While there is a lot to love about Baltimore and we have no doubt that we made the right decision by moving here, it’s been a rocky road to settling in and we are bogged down by minutiae – Lori is convinced that Maryland has it in for her and I can’t really disagree. First there was Lori losing her SSI. Then she had to wait all summer to hear back from the NY Dept of Motor Vehicles so she could finally get a Maryland driver’s license. She tried again a few weeks ago but was turned back because the (not-revealed-to-her) deadline had passed for her to “start where she left off” in April and she didn’t have her Social Security card with her. So until she has the energy to make yet another trip to the Maryland MVA, she is still using her California license. Then came the dental horror. Lori found a dentist that it walking distance from our apartment. She was told she needed a “simple root canal.” One trip to the ER after half of her face swelled up to 4x its size, and 9 out of 11 dental appointments later, she is still without a crown (allegedly will be put in during one of the two remaining dental appointments in January).

We made a few treks to get winter clothes and coats and Lori still needs boots and sweaters. We also need to get one of those thingies with the brush on one end and a scraper on the other. It’s amazing the amount of things you need to buy to deal with Winter, a season we’ve not had to  really deal with for half our lives. Last week we took the car in to be “Winterized.” And discovered that we needed new brakes . Yesterday we got a parking ticket because, unbeknownst to us, our area parking permit had expired. I could have sworn we were supposed to be notified. “Luckily” I had left work early because I wasn’t feeling well so we had time to get to the parking office in time to get a new sticker. It really seems to be one thing after another.

One of the worst things has been that our house in Oakland got broken into. My sister and her partner have been living there and fortunately there weren’t too many things taken. But the house was turned upside down and my sister did lose a number of things of sentimental value that were very dear to her. Not to mention having that feeling of being unsafe. Despite new security doors added, it’s going to take some time for that unsettled feeling to ease up. We miss Lorena & Tess very much.

Despite our pity party, and missing people and places in California and the West coast, we are glad to be here. Nikkyo and Buster have settled in and seem content. We’re very much enjoying friends old and new, the beautiful Fall-colored trees on our street and around the area and appreciating the things we have.

But we could do with far less minutiae – ya hear me, Baltimore?

We indulged in more “Udderly Cream” ice cream and checked out some of the bricks by the water that you can dedicate. Personally I would have been insulted if I were part of “etc.”

We headed over to this cool shop called Galerie Collagia, owned and run by a local artist, Luana Kaufmann. She makes these wonderful collages and sells them among other cool things. She was nice enough to model a backpack (not made by her) that I would have killed for (pun intended) at some past time in my life. Check out her website: http://galeriecollagia.com/index.html.

In other news, I started my new job at the end of last week. As I have mentioned in emails and via facebook, everyone has been kind and welcoming. My position as psychiatric case manager is being defined as we go, but mainly I am the social worker for the two psychiatrists. I will be doing a lot of triaging of phone calls, managing their schedules and getting people in sooner if needed, some short-term case management, providing support of various kinds to the psychiatry clients in person and by phone, doing some crisis counseling and management  and referrals. At my last job, the only insurance I had to deal with was MediCal (California’s Medicaid program) and at my new job, there’s a whole slew of different types they take including Medicaid and Medicare. There’s a lot I won’t have to deal with with those and some I will.

Right now I’m starting to learn a whole new host of acronyms and a very large patient database that has a huge number of components. Mainly I stare at people blankly for awhile and also ask a ton of questions. I’m looking forward to next week when I will sit with a  bunch of the different case managers to be trained on numerous things like insurance, local resources, financial assistance programs and the like.

Meanwhile back at our fab apartment, Lori has been making some great local contacts and has two meetings set up with a web designer and a woman who connects women in business to other women in business. She’s also started karate in Pikesville, which may be the place I went to forever ago in high school that moved down the street or it’s entirely new. I will ask my friend Jen L who will know (or maybe you will read this and tell me).

Other than that we are still not entirely unpacked but a parental visit in about 10 days will light a fire under our butts. Speaking of butts, here are two cute cat butts sitting in the office window. The cats are pretty adjusted at this point and we finally got them new tags for their collars – they are indoor cats but you never know. One example of the unpredictability of our cats is that Lori found the freezer ajar this afternoon and went to close it when Buster leaped out of it. And Nikkyo is happily talking to and carrying her fuzzy toys (her “purple friend” and her “green friend”) from room to room every night, just like she did in Oakland. Who knows what she is telling them.

