Bon Voyage

Today has been a long time coming, plain and simple.

A few months ago I decided it would be supremely cool if, for my 50th birthday (which just happens to fall on St. Patrick's Day,) I went overseas to celebrate actually in Ireland, because really, how many opportunities does one ever get to mark a half-century of life in the land of one's forebears--never mind on the ultimate Irish holiday (well, at least in America)?

The more I thought about it, the more exciting it sounded, particularly because it would offer me a change to go and learn more about my ancestry in the places where it began.  Didn't hurt that I've been hoarding frequent flyer miles for years for just such a trip.  Problem was, as with so much in life, there was always something else coming up to delay my journey.  First I had to wait till my house in Georgia sold.  Then April was crazy.  Then we were moving the girlie to New York for an internship.  Then I was painting all over the house in a desperate frenzy to get it finished and over with.  Then we were moving the girlie back from NY and then into her campus housing, and, and, and.

No doubt all these postponements would have continued indefinitely had I not needed to fit the trip in by mid-September or wait till next year rolled around, which would no longer make it the epic birthday trip it was intended to be.  What I ultimately realized is that you can't just wait till things are perfect...till you're ready.  If we waited till we were ready for something, we'd be waiting till the end of time, whether to have kids, to buy a car or a house, to take up fan dancing or naked Tetris, or to lose that last 20 lbs.  That's just not how life works--at least that's not how it usually works for me. 

So I purchased my ticket and prepared to set off even though I would not have a chance to lose the weight I gained back during the last year of stress and moving and chaos.  I would not have a chance to get back into a regular workout routine to guarantee that I'd have the stamina and energy to do all the walking I'd need to do.  I wouldn't have a chance to get as much prep or planning done in advance as I'd like because of juggling all the girlie's moving (never mind completing my painting).  Honestly, I might as well have been tossing around New Year's resolutions like Mardi Gras beads for all good my excuses were ever going to do in getting me to my goal.   Frankly, sometimes you just have to throw all the fears and concerns out the window and just go for it. 

Now I know what you're going to say--50 seems a little old to be gallivanting off to Europe to find oneself.  Perhaps it is. But it's only been a couple of years since I found my birth mother and so having access to my own genealogy is still a major novelty and one I could spend untold months traipsing around Europe exploring if only I could locate the pot of gold at the end of my St. Patrick's Day rainbow to fund it. But minor details.  Personally, I'm decided to place this little jaunt in the "better late than never" category and run with it.

As a result, I spent the last 48 hours running around like a chihuahua on speed trying to get everything done before flying out this evening.  I must have packed and repacked my carry-on bag 5 times in an effort to pare down my belongings to a more manageable quantity for my 14-day excursion.  No doubt I'll regret some of my choices, but it is what it is.  I was sorry to leave behind the spiffy new camera I got earlier this year, but I just couldn't justify finding room for the large padded bag when half my trip was going to involve spending time in dusty archives where I likely wouldn't be allowed to snap photos anyway.  But I did manage to acquire a small point and shoot camera to augment my iPhone camera as a compromise.  I mean, it's still England.  Pictures are not really optional.

This eyesore is really my own fault for joking that I needed to see a Pope bobblehead before he could visit Philly.

In a rare turn of events, I made it to the airport well ahead of time and even passed through security unmolested, in spite of the metal buttons on my shorts. Still, it's me, and that pretty much guarantees there's going to be a snag somewhere.  This time it was the security and assorted airport staff all insisting that my carry-on would have to be checked (even though it's never been a problem before) because it was 'too fat in front.'  Sigh.  I went over to some seating and yanked out the extra duffel bag I'd prepacked figuring I could rearrange my belongings so I could check the duffel if necessary while keeping the important stuff in my newly-compressed carry-on.  The baggage clerk at Delta told me it would be fine, but still made me shove consolidate my laptop bag inside the duffel so I would only have two items with me in the cabin.  Pre-security still got pissy with me about the bag, but I got the bag through the security scanners just fine and no one at the Delta gate even gave it a second glance.  Suck it, Security!  However, on my way to the gate I noticed the duffel bag was tearing at the strap and that I was likely minutes away from my laptop falling out and crashing to the floor.  Of course. So I went back to the main concourse to locate a replacement.  I found a tote with an obnoxiously large pink flower on it (because that's so my style) for around $50.  Airport extortion as usual, but still vastly preferable to spending a couple hundred bucks fora second carry-on bag.  Because karma has a brutal sense of humor, moments later I passed another shop with a duffel bag I'd originally missed hidden on a shelf for $20 less.  Naturally.  Regardless, the impending crisis was averted, so I guess that's all that really matters.

That can't be good.

Yeah...because I'm such a neon pink Hibiscus kind of girl.

Once at the gate I was held up by my passport, which it took them three tries to verify because I'd already checked in at home.  I can only assume they were going for the 'third time's a charm' motif.  I boarded and spent the next 30 minutes bobbing up and down like a fishing lure while my seatmates, two older ladies, kept needing to get up and dig through their luggage for one thing or another.  No sooner had everyone finally settled than an airline official came over with new tickets and informed the ladies that their seats were being changed to first class (without me!!) so they could keep a mother and child together.  So I got up again.  My fellow passengers were all trying to catch my eye to give me a WTF? look or the inevitable rolled eye.  And when exactly did all the transatlantic planes become so small?  The last time I flew to Europe there was a separate first, business, and coach class with 8 seats deployed across coach.  This plane only had the usual 6 seats across and didn't look big enough to go across the street, much less the ocean.  But I digress.

