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Laney and I haven't discussed this in particular at great length, but I'm pretty sure the idea with her living at Pride Place is that this will indeed be where she basically lives the rest of her days—or, at least, until she needs assisted living. And given that her mother lived into her eighties and her dad lived well into his nineties, we're basically banking on Laney lasting at
least another twenty years—if not thirty! Okay well thirty years from now she'll be 96 which might be a stretch. You never know, she could be the Betty White of Capitol Hill! Is this morbid to talk about?
I need to start focusing nore on making younger friends. I need my own friendship insurance, dammit! Granted, I remain in touch with Ivan, with whom I message multiple times a week. He just left for a solo trip to Puerto Rico, partly because while he stays with his parents in Lancaster for a while he wants to be out of the house while a sister he despises is visiting. Anyway, he's nine years younger than I am, so there's that. Except he only lives in Seattle for a year or two every two years. I need friends who are both younger and more stable!
The trouble is that too many Millennials are in some way or another unstable. I'm painting with a very broad brush here. I am also digressing.
We helped Laney unload her moving vans into the new apartment yesterday. I left work at noon, and since I had no idea exactly when I might be needed, I told Laney I would head home first and she could text me when ready, but I still took transit rather than walking. For no other reason than because of incompatable arrival times on busses, I walked up to the Monorail and then transferred to Light Rail.
I exchanged a couple of texts with Shobhit, as I had told him I'd be headed home first. When I told him I was on Light Rail, he told me he was out for a walk, and just about to head back from Volunteer Park. He asked me to come meet him, so when I got off the train and out of the station, I headed north on Broadway and we met in the middle of the block on Roy just north of where Broadway veers over into it, at the 76 station.
Apparently Starbucks had a 50% off drinks yesterday, so we stopped in at the one in the Broadway Market QFC. There was a
funny sign there, "Even serial killers need a coffee break." It turned out the 50% off deal was only for one drink per customer, but Shobhit still bought me a hot chocolate anyway. We then headed south on Broadway together.
Laney's new apartment is very small, as I have already noted, and she had felt that my offer to help her, her daughter Jessica, and Jessica's boyfriend Mike unload the vans, was likely all the help she needed. Shobhit can tend to micromanage a bit anyway.
We found them in the alley behind Pride Place, Laney's smaller white van and a rented U-Haul van Jessica was driving, both parked near the back entrance. This was where people had to move in, as there's too much going on on Broadway (including the First Hill Streetcar) to allow for moving in from the front side of the building. So, they can really only have one person moving in per day.
I had thought Shobhit even intended to go home, and I had given him m backpack and asked him to take it home for me. But when he was about to leave, Laney assured him they'd love to have him stay. Jessica seemed really happy to see both of us and expressed similar sentiments. (Should I also say something about Jessica's boyfriend, Mike? I was almost taken aback by how cute he was. This is not relevant!)
In the end, I think having Shobhit with us proved helpful, and likely lessened the number of rounds we needed to get Laney's already pretty small amount of stuff up to her sixth-floor apartment. We got it done in four trips, two of us using a hand cart provided by the building. They were pretty cool carts too, as you could convert then to be leading hand carts or two four-wheeled carts onto which you could place things level.
The apartment, of course, felt a lot smaller once all the boxes and the few pieces of furniture were placed in it. I imagine it will feel slightly larger again once Laney has everything unpacked and put away in the plenty of closet and cupboard spaces in there.
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— पांच हजार पांच सौ —
I actually took fewer photos from yesterday than I expected, adding just eight new shots to the "
Pride Place 2023: Laney Moves In" photo album on Flickr—and the eighth one of those, I actually swiped from Laney's Facebook post from later in the evening, so she actually took that picture, of the sun setting behind the Seattle skyline as seen from her sixth-floor window. Honestly, although the view is far better from our roof, the view she has from her apartment now is better than the one we now have from our condo.
Laney invited us to join them to go out for drinks and a late lunch, which honestly I would have loved to do. But, I was already over budget even before Laney and I went out for a drink Wednesday night; Shobhit had prepared food at home already; and it was probably better for Laney to get some quality time with Jessica and Mike anyway, especially on a day like this.
So: Shobhit and I arrived in the alley behind Pride Place at about 1:10, and we were saying our goodbyes in the apartment by 2:00. We got everything unloaded in less than an hour.
We did stop for several minutes in the lobby on our way out, as Shobhit went to chat a bit with Nicolas, with whom Laney actually sat and filled out paperwork during most of the time we were unloading. (Jessica had apparently already told her she couldn't lift stuff anyway, and could "only point.") Shobhit asked about getting on a waiting list, which he assumed was long, but Nicholas said the waiting list is very short at the moment, as they aren't even close to filling all 118 of the units in the building.
Shobhit was thinking super long term as a possibility for us, kind of forgetting that, although he meets the age minimum of 55 in five years (from Monday), this is an affordable housing community and there's a cap on the household income, which we far exceed. That could change in the future, obviously.
But then they started talking in terms of twenty years from now. Nicholas said that hopefully twenty years from now there will be more places like this, and nicer ones. I was like, "This place seems pretty nice to me!" He said it likely won't be as nice in twenty years. Fair point. That made me a little sad, to think on the very week it opens, of the wonderfully designed building falling into dereliction in the future. I love how it looks right now, the color motif so pointedly queer, with a purple facade and windows trimmed in different colors of the rainbow. I don't want to think about it looking drab in fifteen or twenty years. Hopefully they get the funding needed for a good refresh whenever needed.
Aside from all that, Shobhit and I sometimes talk about where else we might retire to, even though my current desire remains to stay in Seattle. Shobhit keeps arguing that by the time I'm faced with that decision most of my family and friends won't still be around to keep me here, except that doesn't acknowledge how much I love Seattle on its own merits—the whole reason I live her at all. If the people in my life were the only reason for where I lived, I'd still be living in Spokane or in Olympia. Yikes.
Still, I do consider the idea of retiring to somewhere else, and honestly? If I could have my pick of anywhere in the world, I'd go for Sydney Australia. If we were to gain access to Uncle David and Mary Anne's house in Adelaide (this is extraordinarily unlikely), I'd even be open to living in Adelaide. Also, we talk sometimes—including yesterday—about going to Palm Springs, where Faith is about to sell her house (technically in Desert Hot Springs).
Scott, who used to work at PCC, recently revealed to me via email that he got a job with KeHE and he will be moving to Phoenix, where he'll also be closer to his son. I think this is legitimately insane. Shobhit keeps mentioning it as an option for us to consider, and I'm just like—I don't give a shit how much cheaper the houses are down there, I'm not doing to live somewhere that summers are so hot that pavement literally melts people's shoes. Fuck that all the way to the middle of the desert.
(Palm Springs would not be extremely better in the summer, mind you. But, it's still not as bad as Phoenix.)
Anyway. We walked home, Shobhit and I watched the season finale of
Our Flag Means Death, and then I discovered I could easily take myself to see
Dicks: The Musical at 4:15 after all, and not have to tack it onto the end of my day tomorrow. Everything works out!
The movie was fine. Hilarious in parts, but starts to lose steam halfway through. Read the review for more!
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[posted 12:31 pm]
