the snow.

I remember looking back at the last 4 months of my life at the time and thinking about how different my life had suddenly become—how much more full of smiles and laughter it was, how much happier I’d become in just that short amount of time.  Looking out my window at Snowmageddon today makes me think about how much has changed since that snowstorm 3 short years ago.  Today, I am not running off to the bar with friends, but sitting comfortably on my couch, snuggling with my dog.  And that’s ok.  I’ll remember that snow storm as one of the most fun experiences of my life, but life is different now.  I’m not in Magnolia anymore, and neither are a lot of those people.  We’re all still friends, but I’d like to think we’ve grown up a bit.  We’re not living that “dorm” life anymore.  And I’m ok with that.  This past Monday I turned 28, and I think it’s time that I start thinking about being an adult.  At least some of the time…

Life is full of inverse relationships

            Running is the reason for my sanity in so many ways.  The main reason though, is that running serves as a cathartic release for me at the end of each work day.  From 7:30 in the morning when I walk into my classroom until 4:00 in the afternoon when I leave, my mind has one whole and complete focus.  Work.  26 first graders.  Teach them.  Help them.  Reach them.  Wrangle them.  Assess them.  Reteach them.  Herd them to lunch.  Counsel them.  Plan for them.  Make copies for them.  Sharpen pencils for them.  Talk to their parents for them.  Care for them.  Love them.  Shuffle them onto the bus.  And then what?  Forget about them?  That is not how this job works.  My day begins with one deep breath followed by an adrenaline rush until the end of the day when I finally breathe out.  I cannot simply flip the switch off and forget about these living breathing children that are my life for so much of the day. 

            However, to be sane and to live a productive life, I must be able to forget about them.  I need to enjoy my dinner without thinking about what they are eating for dinner (or if they are even having dinner).  I need to be able to see my friends and listen to them without constantly planning quietly in my head what I will teach the next day.  I need to be able to fall asleep without thinking about what social skill Johnny needs to work on tomorrow or how I’ll help my brand new student make new friends.  I need to be able to put my students into a pocket in the back of my mind, only to be pulled out the next day.

            My first 2 years of teaching, I struggled with this.  I could not forget.  I did not know how to forget.  I brought work home every night.  It wasn’t until I found running that I finally figured out how to put it all away.  I can envision a line chart of what is happening in my brain as I run (I was a nerd and actually made this chart in Excel but stupid blogger won’t let me post excel stuff).  As the amount of miles or distance covered increases, the number of thoughts in my brain about work slowly decreases until the end of the run where work has disappeared.  Or in other non-nerdy terms: the further I get into my run, the more I forget about those 26 children.  By the end of my run, I am relaxed and thinking about my life.

            Something similar to this happened when I moved to Seattle.  Sierra, Lucy, and I drove cross-country in order to transplant my life into my new city.  We took my little Honda Civic, packed it as full as we could without completely boxing Lucy into a tiny corner in the back seat, and drove from our hometown in Rochester, NY all the way to Seattle.  My mental graph is the same here.  The distance traveled has a perfectly inverse relationship to thoughts about NYC life.

            We took 5 days to make the trip, stopping at as many sights as we could while keeping in mind the separation-anxiety-ridden dog in the car.  It is very difficult to drive from one side of the country to the other without ever leaving the dog alone in the car.  But we did it.  And by the time we reached Seattle, all the negativity that NYC had deposited in me was lifted.

            We started in Rochester, and left with smiles ready to conquer the world.

            Our first stop was my aunt and uncle’s house in Chicago.  My aunt is an animal rescuer and often has a variety of animals in and around her house.  On this particular trip, there were several baby raccoons in a large cage in the backyard, all named by my cousin after Harry Potter characters.  This was an exciting part of the trip for Lucy.  She got to jump at the caged and squawking birds in the house, making them lose a few feathers.  She got to play with the 3 (or 4?) dogs that lived there.  For me, I was still thinking about leaving a life behind.  I was excited for the future, but worried about the past.

            Our first official sight-seeing stop was Badlands National Park.  This was a good pit stop because Lucy was allowed throughout the park.  The beautiful views made my worries about leaving the only coast I’d known fade just a little.

            Next was Wall Drug.  This is a very overrated little tourist town in the middle of nowhere.  I in no way understand people who put “Wall Drug” bumper stickers on their cars.  I don’t get it.  This stop was particularly challenging with Lucy.  We took our wanderings in shifts…one person wandering through the stores and shops while the other waited in the car with Lucy.  Not super fun.  However, I bought a few early Christmas presents here, which helped to ease my fears of leaving my family behind.

            Next was Mount Rushmore.  Here, we could not go inside the gates because dogs were not allowed.  We stopped on the side of the road and gazed for a bit.  I was amazed at how small and far away they seemed up there.  I was similarly amazed by how small NYC was becoming in my mind.