My new seatmates were a young mother with epic Scary Spice hair (of which I was wildly jealous) and her young daughter who had a cute British accent rendered in the deep, husky voice of an 80-year-old lifelong smoker.  She seemed pretty well-behaved though, so I had no complaints.

We settled in once again, only to be told that instead of leaving 10 minutes early as planned, we were going to be delayed while some potential mechanical problem was checked out...because that's just what you want to hear before spending several hours over an open ocean.  Ultimately it turned out to be nothing; I presume Penny just left her check engine light on again.  We finally took off around 7:15, nearly an hour late, but I was on my way overseas at last, some 6 months after my birthday.  But who cares--let the adventures begin!!

Bon Voyage

Today has been a long time coming, plain and simple.

A few months ago I decided it would be supremely cool if, for my 50th birthday (which just happens to fall on St. Patrick's Day,) I went overseas to celebrate actually in Ireland, because really, how many opportunities does one ever get to mark a half-century of life in the land of one's forebears--never mind on the ultimate Irish holiday (well, at least in America)?

The more I thought about it, the more exciting it sounded, particularly because it would offer me a change to go and learn more about my ancestry in the places where it began.  Didn't hurt that I've been hoarding frequent flyer miles for years for just such a trip.  Problem was, as with so much in life, there was always something else coming up to delay my journey.  First I had to wait till my house in Georgia sold.  Then April was crazy.  Then we were moving the girlie to New York for an internship.  Then I was painting all over the house in a desperate frenzy to get it finished and over with.  Then we were moving the girlie back from NY and then into her campus housing, and, and, and.

No doubt all these postponements would have continued indefinitely had I not needed to fit the trip in by mid-September or wait till next year rolled around, which would no longer make it the epic birthday trip it was intended to be.  What I ultimately realized is that you can't just wait till things are perfect...till you're ready.  If we waited till we were ready for something, we'd be waiting till the end of time, whether to have kids, to buy a car or a house, to take up fan dancing or naked Tetris, or to lose that last 20 lbs.  That's just not how life works--at least that's not how it usually works for me. 

So I purchased my ticket and prepared to set off even though I would not have a chance to lose the weight I gained back during the last year of stress and moving and chaos.  I would not have a chance to get back into a regular workout routine to guarantee that I'd have the stamina and energy to do all the walking I'd need to do.  I wouldn't have a chance to get as much prep or planning done in advance as I'd like because of juggling all the girlie's moving (never mind completing my painting).  Honestly, I might as well have been tossing around New Year's resolutions like Mardi Gras beads for all good my excuses were ever going to do in getting me to my goal.   Frankly, sometimes you just have to throw all the fears and concerns out the window and just go for it. 

Now I know what you're going to say--50 seems a little old to be gallivanting off to Europe to find oneself.  Perhaps it is. But it's only been a couple of years since I found my birth mother and so having access to my own genealogy is still a major novelty and one I could spend untold months traipsing around Europe exploring if only I could locate the pot of gold at the end of my St. Patrick's Day rainbow to fund it. But minor details.  Personally, I'm decided to place this little jaunt in the "better late than never" category and run with it.

As a result, I spent the last 48 hours running around like a chihuahua on speed trying to get everything done before flying out this evening.  I must have packed and repacked my carry-on bag 5 times in an effort to pare down my belongings to a more manageable quantity for my 14-day excursion.  No doubt I'll regret some of my choices, but it is what it is.  I was sorry to leave behind the spiffy new camera I got earlier this year, but I just couldn't justify finding room for the large padded bag when half my trip was going to involve spending time in dusty archives where I likely wouldn't be allowed to snap photos anyway.  But I did manage to acquire a small point and shoot camera to augment my iPhone camera as a compromise.  I mean, it's still England.  Pictures are not really optional.

This eyesore is really my own fault for joking that I needed to see a Pope bobblehead before he could visit Philly.

In a rare turn of events, I made it to the airport well ahead of time and even passed through security unmolested, in spite of the metal buttons on my shorts. Still, it's me, and that pretty much guarantees there's going to be a snag somewhere.  This time it was the security and assorted airport staff all insisting that my carry-on would have to be checked (even though it's never been a problem before) because it was 'too fat in front.'  Sigh.  I went over to some seating and yanked out the extra duffel bag I'd prepacked figuring I could rearrange my belongings so I could check the duffel if necessary while keeping the important stuff in my newly-compressed carry-on.  The baggage clerk at Delta told me it would be fine, but still made me shove consolidate my laptop bag inside the duffel so I would only have two items with me in the cabin.  Pre-security still got pissy with me about the bag, but I got the bag through the security scanners just fine and no one at the Delta gate even gave it a second glance.  Suck it, Security!  However, on my way to the gate I noticed the duffel bag was tearing at the strap and that I was likely minutes away from my laptop falling out and crashing to the floor.  Of course. So I went back to the main concourse to locate a replacement.  I found a tote with an obnoxiously large pink flower on it (because that's so my style) for around $50.  Airport extortion as usual, but still vastly preferable to spending a couple hundred bucks fora second carry-on bag.  Because karma has a brutal sense of humor, moments later I passed another shop with a duffel bag I'd originally missed hidden on a shelf for $20 less.  Naturally.  Regardless, the impending crisis was averted, so I guess that's all that really matters.

That can't be good.

Yeah...because I'm such a neon pink Hibiscus kind of girl.

