Things I will miss and things I will not miss about Seattle

Things I will miss about Seattle:

• The friends I have made here
• Many local businesses and the nice people who work there
• The Pacific Northwest Ballet (but I still plan to fly back for the swans)
• My quirky old apartment and the wonderful light it gets
• Spending time in the garden with my 92-year-old neighbor
• Most of the summer weather
• Anhalt buildings

 

Things I will not miss about Seattle:

• The junkies.  The seemingly chemically impaired people just hanging out on the sidewalks, the neighborhood parks, the bus stops, wherever.  The odor of piss along the sidewalks of Belltown and from every alley of downtown.  The used syringes left in our garden.
• The contrast of ground level poverty at the feet of the magic growing glass structures/behemoths of the burgeoning wealthy tech industry.
• The fact that I will not be able to afford to live here (even if I wanted to) when I retire, and even with a pretty well-paying job I will never be able to afford more than a one bedroom apartment in a building with problems (though I realize I am fortunate to have a job that lets me afford this, and I don’t need more than one bedroom for myself, but now and then it would be nice to have guests).
• The overcrowded buses.
• The weed clouds at downtown bus stops.
• Wildfire smoke when it drifts over here from elsewhere.  It was pretty bad last summer; this summer I’m prepared with masks and DIY box fan filter.

 

I am so over Seattle.

 

Things I am looking forward to:

• Snow
• Glorious autumn leaves
• Fireflies
• Thunderstorms
• Visiting Montreal, Boston, and Maine
• The Boston Ballet, and popping down occasionally to NYC to see ballet there

 

Things I am worried about:

• That much snow.
• The slim likelihood of finding a place to live that is within a block of a veterinarian (see also: That much snow).

 

The where, the when:

• Most likely Burlington, Vermont
• Most likely early October mid-late April