Well, so much for a timely update on my life. Heh.
I am officially a Georgia peach. Well, I live in Georgia anyway. Although everything about finding a job and an apartment and making all the decisions to change my life went without a hitch and seemed to be the smoothest transition in the history of all transitions, the move was a bear.
A big, hairy, mean bear!
The end of school came so quickly this year. In the back of my head was always the thought that not only would I have to move my house, but I’d be packing up my classroom, too. Well, I did. Being the ultra-organized person that I am I started my packing during the last week of school. See how organized I can be! Heh.
My mom was flying in on the last day of school so I wanted to be mostly done with the classroom before she arrived. Of course, that didn’t happen. I did have a big portion done, though! On the advice of a colleague I labeled each box and listed the contents on a piece of paper. Very organized! All my school boxes were “A1, A2, A3, etc.” I created a Word document that made a form for me to list each box’s contents. My mom was impressed. She was in Heaven as we finished the classroom. There were times when I just wanted to put “miscellaneous” or something, but she was sure to be careful about listing. (I’m glad she did, too! It made things later much simpler.)
As I was moving my stuff out, Patsy was moving her stuff in. It had been decided earlier that she would take my room for next year. She asked me if it would make me feel uncomfortable if she did start moving things in, and I said that it wouldn’t. I know that she’s the type of person that needs to get things done promptly, and there was another teacher wanting to move into her room already, kind of pushing her out. I really didn’t mind. (It was kind of disheartening to think that I had worked so hard to get things packed and to look at the class and see things up on the walls and over the chalkboard, etc. No, it wasn’t my stuff, but it made me feel less successful in getting things done! Heh.) It really wasn’t a problem for me to see her moving in on “my territory”. I’m glad that it wasn’t.
Once we got everything out of the room and all of the boxes were labeled and accounted for, there were about fifty boxes of school stuff. Fifty. Imagine if I had been teaching for more than five years! (Later my dad would harass me greatly for having so many boxes. Being the calm, levelheaded person that I am I just told him to hush.)
Over the next seven days, Mom and I packed up my house. She is such a trooper! I can’t imagine packing without her help. I’m so glad that she was able to come out and be with me. She kept us on track with the organizational list, and we were able to get everything done by the morning that the movers would be coming. Barely.
For the long, detailed, painful story about the move, read here, if you are so inclined. ;-)
On this page, I will give the short version!
1. After two days of my movers delaying the job and giving me the run-around on the phone, they cancelled the job. Yeah. Nice. I then had to call around trying to find another moving company, which I couldn’t because it was too short a notice—end of the month and the busiest moving month of the year. We finally rented a 15-foot truck, and with the help of the custodians at school, got the truck loaded . . . to the gill. With Patsy’s help, we got the house cleaned finally and all the give-away stuff (tons and tons) categorized for tax purposes.
2. Patsy drove me around for a couple of days while my car was being serviced. Although it’s very frustrating to be dependent on another person like that, she was wonderful and very generous with her time and vehicle. My car’s problem was never resolved and instead of having one vibrating rattle in the dash, I have three. Yeah. Nice.
3. I flew Dad out to help drive the truck. I’m so glad that he was there because three hours into the drive, my car’s tire blew. Fortunately it happened close to a town, and there was a tire repair place right off the interstate. They charged $10 to fix it. Thank the good Lord! It was very good to have my dad there to change the tire—in 120-degree heat!
4. The second night of driving my mom and I wanted to drive another half an hour or so. My dad, being a passive-aggressive person, forged onward for hours . . . into the late night . . . nearly killing my mother and me. We then, at 1 A.M. had problems finding a hotel because of some biker rally thing. We ended up in a dive. My mom drove my car over a big bump and the bottom of the car scraped horribly. My car my never be the same. (To her defense, the bump was part of the entrance to the back lot of the hotel. It was horrible, and they really need to get that fixed!) Apparently one half of the marked bump can be driven over very carefully, while the other half is like a big curb. Mom was furious at Dad and much tension was in the air!
5. The next day was a good day. I started to drive, falling very tired a couple of hours into the trip. After slightly nodding here and there, I woke up and was fine for the rest of the day. Dad got tired halfway into the day and Mom drove the truck. So Lucky, who had been riding with Dad the whole time in the truck) and I drove the rest of the day together. We forged onward. I drove the rest of the day. All day. I’m such a bad long-distance driver. I’m surprised that I made it the whole day. My sisters were on their way and meeting us at a hotel in the city of our destination. We forged onward. Although we got in very late, we made it! Of course, we crossed two time zones the last day of travel, which made our arrival time even later. My sisters were asleep in their hotel room, and Mom and Dad and I woke them up. Heh. Roslyn wasn’t pleased and went back to sleep while Tonya woke up and talked with us for a bit. It ended up being the same hotel that I stayed in when I was out for the interviews! Heh.
6. The next day we drove to my apartment and moved in. My family is very happy with where I am living and really like my apartment. I did well, they say. We got everything in and the living room, bedroom, and kitchen set up for the most part. It was good to have all the help. I couldn’t get in touch with anyone at school, so instead of taking all my school stuff directly to the school, we brought it in a couple of days later. Unfortunately, there were terrential rains the next day and some of my school stuff was water damaged. Darn. Oh well.