Once at the gate I was held up by my passport, which it took them three tries to verify because I'd already checked in at home.  I can only assume they were going for the 'third time's a charm' motif.  I boarded and spent the next 30 minutes bobbing up and down like a fishing lure while my seatmates, two older ladies, kept needing to get up and dig through their luggage for one thing or another.  No sooner had everyone finally settled than an airline official came over with new tickets and informed the ladies that their seats were being changed to first class (without me!!) so they could keep a mother and child together.  So I got up again.  My fellow passengers were all trying to catch my eye to give me a WTF? look or the inevitable rolled eye.  And when exactly did all the transatlantic planes become so small?  The last time I flew to Europe there was a separate first, business, and coach class with 8 seats deployed across coach.  This plane only had the usual 6 seats across and didn't look big enough to go across the street, much less the ocean.  But I digress.

My new seatmates were a young mother with epic Scary Spice hair (of which I was wildly jealous) and her young daughter who had a cute British accent rendered in the deep, husky voice of an 80-year-old lifelong smoker.  She seemed pretty well-behaved though, so I had no complaints.

We settled in once again, only to be told that instead of leaving 10 minutes early as planned, we were going to be delayed while some potential mechanical problem was checked out...because that's just what you want to hear before spending several hours over an open ocean.  Ultimately it turned out to be nothing; I presume Penny just left her check engine light on again.  We finally took off around 7:15, nearly an hour late, but I was on my way overseas at last, some 6 months after my birthday.  But who cares--let the adventures begin!!

Moving, Part #2: The House that Crack Built

Any time you move into a new home, unless it is legitimately new--as in new construction--you expect to have to make small repairs here and there.  That's just part of the deal.  Even so, there are inevitably little surprises that greet you along the way, whether things you missed during the inspection or things which just don't get discovered till you're actually living in the new home.  For example, I used to call one of my Tennessee homes the "House of Many Doors" because until I was living in it, I did not realize how many superfluous or poorly-placed doors were ready to bang into each other.  That's also the house that decided to blow a water heater about 10 minutes after the homeowner's warranty expired.  I'm convinced that appliances can sense when that's about to happen and just lie in wait, ready to spontaneously combust at the most inopportune and expensive time possible.  My home in Georgia had much fewer issues since it did happen to be new construction, but even there I soon discovered that the dishwasher opened at a 90° angle to the sink; this meant that I spent the last four years crammed into a one-foot space trying to clean dishes at the sink and then awkwardly twisting myself sideways like a giant dishwasher wedgie to load the dishes.  It's always something.

Oh, look...it's my Tennessee house.  (From Pleated-Jeans.com)

This house has proven to be no different.  Sure, there were the things we knew about going in, like some cracks from the house settling and a dripping faucet, never mind the big things like a major stucco repair and installing a radon system and sump pump (who has a sump without a pump?), all of which were provided for in the settlement.  I still have to arrange for everything to get done, but at least I don't have to pay for it...mostly.  Even so, there are plenty of other interesting things we've had to contend with in the last two months, most of which appear to be largely the result of an overly-ambitious first owner (who was also an HVAC contractor) and a builder who clearly cut corners.  I don't know if the builder was inept or just lazy but between him, the HVAC guy with delusions of grandeur, and the previous owners with the questionable home improvement skills, this house has been a veritable rabbit warren of oddities.

My first discovery, after spending hours scrubbing them down (cleaning appears to have been considered largely optional), was that all the kitchen cabinets are not constructed of wood so much as covered with a weird plastic laminate condom, presumably to protect them from KitchenAIDS.  Unfortunately, said laminate condom is far more effective at attracting every dirt particle in the kitchen like a giant schmutz magnet than in protecting the cabinets from kitchen STDs.  Laminate condoms might have been more successful in the oven, which looks not unlike it was used to bake auto parts.  Or Meth.  (Though Meth might also explain why half the cabinets and/or their doors are not lined up properly and why all of the trim corners were professionally hot-glued on, never mind why the back of one drawer had to be cut out to allow space for the stovetop's power cabling.)  But that's still not as good as the elaborate hood vent built in among the upper cabinets that is exactly the correct height on which to wham yourself repeatedly (as evidenced by the permanent dent now in my forehead) and which is not, in fact, functional.  That's right--I have 3 feet of fake ventilation, complete with a transformer that was never fully wired and so just whines in the distance when you flip its switch.

Just sittin' here, waiting to suck up all your steam.

Psych!!  I'm gonna drop decaying paint in your food instead!

Not wiring things up seems to be a theme in this house, really.  The heating and air systems in the basement look like refugees from a 1940s airplane hangar, complete with several inexplicable ducts that are capped off and lead nowhere.  As a result, we have vents that don't actually vent.  In addition to the faux hood in the kitchen, the vent in the master bathroom is likewise not connected; the room turns into a sauna when anyone showers and leaves humid air hovering upstairs for hours.  I wouldn't be surprised if the other bathroom's vent was likewise disconnected.  Furthermore, the master bath's floor is wired for radiant heating--which was also never hooked up--and there are heat lamps over the sink.  All I can figure is that the bathroom was constructed for someone more accustomed to Equator-esque weather and so was built to wildly over-compensate.

As if all the disjointed wiring and ducting weren't enough, it turns out that the previous owners were apparently very bad at home repairs and tended to solve their household problems by either simply turning off the offending item or camouflaging it rather than taking the time to get it repaired.  Because, you know, calling someone is hard.  When we had the house inspected, for example, we found that one faucet upstairs was turned off; we were told that this was because a grandmother didn't like listening to the water drip.  Okaaaaaay.  So it didn't come as much of a surprise when we later realized the dishwasher's water supply was likewise shut off (something our inspector missed).   I tried to run a load of dishes after turning the water back on.  The dishwasher promptly spewed out water, which then snaked across the floor and down a vent leading into the basement.  Whoops.  Turns out the dishwasher was missing a simple hose--that's it.  But I guess it was just easier to turn it off than to actually fix it.