            We also saw from a distance the in-progress mountain carving that will some day in the far off future be the Crazy Horse War Memorial.  Life is a work in progress, as it seems the Crazy Horse War Memorial will forever be. 

            As we traveled through the central portion of the US, we spent a few nights in cheap dog-friendly hotels found courtesy of AAA guidebooks.

            Devil’s Tower was our last big sight-seeing stop.  Although we didn’t hike any of the trails, we got pretty close to the base and took some pretty awesome pictures.  At this point in the trip, Seattle seemed to be looming just as close.

            In the boring parts of the trip, there were many of these pictures.

            And these pictures.  Luckily, this is what Lucy did the VAST majority of the trip.

            For our last leg of the trip, we took a detour off I90 to stay for a night in the middle of Wyoming at Sierra’s aunt’s summer house.  Pictures cannot even begin to show the beauty that is back-country Wyoming.  I am dying to go back.  And when I was there, I wasn’t thinking about being anywhere else.

            Lucy even loved it in Wyoming, but mainly because she got to swim—one of her most favorite activities.

            And finally, at the end of it all, we drove late into the night, stopping at a small motel in La Grande, Oregon (I only remember this name because it was such a small and funny little place).  We woke up the next morning and drove the last leg into Seattle.

            As we came down from the mountains on I90 (the same road we left on in New York, and the same road we took the majority of the way), thoughts of New York were gone.  Worries about leaving had abated.  It suddenly sunk in that I was home.  In a new place.   On a new coast.  In what seemed like a new world.  And I couldn’t wait to get started.

DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against cats, small dogs, or landlords...I simply find discrimination intolerable

            I just had a temporary mini meltdown.  It started after my landlord sent me an email informing me of a few dates and times for people coming to view my apartment.  In 25 days, I will be moving.  I gave my landlord my one month’s notice just before New Year’s, informing her that Lucy and I are going to try to upgrade our living style by February 1^st.  More windows, maybe more space?  Enough room for Lucy to wag her tail without it banging into something?  The idea has sounded great in theory for a couple months now, so I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

            The mini meltdown occurred momentarily after receiving the email when it suddenly occurred to me that I am moving in 25 days.  And I have no idea where I’m moving to.  Suddenly that uneasy feeling I talked about a few posts ago exploded into anxiety.  I scoured today’s craigslist listings, called several places, and emailed a few.  It wasn’t until about 30 minutes later when I stepped away from my computer that I was finally able to calm down, refocus, and tame my beating heart.  I reassured myself that in a large city like Seattle, one usually can’t find an apartment until 15 days prior to a moving date.  I got used to this idea in New York.  I reminded myself that all of my moves have been up in the air like this—the only difference here is that in the past I had a one year lease ending that signaled finding a new place.  In this case, where I live on a month to month basis, I ended the lease.  There is no practical difference here, I think it’s just more nerve-wracking because I made the choice to move instead of my pre-determined lease.  I brought this upon myself—it was not forced upon me.

            Moving is stressful.  Moving is even more stressful when you have a large dog to think about and a fairly limited budget.  As dog-friendly as Seattle may be, most landlords are not so dog-friendly.  Especially large-dog-friendly.  I’ve been keeping an eye on craigslist ever since I decided to move, and I’ve seen some great apartments.  Every time I see a good heading and click on the link, the first thing I do is scour the words for the dreaded “no pets” clause, or “cat’s only,” or even worse “small dogs ok.”  I almost always find one of these statements, but the last one pisses me off the most.  When a landlord decrees that small dogs are ok, I can tell they are not dog owners.  The size of a small dog is very disproportionate to the size of its energy.  Do they think that a poorly trained, little yappy bit of a dog is going to do less damage to their apartment or make any less noise than a large, properly trained and mature dog?  It infuriates me.

            No, I am not a landlord.  I cannot step into the shoes of a landlord and understand all their worries.  I have no point of reference for this.  If I reach into the depths of my mind, I can pull out some sympathy for the landlord who doesn’t want pets.  It’s certainly easier not to have to deal with them.  You never know what you’re going to get, and some people are simply horrible pet owners.  I get this.  But to specify that certain pets are acceptable above others, it makes me incredibly angry.  How would having a dog like Lucy around be worse than a male cat that sprays everything in sight and claws the carpets to death?  Or a mini dog that yaps at every person that passes on the street?

            If landlords are going to accept pets, I think there should be some sort of screening process.  Meet my dog.  Talk to my current landlord.  Talk to my former roommates.  But don’t flat out tell me that my pet is not accepted because she is not a cat and weighs over 25 lbs!  This is discrimination, I tell you.  It should be unlawful.  Landlords cannot openly discriminate against the people they rent to, so why should they be able to discriminate against the pets? 

            Perhaps these are just the anxiety-ridden ramblings of a woman in the midst of a change, but it’s the principal of the thing.  Moving is hard enough…why make it harder on people who love their pets?  After all, who would ever want to say no to a face like this?