Adjusting to Big City Living

The transition to “big city living” hasn’t been without challenges. The traffic congestion at rush hour, driving a rental truck in traffic congestion at rush hour, parking tickets, grocery shopping, one-way streets and picking up dog poop has taken some getting used to (we apologize in advance if dog poop becomes a recurring theme on this blog – for better or worse it has become a significant part of our lives).  

It seems like there is a 2:1 ratio of dogs to people in our neighborhood. It is almost like a dog or two is an essential accessory to live in this area. Fortunately, we have the two best looking accessories in town! As you all know, Dex and Mo always enjoy making new friends, however our upstairs neighbor dog, Buddy, has not welcomed them with open paws. Other than Mr. Buddy, the dog friendly environment has been wonderful. Everyone wants to talk about our/their dogs and everyone seems to be tolerant of Dex’s jumping, slobbering and overall bad manners. Not that we recklessly allowed our dogs to poop in public back in Missouri, but the majority of the time it was in our yard or in an appropriate area. D.C. takes poop duty serious, especially in Capitol Hill. We have struggled to remember taking bags on our walks and have had to suffer the judgment from fellow dog owners as we abandon their excrements. In these situations, we always want to make the announcement “we are not jerks, we simply forgot a bag to pick up their poop, we are good people, please don’t judge us”. When we do remember to bring a bag(s) along, Ben is always ready to hand it to me for poop removal.

Ben’s slight OCD/clean freak tendencies have made him reluctant to handle dog feces and when confronted with this type of situation he responds with “I’m not picking it up, it’s not mine”. Ben’s world all came crashing down on our walk one evening. Mo made the poops which Kelly bagged up, then Dex made a poop, which meant Ben had to go on poop patrol. He hesitantly reached down and grabbed the fresh pile and carried it 3 blocks to the nearest trashcan. When asked if he had ever carried poop this long, he said “just my own”.

Ben had a meeting at his new office Friday to get a feel for his new position. We jumped on the metro and headed to K Street. Coming out of the metro station was like a scene from a movie. The organized chaos and commotion of it all was impressive. Thousands of people in thousands of buildings all working for their respective causes. People wearing fancy suits, talking on their fancy phones and seemingly oblivious to anything but their current task. We didn’t really fit in with our Cardinals shirts, jeans and running shoes and Kelly’s hippie purse over her shoulder. This street’s population density of attorneys must rival anywhere else in the world. During Ben’s meeting, Kelly walked a few blocks south of K street only to run into a large white house that happened to be the White House. It was surprisingly close to Ben’s office and she quickly became jealous of his new office local. To pour salt in the wound, on the walk back to Ben’s office she ran into a Fro-Yo (frozen yogurt) less than 2 blocks from his office.

We both are so excited about taking up residence in DC and trying to take advantage of all it has to offer. So far it still feels like a vacation, but each day we get closer and closer to normalcy. We look forward to the day when we are sitting on our couch watching “storage wars” with Dex and Mo, we will know we are home!