I’m getting along with my parents just fine – I now speak to my mom every night on the phone (where is Karen? what happened to her?) because it makes her happy and to be honest, it’s pretty sweet. Hopefully soon we’ll get them some wifi in their home. We did get my dad some speakers for the computer I gave him so he can hear the dvds he can watch on it better.

Lastly, I have been feeling homesick on and off all week, which is par for the course. I am so enjoying reconnecting with my east coast friends and hoping to see more of them soon. In June we may even be ready for a housewarming party. And I sure do miss my West coast friends, family and co-workers. All in all though, I’d say things are going rather well after a bumpy start. As a wise man once said, “Every little thing…gonna be all right.”

Cherry Blossom Tree across the street from our apartment

I love our apartment and I love our neighborhood, but in general, I have been very down since we have lived in Baltimore. Some unfortunate things have happened such as being turned down for a driver’s license until I go through a 3 state fax & snail mail chain plus a $25 check to clear it up. Getting kicked off of SSI was a pretty bad blow too. Worse than pretty bad, not to mention completely unexpected. Thank goodness Karen’s workplace will recognize me as her domestic partner so I can still have insurance and get my meds.

But enough of all that. Things will get better. Hopefully soon! There have been good things too. On Saturday, I got to meet Sharon da Vanport for the first time after working with her for close to 3 years on the Autism Women’s Network. She is the executive director and does more things in a day than I can do in a month. I am the web/tech person. She is just as awesome in person as she seems on Skype, email, and various other virtual means of communication. Thanks for being you Sharon! Almost got to meet a couple of other people that I have worked with to some degree or other, but that didn’t end up working out. I believe we will meet at another time, probably in the not so far future.

I have been very sad and having a hard time thinking, but today, Karen did the most awesome job of cheering me up! We went to the water at Fell’s point and had the best ice cream cone in the world and looked at the boats. After that, we went to see this co-working space called Beehive Baltimore that I was pretty excited about, but it turned out to be a disappointment. We got there and there were a bunch of people working on computers. No one said anything and I don’t think there was anyone working at the Beehive (as opposed to people just working). I think I didn’t understand how it works and was comparing it to TechLiminal, this awesome place in Oakland that I miss very much. I will give it another chance. There are WordPress meetups there and I will definitely be going to those. We also stopped at Whole Foods. Even though we really can’t afford it, we got some good food. It is not nearly as easy to find packaged vegetarian food as it is in California. No big surprise there, but nice to know it can be found somewhere.

We got home to find that our awesome landlord installed a new kitchen faucet to replace our old one that was kind of strange and hard to aim. Karen had mentioned that she liked the sprayer in the other sink and he went out and got this really nice faucet with a nice detachable sprayer at the end of it and a soap dispenser. He is easily the nicest landlord that I have ever had. He lives upstairs.

Other highlights:

Pinkery

There are tons of Cherry Blossom trees everywhere and they are all beautiful! I love the trees here and the season is right to see all of the flowers too. I am very much looking forward to the fall when the leaves will change colors. I wish we could just skip right over the hot sweltering summer!

Bricks

The bricks are awesome and they are everywhere. I was born in Brooklyn, NY, and bricks feel like home to me. I think I can look at them all day. They are completely mesmerizing. Bricks are one of the things that I missed most when moving to the west coast. Right up there with good pizza and bagels, both of which are also here.

Karen has a couple more days off before she has to go back to work. We still have lots more unpacking to do, but we are hoping that there will be more time for K to show me around and even visit some places where she has never been. Even though we have been non-stop busy for several months now and still have so many things to do, days like today feel like we are on vacation. It is really nice to get to spend this time together before ‘regular’ life takes over. I think we will be okay here. Just not sure exactly how yet.

Friday brought more unpacking and we have cut down significantly on our box barricade. What’s left is securing our furniture to the living room wall, or some of it, anyway and filling it up with stuff, and unpacking the office. We have all of our bedroom furniture in the right place and most everything that’s going in it unpacked, but it’s still not picture-ready. A major success was getting my shoe tree put-together. The goddess knows we girlie-girls  who don’t have the luxury of a walk-in closet gotta have our shoe trees! We are so over boxes. Can’t wait to get rid of every last one of ‘em. Buster and Nikkyo are settled in, as evidenced by their taking over our new chair. Once in awhile Lori and I get to sit in it.