Looks like some of my ductwork.

There are other problems, of course.  A garage door opener is missing.  Someone hacked up the baseboards to install a gas fireplace upstairs.  Whoever put up the ventilated shelves in my closet used approximately 568 hooks to secure them because you can never have enough shelf security, particularly when the pull-down attic stairs--which are inexplicably placed in said closet--had to have an opening gouged into the door to keep it from smacking into the shelves.  The basement has outlet boxes dangling awkwardly from the ceilings, making electricians everywhere cringe without quite knowing why.  There are cheap cabinets randomly hung on the middle of the garage wall, guaranteeing that no one can get into the car without first tightly duct-taping all their wobbly bits or dusting a swath down the side of the car with their posterior.  Most of the window blinds are hung so precariously that they look like they're seconds away from making a prison break.  The molding along the stairwell is strangely mismatched; either that or the builder was trying to interpret the steps "artistically."  Nor is the back patio entirely level, which we discovered when the grill decided to go walkies in a storm and pitch headfirst into the yard.  And, just to keep things interesting, the power goes out in the whole neighborhood nearly every time it rains.

Okay, now you're not even trying.

We have additional repairs to make and will no doubt uncover yet more WTFs as time goes on.  Fortunately, however, we are pretty good at DIY, and many of the issues here are primarily cosmetic.  The house itself has good bones, so once the stucco has been repaired and the place has been given a little TLC things should improve considerably, busybody neighbors dropping by to regale us with all the neighborhood gossip and uttering creepy things like "I've been in your house...I know what you have in there" notwithstanding.

Besides, any time I get discouraged, I can console myself with the fact that at least I have not had pipes stolen nor had poop water pouring into my lighting fixtures as has a friend recently who moved into a rental house.  While I'm not sure I be handling her situation as gracefully or as positively as my friend has, her unfortunate house struggles definitely put things here into perspective.  My plumbing (as well as many other things) may well need an overhaul at some point, but at least it's intact and not currently raining literal crap in my home.  By comparison, everything else seems small potatoes.

(From CollegeHumor.com)

Moving, Part #2: The House that Crack Built

Any time you move into a new home, unless it is legitimately new--as in new construction--you expect to have to make small repairs here and there.  That's just part of the deal.  Even so, there are inevitably little surprises that greet you along the way, whether things you missed during the inspection or things which just don't get discovered till you're actually living in the new home.  For example, I used to call one of my Tennessee homes the "House of Many Doors" because until I was living in it, I did not realize how many superfluous or poorly-placed doors were ready to bang into each other.  That's also the house that decided to blow a water heater about 10 minutes after the homeowner's warranty expired.  I'm convinced that appliances can sense when that's about to happen and just lie in wait, ready to spontaneously combust at the most inopportune and expensive time possible.  My home in Georgia had much fewer issues since it did happen to be new construction, but even there I soon discovered that the dishwasher opened at a 90° angle to the sink; this meant that I spent the last four years crammed into a one-foot space trying to clean dishes at the sink and then awkwardly twisting myself sideways like a giant dishwasher wedgie to load the dishes.  It's always something.

Oh, look...it's my Tennessee house.  (From Pleated-Jeans.com)

This house has proven to be no different.  Sure, there were the things we knew about going in, like some cracks from the house settling and a dripping faucet, never mind the big things like a major stucco repair and installing a radon system and sump pump (who has a sump without a pump?), all of which were provided for in the settlement.  I still have to arrange for everything to get done, but at least I don't have to pay for it...mostly.  Even so, there are plenty of other interesting things we've had to contend with in the last two months, most of which appear to be largely the result of an overly-ambitious first owner (who was also an HVAC contractor) and a builder who clearly cut corners.  I don't know if the builder was inept or just lazy but between him, the HVAC guy with delusions of grandeur, and the previous owners with the questionable home improvement skills, this house has been a veritable rabbit warren of oddities.

My first discovery, after spending hours scrubbing them down (cleaning appears to have been considered largely optional), was that all the kitchen cabinets are not constructed of wood so much as covered with a weird plastic laminate condom, presumably to protect them from KitchenAIDS.  Unfortunately, said laminate condom is far more effective at attracting every dirt particle in the kitchen like a giant schmutz magnet than in protecting the cabinets from kitchen STDs.  Laminate condoms might have been more successful in the oven, which looks not unlike it was used to bake auto parts.  Or Meth.  (Though Meth might also explain why half the cabinets and/or their doors are not lined up properly and why all of the trim corners were professionally hot-glued on, never mind why the back of one drawer had to be cut out to allow space for the stovetop's power cabling.)  But that's still not as good as the elaborate hood vent built in among the upper cabinets that is exactly the correct height on which to wham yourself repeatedly (as evidenced by the permanent dent now in my forehead) and which is not, in fact, functional.  That's right--I have 3 feet of fake ventilation, complete with a transformer that was never fully wired and so just whines in the distance when you flip its switch.

Just sittin' here, waiting to suck up all your steam.

Psych!!  I'm gonna drop decaying paint in your food instead!

Not wiring things up seems to be a theme in this house, really.  The heating and air systems in the basement look like refugees from a 1940s airplane hangar, complete with several inexplicable ducts that are capped off and lead nowhere.  As a result, we have vents that don't actually vent.  In addition to the faux hood in the kitchen, the vent in the master bathroom is likewise not connected; the room turns into a sauna when anyone showers and leaves humid air hovering upstairs for hours.  I wouldn't be surprised if the other bathroom's vent was likewise disconnected.  Furthermore, the master bath's floor is wired for radiant heating--which was also never hooked up--and there are heat lamps over the sink.  All I can figure is that the bathroom was constructed for someone more accustomed to Equator-esque weather and so was built to wildly over-compensate.

