City Living, Here I Come Again

Blog # 3

After I had been separated from my husband for several months, living in an apartment instead of the family house, and working full-time, I decided I needed to change it up again.

My commute from Vienna, VA, in Fairfax County to the new office job in Arlington, right next to Washington, DC, was a bear. After working from home for more than 20 years while raising my three kiddos, I definitely did not embrace the twice-daily, grueling drive to work in rush-hour traffic. But I had to do it five days a week; working from home wasn’t allowed until we were on the job for one year, and even then it would only be one day a week.

I had two commuting options: Pay a lot of money to go on the interstate, Route 66, with my EZ-Pass (which could literally cost $35 one way during peak times on certain days, depending on traffic), or tough it out on the side roads, which were clogged with car traffic, commuter buses, school buses, and, once I got into Arlington, lots of bicyclists and scooters sharing the road. One option was expensive but fast, and the other was cheap but tedious and slow.

Arlington is an unusual place in that it is both a county and a city, and it’s an intermediary between the rest of the Virginia suburbs and Washington, DC. So even if you’re not going all the way into DC, you’re in the same traffic as all the federal workers and others going into the big city at the beginning of the day. Not to mention that Arlington is a pretty booming metropolis in its own right.

My husband and I had lived in bustling Arlington for the first four years of our marriage, and then we moved further out west, to a more suburban town (Vienna). But now my job happened to be in Arlington again, and I was going back and forth with the bulk of the traffic every morning and afternoon. And it appeared to have gotten a lot worse since I had lived in Arlington 20 years earlier (and DC before that).

As much as I loved my job, I did not relish the commute, ever. So I started to consider other options. I wanted to keep this great job in book publishing at a trade association, so I wasn’t going to change that. But if I couldn’t work from home or close to home, I would have to find an apartment in a closer-in town.

First I started looking at apartment complexes in Tysons Corner/McLean, which would still be fairly close to the house where my kids came and went, but it would be a shorter commute to the office in east Arlington. I made appointments to tour the different complexes, selecting only those that allowed dogs, because I planned on adopting a small dog. Our last family dog had to be put down a couple months after I had moved out, and I missed having a canine companion.

I toured some nice rental places, with swimming pools, fitness centers, and well-landscaped walking paths. They were in better condition than the low-cost garden apartments I was staying at now. One of them was within short walking distance of an upscale mall, Tysons Galleria, and in a pretty neighborhood. Others were close to downtown McLean, with its shops and restaurants.

On weekends I practiced the commute from many of these apartment homes to the Arlington office, trying to see how doable the drive would be once I lived there. It was a little better; there were some quicker options than I currently had from west Vienna.

But then, I thought, why not eliminate the commute completely? If I’m going to try to be closer to work, why not walk to work? My office between the Rosslyn and Court House neighborhoods of Arlington was close to many high-rise apartment buildings, and most of them looked luxurious when I walked around the area during my lunch hour. Also, I had a free parking space (with my name on it!) in the parking garage under my office building, so I didn’t even need to drive to and from home if I could walk the route.

I soon researched and mapped out all the apartment buildings within six blocks from work. Most of them allowed dogs, and they all had swimming pools and other amenities. From the office during the week, I then went to tour about eight of these buildings, limiting it to apartments and rental condos that accepted dogs and that had nice-sized, safely enclosed balconies off the apartments.

I had already selected a new fur-baby for my life, while scoping out dog rescue organizations over the summer of 2019. His foster family called him Versace (for being “a hot mess”!) and he was a Pomeranian mix, around 1½ years old. He would be available to come to me in September, so I wanted to find a good home near work where I could walk to my apartment every day and take him out at lunch.

So my new dog was the other reason I wanted to be close to work. Between the harried commute that I currently had and the new responsibility that I would be soon taking on, I needed to move to Arlington and start a new life back in the city!

Once I discussed it with my kids and made sure it was acceptable to everybody, I made plans to move to the Courthouse Plaza Apartments in late August 2019. Due to the higher cost of living in close-in Arlington (which was just a mile or two from the Key Bridge into DC), my new apartment was only a one-bedroom unit, but it had a large living room where I could have my pullout couch and my trundle bed for the kids’ overnight stays. It was definitely going to be a more expensive life change, and I would have to pay an additional fee per month for the dog, plus more if I wanted a parking space under the building (which I declined due to my spot at work).

The best part about my new home? It was in a 21-story building with a rooftop terrace and pool, which included beautiful, sweeping views of the Potomac River and the Washington, DC, skyline with all of its monuments, memorials, and stately federal buildings. Plus it had a rooftop gym, where I could work out at night high up in the sky overlooking the sparkling lights of the nation’s capital. It seemed a good tradeoff to lose a little apartment space for the chance to be in such a great location.

I would be four blocks from work — an easy commute. Other than the work-from-home gig I had had while raising my kids, this would be the only time I would ever be able to walk to a job. I also could walk to stores, restaurants, my bank, and other businesses. And the Courthouse Metro stop was right next to my building on the same plaza. It seemed perfect. I thought, “I won’t drive anymore — I’ll walk everywhere — maybe I’ll lose weight!”

I moved into the new apartment on August 28 and brought home my new dog less than three weeks later. I renamed him “Lex,” and he fit right into my life. A small dog for a small home.

My seventh-floor apartment had a fairly large balcony off the living room, with a nice walled enclosure around it, so there was no way that Lex could slip through and fall out. I put out a fake-grass pee mat in a corner of the balcony, for the nights and mornings when riding the elevator down to the street would take too long. For fun and exercise, we ran up and down the long carpeted hallways of the building, which Lex loved. He also loved helping me take out the garbage to the trash room and got excited when he heard me rustling around with the trash bags. And we went for long walks around my new neighborhood.

So now I was adjusting to living in the city after all of these years. But now I was in my 50s living the urban life in Arlington again, where last I had lived as a single 20-something and then a newly married person. This was a far cry from my days as a young newspaper copy editor where everybody around me was near my age, and single, and we would all go out to the bars and restaurants after work. Now I was far older than almost everybody in my apartment building, I was separated from my husband of 24 years, and I had three kids ages 17 through 23. So it was definitely a different experience, and a bit of a challenge. But with my new little companion and my job so close by, it was an easier life than I had had in the previous months where I had fought crazy traffic every morning and night.

Now, every morning I slept later, strolled to work, came back home at lunch and took Lex out for a potty break before eating with him, sometimes out on the plaza next to my building during nice weather, and then walked back to work. After work I could go to a work happy hour if there was one, walk to a store or pick up dinner, and leisurely come home. I didn’t have to deal with any traffic. I went back to Vienna usually only on the weekends, seeing friends, playing tennis, and picking up any available kids for a weekend stay. I bought a car carrier for Lex that latched into the seatbelts of the back seat, so he could safely go on these trips with me.

It was an unusual life. Not many middle-aged, separated mothers were living back in the haunts and neighborhoods of their early adult years, having zig-zagged from single apartment life in the city to family house in the suburbs and back to single apartment life in the city. But that was where I found myself now. And I was determined to make the most of this new development in my life.

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Jenny and Lex

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