Yesterday we were so excited to finally get to meet Sharon daVanport, the Executive Director of the Autism Women’s Network. Lori’s now worked, skyped and emailed with her for years but they’d never met in person. Sharon is an amazing woman and it was an honor and a pleasure to get to hang out with her for the day. We will hopefully be seeing her tomorrow as well in D.C. I spent today with my parents, doing laundry there instead of braving the death-defying fire escape stairs to get to the laundry room and helping them out with a few things. They were happy to pawn off their last box of matzoh on me & Lori.

Other than that, we are trying to acclimate to Baltimore in various ways. We’ve had some humidity but not too bad. Today I even got to wear shorts and sandals. This evening we had a pretty good thunderstorm with torrential rain that you just never see in the Bay Area but for once in a blue moon. We walked over to the Paper Moon Diner for brunch this morning (7-block walk), the atmosphere and food were great – finally a good cup of coffee other than Starbucks! Any of you other B-more dwellers care to weigh in on where else to get a good cup? And by good, I mean strong (no amber, only dark!) with good flavor.  The diner has a very quirky, funky decor – reminds me in some ways of Berkeley or SF but there is a feel to it that is pure Baltimore.

We are also trying to adjust mentally to being here – still being in boxes doesn’t help but I think starting work and a routine will. Not that I haven’t been grateful for the time off between jobs, but I think things will start to feel more normal for both of us then. Still missing our house and everyone and everything in the Bay Area but also looking forward to seeing everyone here and starting our new Life in Baltimore in earnest.

We’re hopeful that we can relax during the last couple of days before my first day of work, since we’ve been going non-stop for oh, several months now. The rest of the boxes will just have to wait. Thanks everyone on both coasts and in-between for your patience with us when we are slow to return phone calls or email – we’re just still adjusting. Hope everyone had a good Passover/Easter/Spring week.

If you receive SSI, you are allowed to own a house if it is your primary residence. We didn’t think about it. I’m a freakin’ social worker and I didn’t think about it, even once. We moved to Maryland. We went to Social Security and Lori honestly reported that she owns a house. She is not allowed to own a house if she doesn’t live in it, as it is considered an asset. Therefore, she is going to lose her SSI. We kind of freaked out.

And we are very fortunate, more fortunate than most, in that we have families and people in our lives who won’t let us fail in this move. But it was, and is, very scary, to suddenly be without that portion of our household income, income that Lori has relied upon for almost half of her life, for the many years she was unable to work, for those times both past and some more recent when it is very hard for her to function. Along with that came medical benefits that pay for the medications that help her on a daily basis. Thank goodness my new job has domestic partnership benefits or she’d be royally screwed.

For the rest of that day and all day Thursday, I was really sick – my stomach was all kinds of messed up, I was extremely fatigued and a little bit delirious. Lori was very stressed out too with bad headaches. Like I said, I know we are very fortunate – we have a wonderful support system, live in a good neighborhood, I’m starting a great job as a psychiatric social worker at Chase Brexton Health Services in a couple of weeks and we have nice things. I’m sure I sound like like an overprivileged whiner, but it still felt like a punch in the gut to lose that money. We have a lot of debt. But I know we will be okay.

Yesterday we did manage to get out and get to the Inner Harbor, get some fresh air, see the water and get some things for the new job. This is one of my favorite parts of Baltimore. I love this view. It looks across the harbor from Harborplace, which seems to be struggling financially, (but still there were people about, enjoying the beautiful Spring day), to the National Aquarium.  Just west of the Aquarium is Baltimore’s World Trade Center and the USS Constellation.

We still have a barricade of boxes in our living room, which the cats are coping with in their various ways.

Today we were able to put together a good portion of Lori’s office and the bathroom.

Tomorrow brings a breakfast reunion with an old co-worker/friend from my SF AIDS Foundation days and then it’s over to my parents’ place to help cook for Monday night’s Passover seder. I will end this post with a little Maryland humor:

Yesterday I went by the new job – more on that in a different, upcoming post. After that, we went to Fell’s Point, which is a place by the water, east of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and downtown areas. I lived there during my last semester of college in 1992. Had dinner at John Steven, that is on the corner of the block where I used to live with my friend Chris and another guy named Jesus (not pronounced the Spanish way). Jesus used to berate me about my use of plastic, like tupperware – we didn’t get along very well. Had raw oysters (so good!) and crabcakes – very good but could have used some Old Bay – I mean, really, crabcakes without Old Bay? Lori even tried them! The rent on my old block is now about 5x as much as it was, since all the rowhouses have been rehabbed. You now have to pay for parking and there’s quite a few more bars and restaurants. I love it still. A lot of these places are on a cobblestone street, Thames street, which you non-Marylanders may be interested to hear is pronounced in the way that rhymes with James. This bummed Lori out since it took her years to pronounce it in the British way.