As if all the disjointed wiring and ducting weren't enough, it turns out that the previous owners were apparently very bad at home repairs and tended to solve their household problems by either simply turning off the offending item or camouflaging it rather than taking the time to get it repaired.  Because, you know, calling someone is hard.  When we had the house inspected, for example, we found that one faucet upstairs was turned off; we were told that this was because a grandmother didn't like listening to the water drip.  Okaaaaaay.  So it didn't come as much of a surprise when we later realized the dishwasher's water supply was likewise shut off (something our inspector missed).   I tried to run a load of dishes after turning the water back on.  The dishwasher promptly spewed out water, which then snaked across the floor and down a vent leading into the basement.  Whoops.  Turns out the dishwasher was missing a simple hose--that's it.  But I guess it was just easier to turn it off than to actually fix it.

Looks like some of my ductwork.

There are other problems, of course.  A garage door opener is missing.  Someone hacked up the baseboards to install a gas fireplace upstairs.  Whoever put up the ventilated shelves in my closet used approximately 568 hooks to secure them because you can never have enough shelf security, particularly when the pull-down attic stairs--which are inexplicably placed in said closet--had to have an opening gouged into the door to keep it from smacking into the shelves.  The basement has outlet boxes dangling awkwardly from the ceilings, making electricians everywhere cringe without quite knowing why.  There are cheap cabinets randomly hung on the middle of the garage wall, guaranteeing that no one can get into the car without first tightly duct-taping all their wobbly bits or dusting a swath down the side of the car with their posterior.  Most of the window blinds are hung so precariously that they look like they're seconds away from making a prison break.  The molding along the stairwell is strangely mismatched; either that or the builder was trying to interpret the steps "artistically."  Nor is the back patio entirely level, which we discovered when the grill decided to go walkies in a storm and pitch headfirst into the yard.  And, just to keep things interesting, the power goes out in the whole neighborhood nearly every time it rains.

Okay, now you're not even trying.

We have additional repairs to make and will no doubt uncover yet more WTFs as time goes on.  Fortunately, however, we are pretty good at DIY, and many of the issues here are primarily cosmetic.  The house itself has good bones, so once the stucco has been repaired and the place has been given a little TLC things should improve considerably, busybody neighbors dropping by to regale us with all the neighborhood gossip and uttering creepy things like "I've been in your house...I know what you have in there" notwithstanding.

Besides, any time I get discouraged, I can console myself with the fact that at least I have not had pipes stolen nor had poop water pouring into my lighting fixtures as has a friend recently who moved into a rental house.  While I'm not sure I be handling her situation as gracefully or as positively as my friend has, her unfortunate house struggles definitely put things here into perspective.  My plumbing (as well as many other things) may well need an overhaul at some point, but at least it's intact and not currently raining literal crap in my home.  By comparison, everything else seems small potatoes.

(From CollegeHumor.com)

Moving, Part 1: The Relocation Blues

A month or so ago I was browsing in a bookstore (one of the two main places I cannot be trusted with a credit card, the other being a fabric/craft shop) when I ran across the following quote:  "Moving is the second worst thing in the world...the first is ethnic cleansing."  While perhaps a bit overstated, I generally agree with the sentiment and am glad to have largely survived my most recent cross-country relocation extravaganza.

Wouldn't this be so much easier?

Even in the best of circumstances, moving is never fun.  Oh, sure, it's exciting at first when you're fantasizing about how best to rearrange your furniture in a new place.  Then you arrive and discover all the dubious things that need repairing because you were too busy evaluating those 30 houses in three days for overall structure to notice all the little dings and dents and scuffs and dirt and questionable constructions.  And that doesn't even take into account the actual moving process, which starts with the oh-so-careful labeling of boxes in exquisite detail and which rapidly devolves into a mad free-for-all of throwing completely unrelated items into the same boxes and labeling them all "Misc" just so you can finish before the movers arrive, guaranteeing that you will spend the next several months fruitlessly trying to find your favorite spaghetti fork till you eventually give up and purchase another one--only to discover the original one packed inexplicably in a box of Christmas lights the following December.  And that's assuming that the move goes smoothly.

In our case, I think, "smooth" is a relative term.  The moving crew arrived to load us up early on a Friday morning.  They were all very young and polite and moved with such alacrity that they had half our stuff in trucks before noon.  Because we were still frantically throwing things in boxes, I wasn't able to supervise everything as it was leaving my home.  That should have been my first red flag.  Eventually we ran out of boxes and so the movers just started taking loose items as they were and lumping them in with other stuff.  Once loaded up, they drove off into the sunset with all our belongings to await transport.

We stayed in the Georgia house that night, intending to thoroughly clean it and do all the paint touchups in an (admittedly over-ambitious) attempt to save money, but we were all so exhausted that it just didn't happen and I had to admit defeat to the realtor and let him hire a cleaning crew behind us.  The next day we loaded up our cars (late) and began the lengthy drive to New Jersey.  We ended up having to leave a few mostly irrelevant things behind in the garage because we simply couldn't get them all in our vehicles; as it was, the Spousal Unit's little sports car look disturbingly like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck on the way to California.

