City Living

Russ and I are staying in a hotel in Boston because I promised Carter I would not stay with her until she had a guest room, which I am not counting on anytime in the next decade. Last night as we slept on the twenty sixth floor I was rudely awakened by a bright flashing light and loud voice in our room repeating, “Potential Emergency, await stair evacuation instructions.” I was up like a bolt, but Russ barley moved and resumed a light snore. For two hours I awaited instructions, planning what I would take down the 26 flights of stairs.

I went to the door and smelled nothing and heard only the opening of other doors, wondering the same thing I did. I looked out the window and listened for sirens; Nothing. I lay down and tried to not go back to sleep thinking about what an orphaned Carter might do. We never got follow up instructions and eventually I fell back to sleep, only to awake prematurely when Russ got up to have a very early work call.

Since I was awake I went ahead and got up. It was raining, but not too hard. I was going for a Pedicure at Carter’s nail place, it had been 18 months since my last one and I did not want to subject my regular nail person to these feet. Russ gave me his tiny travel umbrella and I walked the six blocks in the rain.

When I was finished with fabulous feet, the rain had significantly picked up. The howling wind came around corners flipping the tiny travel umbrella inside out so I stopped in a CVS and bought an equally small and flimsy replacement. There was no way to keep my thin white button down shirt from being totally soaked, providing a sheerness that no one wanted to see. I finally made it back to the hotel only to discover that the wind had pulled my reading glasses off their chains around my neck. So much for my favorite glasses.

As I had not eaten anything yet, and Russ had a one hour break we went to find lunch in a way that we did not have to go outside. Since our hotel was not serving lunch we traveled through some overground tunnels until we found one open restaurant. It was huge with no customers. We were sad for the, but happy for us.

After lunch the sun came out. Russ went back to work and I walked to the MFA for my planned visit. Along the way I passed the Christian Scientist Mother church, which has been under renovation since before we looked at Northeastern with Carter seven years ago. I got to wondering if there would be any Christian Scientists left due to Covid to pay for finishing the renovation.

After a good mile walk I arrived at the Museum. Thankfully museum goers are good rule followers and everyone had their masks on and did excellent social distancing. A whole afternoon of fabulous art fixers all other problems, as well as the 14,500 steps I got today.

After working all day, Carter joined us for dinner at Salty Girl where we had a most fabulous selections of various seafood dishes, but by 8:30 my middle of the night interruptions were catching up with me. Carter went home on the T and Russ and I walked home. Praying for a solid night’s sleep since we finally get to Maine tomorrow.