We then had ice cream at Maggie Moo’s, and discovered an incredible flavor, Udderly Cream. Freakin’ fantastic. It was a warm night but not humid, we ate outside then walked by the water while we ate ice cream and we were struck by how wonderful it was to just relax and have a date, something we haven’t done, it seems, in at least a couple of months. It was really, really nice.

…which was great, because today was not so nice. We slept in (okay, till 9) and got a bit of a late start getting to the Motor Vehicle Administration. We went to the one in Glen Burnie as opposed to the closer one in Baltimore City because the wait times were way shorter. I’m sure it’s because of the million things we’ve been doing and keeping track of, but somehow despite my careful checking and planning, I failed to bring our inspection certificate, which already meant a second trip back, but also didn’t notice that we each needed TWO forms of proof of Maryland residency, which neither of us had at the moment, meaning we couldn’t even get our driver’s licenses in that first trip.

So back home we went, had lunch from Sam’s bagels where the woman who owns/runs it is just out-of-control happy and very sweet and watched some of a very cool documentary about the building of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Lori had no idea she was moving from one Bay Bridge city to another. Back we went to the MVA for, as Lori called it: “MVA, Take 2: The Reckoning,” wherein our hapless protagonists succeed at acquiring one driver’s license (mine) and new plates and registration, but alas, find they must make a third trip at some point after Lori clears up something from her old New York and Florida licenses from twenty-four freakin’ years ago. The MVA guy said all of the country’s records are now connected. Well if they are so connected, why has Lori had her California driver’s license for 20 years without a peep? The goddess, please help us. Lori called Florida, they have to get something faxed from New York, where Lori can only reach someone from 8am – 12pm, so has to call tomorrow.

The new Maryland license plates are very…umm…patriotic. They have the flag, they say “The War of 1812″ below Maryland, and the MVA lady was impressed that I knew that was because it was during that war that Francis Scott Key wrote the National Anthem from Fort McHenry in Baltimore. And fireworks. And they are red, white and blue, of course.

And we haven’t had time to unpack at all yet this week. Tomorrow brings more errands and bureaucracy, but at least Thursday someone is coming to put together our Ikea furniture. Maybe we can relax again on Friday?

Before that, Lori put up the space saver in the bathroom, our landlord boarded up the hole under the sink…well, mostly…there is still a space that Buster may or may not fit through – he tried while we were watching and did give up, but we put a smaller barricade there just in case and may need more boards. Lori and I also debated the color of our bath towels and bathmat, which we ultimately decided was royal purple. And this is the “homosexual lifestyle” from which people must be protected. We did actually do some unpacking but not all of our things made it in one piece Since we didn’t get extra insurance and packed most of the broken things ourselves, we can’t get reimbursed. Bleah.

The most exciting part of the day was when I discovered the crevice tool on the dustbuster. No self-respecting woman should be without a crevice tool. Ahhh, THIS must be the homosexual lifestyle from which people must be protected! Please, don’t allow us to marry, or the (royal purple) fabric of society will surely tear.

I picked up a City Paper, where else? Within a one-block radius. I happened upon the following ad. They had me at Tuesdays, and then I saw Mondays.

In other news, my wonderful sister has been fixing up our Oakland house that she and Tess will live in. She’s having the office and living room floors redone as the wood under the carpet wasn’t too bad at all. Check it out – people who have been there – you won’t believe your eyes – isn’t it gorgeous? Go go Lorena!

Today we got our car inspected, the first step on our journey to make Rollie (our car) a true Marylander. Next week we will spend countless hours walking on red-hot pieces of sharp, jagged glass, oh sorry, I meant at the DMV. We went to a few more stores to get some needed items and then picked up my poor uncle from the car dealership. He and my aunt had just pulled into my parents’ place when their car broke down, then broke down again when he was taking it to the dealer, in the pouring rain. Fortunately he was able to call from another business and the tow truck got him. Went to the Outback for dinner and Lori had a 10 oz Porterhouse with a side of grilled shrimp. Just kidding, she had salad and a baked potato. Lori and I shared a bottle of wine with my aunt called Little Boomey, which neither Lori nor I caught onto until we saw the little boomerang picture on it. What can I say, we are are still slow on the uptake!

