Conundrums

I know as a girl growing up I always thought it would be undescribably cool to live in Chicago. And now I am living in Chicago (not quite downtown or next to Wrigely which is where I always wanted to, but still in Chicago nonetheless). In a pretty nice highrise (complete with the doorman, package room, penthouse, and sundeck on the roof). But this type of living presents problems that I bet you would never think of. I will outline a few of the more frustrating ones:

1. You never know the weather. Now mind you, I have a wonderful birds-eye view of the weather. I can see the lake, clouds, fog, etc. But living on the 15th floor, sometimes I can't even tell when it's raining. More frustrating, you can't tell what the wind/temperature is like. When I open my front door to get the morning newspaper, I'm in my nice hallway. I have no idea if it's sweatshirt weather or winter coat weather. Because those type of days often LOOK the same. More than once I've been caught leaving the building for my mile walk and found that I dressed very inappropriately. I've tried to get around this my sticking my arm out the window each morning but it's not the same. This leads to:

2. Leaving the house is a much more drawn out process. Say you walk out of the building and realize, shit, it's not sweatshirt weather, it's parka weather. Or you head down to your car and just as you're getting in, you realize you forgot a critical component (maybe the address to where you're going or your cell phone). It's at least a 10 minute mistake. If you're running late or cutting it close, it's simply not an option. By the time you go back in, wait for the elevator, go up to your floor, get what you forgot, wait for the elevator again (and invariably at least once probably both ways you'll have a full elevator with people stopping at multiple floors on your way up/down). You can't run in for one more thing. Once you leave the floor, really you're stuck with what you have. And if you do go back, it's not going to be pleasant. or fast.

3. Now my condo is fantastic, with gorgeous hardwood floors. But you know when you get new shoes, particularly heels, sandals or heeled sandals, its good to break them in before wearing them out. Hardwod floors are not conducive for that. In general, there are no shoes allowed on the floors (gotta protect the investment). Heeled shoes are especially not good. Everything on the floor has protective pads on it. So how the heck do you break in new shoes? I've yet to figure it out.

These are just the little things. Overall, it's pretty freaking sweet.