After innumerable pit stops for the dog and/or the child, I finally pulled safely into my New Jersey driveway around 3 or 4 am after mainlining Pepsi non-stop and with no small thanks to the girlie for staying up chatting all night to help me keep awake.  Twenty minutes later I was out on the road again to locate the wayward Spousal Unit and lead his GPS-less car to the house.  We all finally got to bed around 6 am Sunday, just as the day was well and truly dawning.  I know that's when I always like to go to sleep.

Caffeine drip.

 The movers arrived bright and early the next morning with all our belongings in tow.  They whipped through unloading at warp speed and were on their way barely 5 hours later, but not before treating me some prime mover porn as they basically performed a bucket brigade with our boxes, so I got to watch the rippling muscles of a bunch of attractive 25-year-olds.  Try not to be jealous.

This is when they weren't flinging boxes at each other.

My new boyfriend (he just doesn't know it yet).

As the morning progressed, it didn't take long for me to discover why the movers were so speedy all the time...in their youthful zeal to get the job done quickly, they weren't as careful as they might have been in stacking boxes, causing several to split or tear.  One even had a gash torn across the side, which mercifully occurred about an inch and a half above the printer housed inside.

In addition to my many now-crunched boxes, several small storage carts/units were damaged in one way or another (one is missing two wheels, for example, and hovering precariously in the sewing room like the Leaning Tower of Sewing Equipment).  At one point I went upstairs to discover a dresser lying on the floor of my new bedroom and one of the movers attempting to glue back together one of the three feet that had come off.  Shelving units from my office were unnecessarily dismantled in Georgia and left swaying in my office here (they're still a bit on the wonky side, even reassembled). My desk was significantly damaged as well and had to be repaired so it would, you know, not fall over.  Admittedly, most of my furniture is of the super-fancy kind that requires lock-screws, multiple tools, and extensive swearing to assemble, but it's still mine and I still prefer it in one piece.  Furniture which was originally dark now has white streaks on it, and things which were white now have dark smears.  My refrigerator's freezer drawer was disassembled to make it fit through the door, but then returned to me coated in a fine black dust.   Yesterday I spent several minutes picking up straight pins and buttons from my driveway, presumably fallen from a broken box.  Perhaps the coup de grace, though, was the Unit's completely trashed work cabinet, which appears to have resulted from the movers setting heavy boxes on top of said cabinet, the removable countertop of which had been taken off for some reason.  Needless to say, the heavy boxes shifted in transit and slammed into the exposed drawers and fell right on through to the bottom of the cabinet.  Well done, movers...well done.  Ironically, all our fragile items seem so far to have come through just fine, so clearly the movers are able to take extra care when needed.  Apparently they just didn't feel the need for everything else.

Whoops.

Ultimately I don't think the guys were deliberately careless; I just think they were very young and perhaps overly enthusiastic.  And it will be a while before I know if anything in the many smushed or torn boxes is damaged.  Still, I'm keeping track of the carnage as we unpack and taking pictures for a claim down the road.

Damaged or not, it still feels much more like home with all of our stuff here, even if half of it is still buried in a cardboard jungle creeping through all of the rooms like the ubiquitous Kudzu we just left behind.  Eventually everything will get unpacked, but in the meantime I will dive back into the cardboard chaos with my trusty machete in hand (and by 'machete,' I mean 'box cutter'), and chanting the mantra of unpackers the world over:  "It's around here somewhere..."

If you don't hear from me in a week, send out a search party.  With cookies.

Moving, Part 1: The Relocation Blues

A month or so ago I was browsing in a bookstore (one of the two main places I cannot be trusted with a credit card, the other being a fabric/craft shop) when I ran across the following quote:  "Moving is the second worst thing in the world...the first is ethnic cleansing."  While perhaps a bit overstated, I generally agree with the sentiment and am glad to have largely survived my most recent cross-country relocation extravaganza.

Wouldn't this be so much easier?

Even in the best of circumstances, moving is never fun.  Oh, sure, it's exciting at first when you're fantasizing about how best to rearrange your furniture in a new place.  Then you arrive and discover all the dubious things that need repairing because you were too busy evaluating those 30 houses in three days for overall structure to notice all the little dings and dents and scuffs and dirt and questionable constructions.  And that doesn't even take into account the actual moving process, which starts with the oh-so-careful labeling of boxes in exquisite detail and which rapidly devolves into a mad free-for-all of throwing completely unrelated items into the same boxes and labeling them all "Misc" just so you can finish before the movers arrive, guaranteeing that you will spend the next several months fruitlessly trying to find your favorite spaghetti fork till you eventually give up and purchase another one--only to discover the original one packed inexplicably in a box of Christmas lights the following December.  And that's assuming that the move goes smoothly.

In our case, I think, "smooth" is a relative term.  The moving crew arrived to load us up early on a Friday morning.  They were all very young and polite and moved with such alacrity that they had half our stuff in trucks before noon.  Because we were still frantically throwing things in boxes, I wasn't able to supervise everything as it was leaving my home.  That should have been my first red flag.  Eventually we ran out of boxes and so the movers just started taking loose items as they were and lumping them in with other stuff.  Once loaded up, they drove off into the sunset with all our belongings to await transport.

We stayed in the Georgia house that night, intending to thoroughly clean it and do all the paint touchups in an (admittedly over-ambitious) attempt to save money, but we were all so exhausted that it just didn't happen and I had to admit defeat to the realtor and let him hire a cleaning crew behind us.  The next day we loaded up our cars (late) and began the lengthy drive to New Jersey.  We ended up having to leave a few mostly irrelevant things behind in the garage because we simply couldn't get them all in our vehicles; as it was, the Spousal Unit's little sports car look disturbingly like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck on the way to California.