7. Dad hooked up the washer and dryer that my sisters brought down in Roslyn’s truck. He then loaded my refrigerator on her truck to take back to their house. It’s going to my parents. They’ve needed a new fridge for a long time, and I don’t need one now because it’s provided in the apartment. It all works out. He left a day earlier than we because he had to get ready for a gig. He’s a guitarist and was hired to play on the Circus Train that goes through Wisconsin at this time of the year. He drove Roslyn’s truck home and hit a deer only hours from the Wisconsin border. Argh. I guess it’s about $3400 worth of damage to the truck. Well, Roslyn took it very well. Insurance is a very good thing. The thing about deer is that there’s so little that you can do. When the run out in front of you, there’s little time to react or anything that you can do if you’re able to react.
8. Mom, Tonya, Rosyln, Lucky, and I climbed in my little Honda Civic and drove home. Lucky laid in-between the two passengers in the back seat, whoever they were at any given time. I drove for about an hour or so before I had to ask someone else to drive. I tell ya, I was tired. There’s no way I’m going to drive when I’m falling asleep on the road. Roslyn drove from there. After a couple of hours we stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. I had told my sisters, who had brought several books on tape, that you could buy books on tape and cd at Cracker Barrel and return them at another location for most of your money back. I don’t have a tape player in my car, so their tapes were not usable. We stopped and got some books on cd. The one we listened to was The Summons by John Grisham. It took the entire remainder of the trip. It was long. It was boring. And it had a bad ending! Argh. We were driving on July 3rd, and we hit some major traffic in Chicago. It took us an hour and a half to travel twelve miles. Yikes! We got home very late, and we were all pretty ornery and tired. When we got into town, Dad was supposed to meet us at the Jaguar place where we would pick up Mom’s Jag. Instead, Dad had taken Roslyn’s son to her house. So, we had to pack Rose back up (because she thought Dad would be there with her truck) and drive to her house. Mom was not pleased. We picked Dad up, dropped Ros off, took Mom and Dad to the Jag place, and Tonya and I went home. It was another long day! My hinder hurt from all the driving I had done in the last week. I was ready to rest it for a while. Heh.
9. I stayed in Wisconsin for a little over a week. We had gotten there Thursday evening/Friday morning, and I had wanted to leave the following Wednesday or Thursday. It was nice to be home again. It was a lazy time, although I was doing stuff every day. It rained all but one day that I was home! I’m talking thunderstorms and lightning. Lucky isn’t used to that, so I spent many nights awake, trying to calm him. That was nice. Heh. Rain in Georgia while we were there. (We couldn’t even utilize my pools!) Rain while I’m home in Wisconsin. What’s happening here? I’m a desert girl! Before I left, my brother wanted me to come and visit him. (He’s in prison.) I’m not on his visitor’s list, so I had to get on it. There’s a form to be filled out and then it has to be okayed. We tried to get it done quicker, but it didn’t work out that well. We were told that we’d find out by 3 o’clock on Wednesday. That meant that I wouldn’t go up to visit him until Thursday, which meant that I couldn’t leave for Georgia until Friday. I wanted to visit him, though. We didn’t find out on Wednesday, but were assured that we’d find out on Thursday. We decided to chance it and be on our way when we found out. The prison is about six hours northwest of my parents’ house. Yes, another drive! Right before I’d have to drive thirteen hours to Georgia! Anyway, as we were on our way, we got the okay. I was on Don’s list. We wouldn’t get there until about 6 P.M. We could visit for three hours, which we did. So, we didn’t leave until 9 P.M. It would be another late night. I was very glad to see him, though. It was a really good visit. I don’t remember the last time that I had a true conversation with Don. I love that jerk!
10. I was going to leave the next day for Georgia, but after my parents made me go through a bunch of stuff of mine, it was getting into the afternoon. I had a thirteen-hour drive ahead of me, so I decided to leave on Saturday, early in the morning. I’d avoid rush-hour traffic that way, too. My parents were pleased. I was able to spend a little bit more time with Mom and Dad and later my sister. I left at 6:30 A.M. on Saturday and arrived in Chattanooga at 7 P.M. I called Sandy and we arranged to meet at Olive Garden for dinner. I pulled into the parking lot, put my car in park and all of a sudden the skies opened up and started pouring. POURING rain. I had Lucky and I didn’t want to leave him in the car without any windows opened. (It wasn’t hot, so I knew that he’d be okay in the car, so please don’t send me messages about how it’s pet abuse to leave him in the car!) I opened up the sunroof just a little. I got out of the car, and as soon as I stepped out, I was soaked. Absolutely soaked. I ran through the flooded parking lot into the restaurant. I had a white shirt and capris on. I was a mess by the time I ran through the doors. I went into the bathroom and actually wrung my shirt out. I got some paper towels and dried off as much as I could. I put my name on the waiting list, as Sandy wasn’t there yet. (She ended up being stuck at the bookstore waiting for the rain to clear, it was that bad!) By the time she got there, the rain had stopped, so I went out and got some fresh clothes and changed. The rain had come in through the sunroof and soaked my front passenger seat. Oh well. Later I found out that the sliding door thingy for my sunroof is also a little in need of repair because of the rain. Oops. Heh. Dinner was nice. I don’t get to talk to Sandy that often, so it was nice to be able to do that. She’s the coolest, and I adore her immensely. She’s a good friend. ;-) After dinner, Lucky and I drove home.
11. It was so good to be home. It was so good to sleep in my bed. It had been two weeks since I slept in my bed. Ohhhhhhhhhh, I’m so glad that I made sure I made it before I left. There’s nothing like coming home from a long trip and just folding back the quilt and sliding between clean cotton sheets.
So, that’s the low-down on the last couple of weeks of my life!
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