Jun 18,
The last 4 weeks have been crazy busy and productive at the same time. It was only 4 weeks ago that I talked to my manager about moving back to Cincinnati and here we are. We have made an offer on a house in Cincinnati, we have accepted an offer on our Boston house, and we have confirmed a pack and move date of the last week of Jul. The next few weeks will be plenty crazy as well, but at least we are moving in the right direction. And hoping for no surprises on either house.
Jun 18,
I finished the latest audiobook. It is a good book, but it is also a sad heavy story. I am still surprised that Sofia read this in High School, which I didn’t know until after the fact.
Jun 15,
Our Sofifi could not be here for this one, but we enjoyed the memories and Bella and I held the fort and celebrated Lionel on father’s day
Jun 14,
Cheryl and I have had some particularly stressful weeks, so this week we took a bit of mental health time. We also used it as a time to remove items from my Boston bucket list. So we went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum one afternoon. And we gave ourselves a “beach day” at Rockport, which I have visited before but she had not. Bella did not want to go to the museum but happily tagged along to go to Rockport, which is one off my favorite coastal towns. I will miss being able to go there but have great memories of being there with my faves.
Jun 9,
Cheryl and I signed up for a 4 week pickleball tournament right next to work. Our flight back from Cincinnati got delayed, so we barely made it back on time. It was so tight, that I had to drop Bella off for her to play the first game on my behalf while I tried to park.
Jun 8,
This weekend we did a flash trip to Cincinnati to look for a house. The Cincinnati market is super challenging right now, and while I would have loved to be right in Hyde Park, the few houses for sale were simply not the right ones for us. So we ended up buying a house in East End, a neighborhood pretty much next door to Hyde Park. The house is new, and modern, and with plenty of light. And it has views of the river and downtown.
Jun 5,
Our house is now officially for sale. Just a few photos of how nice and clean it looks.
Jun 4,
Today was Bella’s last day of school. Those last few weeks were very challenging, but she never has to go back there again. Her and Izzy are done with those kids.
May 30,
Sofia was in Boston with us this week. The original plan was to just work Tuesday-Thursday mornings, and hang out with her the rest of the time. But since we now needed to get the house ready for sale, we ended up sorting and cleaning, and taking stuff out to donate most of the time. We still had a lot of school supplies that we brought from Cincinnati, that Bella and I painstakingly sorted to donate to a local school. Sofia cleaned her room, and we removed a lot of decorations and personal items to put them away for now.
On Thursday night we were supposed to go see Shakira at Fenway, the one fun activity we had planned way ahead of time. Unfortunately the concert got canceled just a few hours before it was supposed to start, but we didn’t find out until we were pretty much there. We took the green line to Fenway, had dinner at a food hall, walked around for a bit, and came back.
One afternoon we did make the time to go to the Commons and walk around Newbury street, and to close out the week Sofia and I went to Beacon Hill.
May 19,
This weekend I was back in Cincinnati. The original reason was to attend a doctor’s appointment with my dad, which was a reason important enough, but ended up being a whole lot more.
When we moved Bella to the new school in Massachusetts we were full of hope, and at the beginning it started well, but things deteriorated throughout the months. Lots of mean girls once again, lots of jerks, and a whole lot of entitlement. Not to mention a highly insular culture. She made one good friend, Izzy, and for a while we thought that would be enough, but over the the last few weeks of the school year it became apparent that things were not good at all for her or for Izzy, and that there was no way they could handle getting back there. Her mom told me that since the environment at that school was so toxic, they were pulling Izzy out and sending her somewhere else. And that was the last straw for us. While we didn’t want to give up after the first year, and made the effort and investment to send her to the private school for year two, we were not about to try yet a third school. Besides, after the experience with the first two, we had no reason to believe that a third school would be any different. We were done.
With lots of personal and professional dread, I scheduled a meeting with my boss when I was in Cincinnati, and went to meet her in person. I told her I wanted to be moved back to Cincinnati byAugust, and shared some of the stories that finally made us be done with Boston. She was not necessarily surprised with the additional stories, since she knew things had not been great for Bella, but was sad for her and for us and - thank God - was highly supportive of moving us back as long as I committed to travel back and forth to Boston and get the job done.
Getting her support, and the support of my incoming manager was a huge relief, but it was not the end of the story. The weekend was still extremely stressful as we needed HR confirmation that the move would be supported, which we finally got on Monday morning. Things have to move very quickly, both for the company and for us, so the next few weeks will be some crazy ones.
I am extremely disappointed that our Boston experience has not been what we had hoped for, and that it will end so abruptly. But we have to do what is best for Bella and after two years in Boston it is clear that this is NOT it.