After innumerable pit stops for the dog and/or the child, I finally pulled safely into my New Jersey driveway around 3 or 4 am after mainlining Pepsi non-stop and with no small thanks to the girlie for staying up chatting all night to help me keep awake.  Twenty minutes later I was out on the road again to locate the wayward Spousal Unit and lead his GPS-less car to the house.  We all finally got to bed around 6 am Sunday, just as the day was well and truly dawning.  I know that's when I always like to go to sleep.

Caffeine drip.

 The movers arrived bright and early the next morning with all our belongings in tow.  They whipped through unloading at warp speed and were on their way barely 5 hours later, but not before treating me some prime mover porn as they basically performed a bucket brigade with our boxes, so I got to watch the rippling muscles of a bunch of attractive 25-year-olds.  Try not to be jealous.

This is when they weren't flinging boxes at each other.

My new boyfriend (he just doesn't know it yet).

As the morning progressed, it didn't take long for me to discover why the movers were so speedy all the time...in their youthful zeal to get the job done quickly, they weren't as careful as they might have been in stacking boxes, causing several to split or tear.  One even had a gash torn across the side, which mercifully occurred about an inch and a half above the printer housed inside.

In addition to my many now-crunched boxes, several small storage carts/units were damaged in one way or another (one is missing two wheels, for example, and hovering precariously in the sewing room like the Leaning Tower of Sewing Equipment).  At one point I went upstairs to discover a dresser lying on the floor of my new bedroom and one of the movers attempting to glue back together one of the three feet that had come off.  Shelving units from my office were unnecessarily dismantled in Georgia and left swaying in my office here (they're still a bit on the wonky side, even reassembled). My desk was significantly damaged as well and had to be repaired so it would, you know, not fall over.  Admittedly, most of my furniture is of the super-fancy kind that requires lock-screws, multiple tools, and extensive swearing to assemble, but it's still mine and I still prefer it in one piece.  Furniture which was originally dark now has white streaks on it, and things which were white now have dark smears.  My refrigerator's freezer drawer was disassembled to make it fit through the door, but then returned to me coated in a fine black dust.   Yesterday I spent several minutes picking up straight pins and buttons from my driveway, presumably fallen from a broken box.  Perhaps the coup de grace, though, was the Unit's completely trashed work cabinet, which appears to have resulted from the movers setting heavy boxes on top of said cabinet, the removable countertop of which had been taken off for some reason.  Needless to say, the heavy boxes shifted in transit and slammed into the exposed drawers and fell right on through to the bottom of the cabinet.  Well done, movers...well done.  Ironically, all our fragile items seem so far to have come through just fine, so clearly the movers are able to take extra care when needed.  Apparently they just didn't feel the need for everything else.

Whoops.

Ultimately I don't think the guys were deliberately careless; I just think they were very young and perhaps overly enthusiastic.  And it will be a while before I know if anything in the many smushed or torn boxes is damaged.  Still, I'm keeping track of the carnage as we unpack and taking pictures for a claim down the road.

Damaged or not, it still feels much more like home with all of our stuff here, even if half of it is still buried in a cardboard jungle creeping through all of the rooms like the ubiquitous Kudzu we just left behind.  Eventually everything will get unpacked, but in the meantime I will dive back into the cardboard chaos with my trusty machete in hand (and by 'machete,' I mean 'box cutter'), and chanting the mantra of unpackers the world over:  "It's around here somewhere..."

If you don't hear from me in a week, send out a search party.  With cookies.

Dormageddon

Yesterday, yet again, we helped the girlie move into her dorm for the coming year.  But this isn't just any year, this will be her SENIOR year.  I find this concept baffling since I'm pretty sure that she was a high school senior only 10 minutes or so ago.  I mean, I know I'm not getting any older, so how can she be?  It's a mystery.

After arriving in town Friday evening and grabbing some dinner we drove out to a friend's house to reclaim her car, which he had been watching over while she was home for the month of August.  What exactly he was watching it do I can't say, though I like to think he used it to herd his alpacas around their pen in lieu of a more compact and furry 4-footed herding companion.  After all, even a poor little Saturn should be allowed to dream big.

Saturday morning we went to collect the girlie's room key, went to the storage unit to load up our rental minivan (Stow and Go seats, you rock my world) and headed back to the dorm to unload.  Because the girlie's roommate is of the awesome, she stashed one of the giant orange utility carts littered around the campus in the suite for us after moving herself in earlier in the week.  This was quite the boon since those carts tend to be hard to get on move-in and move-out days.

I'm pretty sure that cart has a pig snout.

We loaded up the first cart and started to take it upstairs, only to discover a magically deserted second cart with which I promptly absconded.  Thus began what amounted to a move-in bucket brigade, with the hubs and the girlie taking one cart and unloading it upstairs while I loaded up the second cart at the car, then swapping them out and starting all over again.  At one point during the proceedings, a couple of German students who were standing outside having a smoke bemusedly watched me loading up carts.  Halfway through my second cart, they finally commented that my student had "packed the entire house."  While not expressly true in and of itself, her collection of SCA accoutrements over the last three years has nearly doubled the paraphernalia housed in her room.  When I was nearly done loading, one of the boys did ask if I needed any assistance, by which point I obviously didn't.  So much for chivalry.

Because we couldn't get everything from storage into the van in one go (yay, armor!), we once again hid the orange cart in the suite, released the second, and took a lunch break with the girlie and her roommate.  Then it was back to storage with a quick trip to Target on the side.

