Living in the City

Thanks to Dolby's corporate housing for new employees, we've been living at 2000 Post in San Francisco until we find a permanent place. We just have to pay taxes on it, which after learning its about $3500 per month for the little one bedroom place we are in, taxes are about what we would pay for rent anyway, but its still a nice little perk.

Anyway, I started this blog post after less than 2 weeks of living in SF, when I have to say, I felt a bit more negatively toward city life and blamed the atmosphere of city living for circumstances that had nothing to do with that. I write now in retrospect of the whole experience 3 months later (February 2008)... I was very excited about living in the city since city life was always something I wanted to experience and we were going to be in a nice little furnished place. I planned to see the sights, enjoy the mild weather, try some new cuisine, show the kids museums, and basically just do things that you can't do as well if you don't live in the city. Here's what really happened.

I of course didn't know anyone in the month I lived there, and I had gotten used to having my unemployed husband home all day with me to keep me company and help me with adjusting to having 2 kids at home. So what happened was, I felt rather isolated and for the first time forced to finally handle both kids alone. Thankfully, Jack was a fairly easy baby, but obviously at only 2 months old still needed mom every second and had little to no schedule to speak of. Poor kid slept in his swing every night (since we had just 1 room for the 4 of us and all our things we're in storage with the moving company).

Elyette, herself had fallen on hard times. She too was forced to deal with the reality of her daddy suddenly gone all day. In fact she didn't get to see him some days since he had to stay late. I think she may have resented me some what for it. We ripped her world apart. We moved her from the only place she'd ever know and took away her daddy. I think she also was afraid I'd leave her, because she made me carry her everywhere we went outside of the apartment and even inside at times. It was just a month ago now that she no longer needs me to carry her anymore. Thank goodness. I've gotten pretty strong though hauling both kids (plus a car seat, diaper bag and whatever else we needed) all over the place. It'll be interesting to see how many kids I can hold at one time :).

I got a double stroller thinking it would enable me to venture out of our apartment and sight see a bit like I had planned, but Elyette wouldn't sit in it, I had to hold her. Any time we left the apartment, even just down to the court yard, pool area of the complex, it was only a matter of minutes before she turned hysterical and started screaming and throwing fits for no apparent reason (Brooke may recall one of the first time this happened on our trip to Safeway the first day in the city:)). I then had to run for refuge back in that little apartment. Unfortunately, she still acted hysterical inside as well, but, thankfully, to a lesser degree.

So basically, I was confined to the inside of a place that contained nothing of mine with a helpless little baby and emotionally torn 2 year old. I thought maybe when Boz got home, we could go out then, but this only happened on 2 occasions (Elyette's Bday and Our anniversary) since by the time he got home and we got out it was just about bedtime for the kids. The 3 weekends that we lived there, didn't include city living either. The first one was spent just me, Jack, and Elyette flying back to Utah to get Elyette's cast off (oh yeah, she broke her arm... more on all that in a future blog) and then driving our car out to California. The second weekend,we looked for apartments (stressful, but nice). and the third was Thanksgiving... a very nice and welcome break from it all! Just after that, we moved to our new place. Which was a huge relief and the beginning of some security for Elyette.

So due to circumstances, our city experience was not as glamorous as we had hoped, but a huge growing experience...one for the books. One thing that did come out of it, as expected, was that we got really good at aggressive, confusing, city driving... oh wait, we got a fix it ticket for expired tabs and I got a $400 ticket and traffic school for running a red...haha, you'll have to ask me that embarrassing story personally. I choose to not air too much of my stupidity:)