I Am Never Moving Again... For 12 Months

Full disclosure: I'm writing this at work on Sunday afternoon, and they are playing an all-weekend marathon of Christmas music. Why yes, I am enjoying some hot chocolate and singing "Sleigh Ride" while staring out the window at the lovely orange and red fall foliage. And I'm completely okay with that. But now I want to watch Home Alone.

I moved into my new place just over a week ago and am almost completely settled in. Yay me! The move itself was of course riddled with tiny yet super-stressful setbacks that made the process not-so-fun. Oh, the joys of moving!

I was supposed to be out of the old place by the 15th, so I was all set to move everything on the 14th. Even though it was the middle of the week, these days worked pretty well for me since they're the days I have off from work. By the morning of the 14th, I had everything packed up except the kitchen. What is it about boxing up a kitchen that just so completely sucks?

Oh yeah. That.

And that.


And those.




My moving drama actually started the day before though, on the 13th. You see, I had it all planned, and was set with 3 guys and 2 of their trucks to help me move - awesome! This was going to be a really quick move with me doing very minimal heavy lifting!

Yeah, not so much. On the 13th, I texted one of the guys to confirm the times we set up for the following day, and I get this text back.

"Oh crap. Oh man, I'm so sorry! You see, we were all drinking last night, and well... we're on a road trip. To Houston."

Well isn't that just great? Now, I'm all for drunken impromptu road trips but not when they strand me helpless!

Immediately, I went to facebook to broadcast my problem. Within in an hour I had the husband of a friend ready to help me.

Crisis One averted. I was able to sleep easily that night.

So now it's moving day, and I'm awake at 8 am, determined to have the kitchen packed up before we start moving stuff over at noon, which is when he's supposed to show up with the truck and start moving furniture.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

11:45, I get a text messaging asking if we're still on for moving today. Um, yes. Okay great, he should have the truck in the next hour and should be there by 1:30. Cool, I can handle this. I load my car up with as many boxes as I can cram into it. May as well, right?

2:30, I sent a slightly concerned, but still polite text along the lines of, um, where are you? Oh, he just got the truck, and he has to clean it out and he and his friend should be there within the hour. Right. Well, while I'm waiting, I'm going to just go take this carload of boxes to the apartment and will meet you back here. Sure great, we'll have started loading the truck by then.

3:30, Back at the house and there's no truck. No answer to my text messages either. Concern becomes panic, and I start texting other friends (Sorry Amanda!) and bitching and complaining about how my stuff is never getting moved. In the meantime, the cable/Internet people call me and are all, "where are you, we're here to set up your service."

Oh hell no! My installation was scheduled a week prior, and for the very specific hours of between 5 and 7 pm, with the phone people coming the following morning. Now, this is a future post, but I do not do well with service calls. Ever. And I feel bad for any service rep who gets me on the phone if I've not had a good experience with their people. So when the guy tells me he's there now and if I'm not there in 10 minutes, they're going to reschedule my installation and it will be the following week, I lost it. I packed the car up again with a million boxes and headed back to the new apartment, because let's face it - a girl needs her Internet and cable when she's all along in a new place for the first night!

So the installation gets done, I unpack my second round of stuff, and get back to my house at 445 and guess what? THERE'S STILL NO ONE THERE! So I did what I had to do.

I texted my friend's wife. Oh yeah, I went there. He wasn't answering my texts so I went to the wife and made her track him down.

5:30, Still no one at my house, and now I'm in the predicament where everything I own EXCEPT the furniture is at the new place, and the furniture is at the old place, so if no one shows up at all, I can't really stay at either! So I begin making new plans, and enlist another friend to come help me out. (Thanks, M & B!)

6:15, Naturally the minute I finalize plans with the second round of friends, this guy shows up. Sigh. I call my other friends back and call them off, but thank them profusely, but you know what? Its now SIX HOURS AFTER I was supposed to have been moving stuff, and I'm done being grateful for a friend's help and more pissed off than anything. Because now, it's dark outside, and the temperature is dropping into the 40s. And I haven't eaten anything all day because I assumed we'd be moving stuff at noon and then was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for this guy to show up so I didn't dare leave for food.

Yeah, I was kind of cranky.

By 10:30, we finally have everything moved into the new place and I know that I should be grateful, I should be thrilled and happy that I had the help. Unfortunately, all I can think of is that it took us 4 hours to move everything, and if we had started at NOON like I wanted, we would have been done by 4, I would have already eaten, and could be sitting in my new living room watching Law and Order: SVU.

I really am ungrateful sometimes. I need to work on that.

11:30, I've eaten, the cats are adjusting, and while I can't figure out how to set my bed up, I've at least made the bed so I have sheets and blankets and pillows to sleep on, and oh-my-god does my entire body ache from carrying 50 million boxes of crap up one flight of stairs (I need to exercise more) and all I want to do is go to bed but I all I can see is this.


And this.


So you know what I did? I turned the lights off, ignored the mess, and dropped into bed.

You would have done the same. And if you wouldn't have, then I'm calling you for my next move.
Thursday rolls around, and its not so bad. I get the last two car loads of crap out of my old house, get things squared away with the landlord and I was free!!! Too bad I had to go straight to work for an 8 hour shift then. Oh yeah, work sucked. I was sore, and I was freezing cold from being out in the rain and 40 degree temps for two days and I was exhausted and stressed that my new place was a wreck and yeah, I just wanted to go home.

Oh, there's another story about my phone installation and how that got jacked up, and it carries over from Thursday to Friday, but like I said, that's another post. :)

Needless to say, I'm up at 8 am Friday morning because the phone people are coming. Nevermind that I got home from work Thursday night at 12:30 and HAD to watch the new Grey's Anatomy before going to bed. I'm a little upset when the phone guy doesn't show up until 10:45 am. Oh yeah. But I didn't stay mad for too long, because it was Friday and that meant my Mom, my sister, and my Grandma were on their way to come see me!

Because, you see, even though I am almost 29 years old, my Mom still feels like she has to come and unpack my things and set my apartment up. Hey, I'm not stupid enough to complain about that! Plus, I had the night off from work, so that made things even happier.

My sister and mom were staying at my place for the weekend, so we got back around 9 that night and right away, my mom starts unpacking things. And dude, she went right for the kitchen. Seriously, first thing she attacked was the last thing I wanted to do! So, she banished me from the room, and within an hour she had turned that mess in the picture above to this.

Me? I was a happy girl.

Even better? I went to work Saturday morning with nothing else done, and came back Sunday night to find this.

And this.

Seriously? Best. Mom. Ever. God, I love her.

So, spurred on by my mom's awesomeness, Saturday night I unpacked all of my clothes, all of my bathroom stuff, and all the other little stuff. The only thing left for me to do is to finish up my second bedroom slash office. The bedroom part is set up, but I haven't unpacked the office type stuff yet... or my books! My bookshelves are lonely! But I didn't have much motivation for it last week, and it wasn't really necessary for living, and so... it will get done this week.

So my feelings on the new apartment thus far? I'm happy with it. It's home... my things, my signature room scents (they're very specific for different rooms because I'm weird like that), and the cats have adjusted well enough that they don't freak out over every little sound. I'm confident this was a wise move for me... already, my stress levels are way down, and I haven't had an anxiety attack yet, so hey... bonus!


Also? Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas is You still makes me unbelievably happy.