Finished the evening with apple pie, an adorable video of one of my 2nd cousins (or is it a cousin once-removed if he is the son of my first cousin?) and a scintillating debate with my mom over the wisdom (or lack thereof) of us buying a water purifier. Lori scored us a great parking spot across the street where we can park on weekends only until we get a permit after visiting the thirteenth circle of hell, I mean the DMV, nope I mean the MVA.

Non-sequitur (I thought of a complex word, hooray!): Hey can one of you Maryland people tell me if I can at least buy alcoholic beverages at Costco? You can’t buy them at grocery stores here. If I can’t buy them at Costco, I will die of shock or of drama queenliness, whichever comes first.

And lastly, Nikkyo is once again demonstrating why we nicknamed her Pica (for you non-mental health field or medical types: pronounced PIKE-uh, it is a pattern of eating non-food materials). Shortly after this picture was taken, she began gnawing on the corner of the mantle on the right. Tomorrow the landlord will come down and block off the hole under our sink, otherwise known as “the place Buster went for 7 hours,” possibly also known as the gateway to hell, but I’m pretty sure that actually has to be in the basement, if all of those horror films I used to watch are to be believed.

Anyway, as you can tell, I’m pretty delirious and Buster tells me it’s time to crash. We have a long weekend of major unpacking ahead of us.
 

…and it was our saving grace this evening. I don’t know that I’ve actually ever been to the Charles Village Pub. In my misspent youth, it was mostly the Mt Royal Tavern where I’d hang out when home from college or just hanging in B’more some random weekend. The beer and bourbon & ginger hit the spot after a very long day and the food smelled delicious – 3 hours at IKEA and then an hour or more at Home Depot. But although we came close, neither of us cried at IKEA, which tends to be the norm for us.

The ride home was, let’s just say, “interesting,” in that our GPS took us a route I wouldn’t have chosen to get home. I made Lori take it off the dashboard and hold it in her lap. I’m just glad she never watched the Wire. We’ll get our friend Marnee to remind us where not to go! Feel free to chime in, Baltimore peeps. Don’t worry, it is a mistake I won’t repeat again. In all seriousness, it’s incredibly sad that there continues to be such a split between the haves and the have-nots in a country so rich in resources. Starting to get the old social worker juices flowing again..which is good so I can seem somewhat intelligent when I meet the new work people next week, tho’ I’m still having trouble with most nouns and some verbs.

Lori is slowly getting to understand the city grid, at least the part near where we live. Although for the life of me, I can’t explain why North Ave runs east/west – it just puts the charm in Charm City! Tomorrow we are getting our stuff, all of our alleged 85 boxes and more, as well as our stuff from IKEA. We will get someone to put it all together, we did it for our foldout couch and it was well worth it. I think having familiar furniture will make Buster feel better – he’s having a hard time adapting, poor little guy, but generally he and Nikkyo are doing ok.

Friday we will get an exciting car inspection so we can go to the DMV (or MVA as they call it here) next week and spend hours wishing we were dead, oops I mean getting our new licenses and plates. Then we’ll hang with my aunt & uncle and my parents for the evening. The weekend will mostly be spent getting our place in order.

Another saving grace tonight was being able to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory online. Not only that, but it was about Sheldon’s World of Warcraft account getting hacked – doubly nerdalicious!

I can’t believe we live in Baltimore! Everything is very surreal, like I am living someone else’s life. Pretty sure that Karen is living someone else’s life too. I wonder if that means we are cheating on each other. Maybe it will feel more real when our stuff gets here on Thursday or maybe when I have some sort of clue where I am when I walk out the door.

Karen has been showing me around as we do errands, and trying to explain where things are, but directions are not my best thing. Luckily we live down the block from about a million things, so I don’t need to travel very far at the moment. There are 3 cafes including a Starbucks in walking distance, a liquor store, our bank, a little market, a sushi and bagel store, Barnes and Noble, a pub, and some other random interesting places.

Today we went to the state building (or whatever it is called in MD) and officially registered my business, then to the bank to get K an account and set up my business account. Always good to be able to deposit checks! Tomorrow, we will brave IKEA. IKEA makes me cry 99.9% of the times that I go there and K is not too fond of it either.

All I know is that everything is perfect now that Buster is back. That little orange cat just about broke our hearts last night and it was hard to give a crap about what a great apartment we have while he was gone.

Today, things are better. I am back in business, or at least as much as I can be without my main computer, K will go meet her new work people on Monday, the cats are fast asleep and happy, and sometime in the near future we will be drinking beer with old friends! When we pulled out for the final leg of our drive, our song was playing (Nothing Else Matters by Metallica). I think that is a sign of good things to come.