A funny thing happened on the way to school pick-up.....

Back in January I made a new friend. Jackie moved to Omaha from Manchester-By-The-Sea, and I met her in the school parking lot. She has a little boy named Andrew who just started at Sophie's school. As you can imagine, we've become fast friends, commiserating over our homesickness and it's been wonderful to have her here.... finally someone who understands how hard Omaha's been for me, and at least she has me, someone who feels her pain adjusting to life here.

Jackie has a niece back in Boston whose husband just accepted a job with Mass General, and they were looking for a house. She had me e-mail pictures of my house, they saw it, loved it, and they are buying it when our tenants move out in August. So bad news.... I am selling my beloved Boston house.

As you can imagine, as a Bostonian and a proud Charlestown Toonie, this is crushing for me, but yet I know it's the right thing. What a fluke for someone to move here from Boston, have a relative looking for a property like mine, have me walk them through via cell phone complete with tenants, buy it, and I get the price I want in a terrible real estate market? I can rationalize this very painful decision because unlike Omaha, everything has fallen into place, and as my wise friend Lori says, "if it's meant to be, it will be". I guess this was meant to be.

We are now preparing to go back home, to Boston for a few weeks to visit, and pack up the house. I can't wait to be home, but still..... I am very sad these days about really, truly leaving home... especially for a place that just doesn't feel right, nor has it ever felt right. I think I just need skyscrapers rather than wide open spaces, oceans rather than golf courses, enthusiasm rather than apathy, and lots people instead of this isolation and boredom!

The Cost of Living.......

in Omaha is OUTRAGEOUS! I laugh because people from here think it's so inexpensive relative to the east coast. What a hoot! they don't know what they are missing when there's a little healthy competition! Here's my latest example.....

I decided that I wanted my downstairs power room to be fancy, like my Boston power room, and like all my friends' power rooms. We are having the whole house painted since the original cheep contractor's paint shows all the kids' fingerprints, so I figured it was a good time. I found a reasonably priced granite remnant, and thought the painters could just take down the mirror which I would replace with my fancy one coming from my Boston house. WRONG! I need to pay a glass guy $60.00 to come take it down because painters here don't do handiwork.

Then there's the faucet. We could just use our old faucet, right? WRONG! Neal needs to figure out how to take it off, or else I need to pay a plumber to come out here and do it, and they might not do it because they are union, so if I am taking a faucet off, then I will need to replace one, and I will need to buy said faucet from that plumber, who will mark it up 400 times. The lady at the lumber store said that she had a pedestal sink she found for $200, but the plumber wouldn't install it unless she bought it from him for $800! HIGHWAY ROBBERY!

In Boston, we have a great plumber who always answers his phone and comes when he is scheduled to be there. He charges reasonable rates and he even specs things out for you so you can buy it yourself.We put in a high end shower in Boston and Tom, the Awesome Plumber told us everything to buy and gave us no grief installing it at all. I think he even has a key to our house so he comes and goes as necessary. This whole thing would be such a non issue if I were home!

So, my simple little project has turned into a great big pain in the ass! Ah.... Omaha!