One trip to Lowe's, two to storage, three to Target and 4 orange carts of chattel later (never mind the 6 packs of bubble-wrapped books we took on the plane), we finally got the girlie moved in for her senior year.  The first Target trip was for standard cleaning/restocking sorts of supplies.  The second was for a curtain rod for her closet and a pack of underpants because she couldn't find any clean ones, having not had time to wash her Pennsic clothes before flying home.  The third trip was to return the curtain rod (which turned out to be the wrong size) and to exchange said underwear for the correct style.  I should have gotten a picture of the underpants and curtain rod for my collection of awkward shopping photos, but didn't.  I did get this one, though.

"Brain bleach on Aisle 6..."

The truly sad part was discovering today at the airport that I still had a Target gift card in my wallet, which somehow got missed on ALL THREE of the Target runs yesterday.  Clearly I need to staple it to my shirt or something because I'm pretty sure this is about the 10th trip I've made to a Target since receiving the card and I still haven't managed to use the blasted thing.  Ah, well...one of these days I'll finally achieve the elusive bullseye.

We spent the rest of the evening nomming pizza and catching the end of the recent Les Misérables movie.  Frankly, I still can't take Russell Crowe remotely seriously in the role of Javert; you'd think he'd be good at that sort of character but his clear preoccupation with getting the singing right (which he didn't, considering he sounded most of the time like he had a serious sinus infection or possibly a dirty sock wedged down his esophagus) rendered him virtually incapable of any acting barring the odd scene or two (when he notably was not singing).  On the plus side, when all the deceased characters came back at the end to sing the finale, I got to watch the hubs nearly spew soda up his nose when I casually commented "I see dead people."  So it was all good.

In spite of the approximately 900 trips around town, move-in went relatively smoothly though I find it difficult to believe that the next time we schlepp the girlie's possessions, it will likely be to take them off to her grad school residence.

Time really needs to stop flying past so quickly.

Dormageddon

Yesterday, yet again, we helped the girlie move into her dorm for the coming year.  But this isn't just any year, this will be her SENIOR year.  I find this concept baffling since I'm pretty sure that she was a high school senior only 10 minutes or so ago.  I mean, I know I'm not getting any older, so how can she be?  It's a mystery.

After arriving in town Friday evening and grabbing some dinner we drove out to a friend's house to reclaim her car, which he had been watching over while she was home for the month of August.  What exactly he was watching it do I can't say, though I like to think he used it to herd his alpacas around their pen in lieu of a more compact and furry 4-footed herding companion.  After all, even a poor little Saturn should be allowed to dream big.

Saturday morning we went to collect the girlie's room key, went to the storage unit to load up our rental minivan (Stow and Go seats, you rock my world) and headed back to the dorm to unload.  Because the girlie's roommate is of the awesome, she stashed one of the giant orange utility carts littered around the campus in the suite for us after moving herself in earlier in the week.  This was quite the boon since those carts tend to be hard to get on move-in and move-out days.

I'm pretty sure that cart has a pig snout.

We loaded up the first cart and started to take it upstairs, only to discover a magically deserted second cart with which I promptly absconded.  Thus began what amounted to a move-in bucket brigade, with the hubs and the girlie taking one cart and unloading it upstairs while I loaded up the second cart at the car, then swapping them out and starting all over again.  At one point during the proceedings, a couple of German students who were standing outside having a smoke bemusedly watched me loading up carts.  Halfway through my second cart, they finally commented that my student had "packed the entire house."  While not expressly true in and of itself, her collection of SCA accoutrements over the last three years has nearly doubled the paraphernalia housed in her room.  When I was nearly done loading, one of the boys did ask if I needed any assistance, by which point I obviously didn't.  So much for chivalry.

Because we couldn't get everything from storage into the van in one go (yay, armor!), we once again hid the orange cart in the suite, released the second, and took a lunch break with the girlie and her roommate.  Then it was back to storage with a quick trip to Target on the side.

One trip to Lowe's, two to storage, three to Target and 4 orange carts of chattel later (never mind the 6 packs of bubble-wrapped books we took on the plane), we finally got the girlie moved in for her senior year.  The first Target trip was for standard cleaning/restocking sorts of supplies.  The second was for a curtain rod for her closet and a pack of underpants because she couldn't find any clean ones, having not had time to wash her Pennsic clothes before flying home.  The third trip was to return the curtain rod (which turned out to be the wrong size) and to exchange said underwear for the correct style.  I should have gotten a picture of the underpants and curtain rod for my collection of awkward shopping photos, but didn't.  I did get this one, though.

"Brain bleach on Aisle 6..."

The truly sad part was discovering today at the airport that I still had a Target gift card in my wallet, which somehow got missed on ALL THREE of the Target runs yesterday.  Clearly I need to staple it to my shirt or something because I'm pretty sure this is about the 10th trip I've made to a Target since receiving the card and I still haven't managed to use the blasted thing.  Ah, well...one of these days I'll finally achieve the elusive bullseye.

We spent the rest of the evening nomming pizza and catching the end of the recent Les Misérables movie.  Frankly, I still can't take Russell Crowe remotely seriously in the role of Javert; you'd think he'd be good at that sort of character but his clear preoccupation with getting the singing right (which he didn't, considering he sounded most of the time like he had a serious sinus infection or possibly a dirty sock wedged down his esophagus) rendered him virtually incapable of any acting barring the odd scene or two (when he notably was not singing).  On the plus side, when all the deceased characters came back at the end to sing the finale, I got to watch the hubs nearly spew soda up his nose when I casually commented "I see dead people."  So it was all good.

In spite of the approximately 900 trips around town, move-in went relatively smoothly though I find it difficult to believe that the next time we schlepp the girlie's possessions, it will likely be to take them off to her grad school residence.

Time really needs to stop flying past so quickly.