Moving Day

November 18th,

Life is beautiful, but bitter at times. I need to accept that as part of the experience. What really matters is that I stick to my purposes and goals. These keep me moving forward, help me focus on what’s truly important, instead of pain. Life goes on no matter what, and my peace and joy are mine to protect.

….

We woke up at six, made coffee and took showers. Since I didn’t have time to run a load of laundry, I just threw the wet towels and shower curtain into the dryer for 15 minutes – just enough to keep them from smelling bad or getting moldy. At seven, he got Sam to take half a sedative pill to help him stay calm in the car during the trip.

I packed up the last few things in the bathroom, and threw blankets I had left out, thinking they might be useful for wrapping, into baskets along with a big tray. S kept worrying that the movers might not accept the baskets as they weren’t in boxes and he hadn’t included them on the item list. His concerns didn’t make sense to me and if that were true, the “moving rules” were overly strict. It’s normal for not everything to fit into a box, and listing every single miscellaneous item isn’t realistic. There should be some flexibility.

I wasn’t home when the movers arrived around 9:30 as I had a doctor’s appointment. When I got back in the afternoon, S told me they’d asked for an additional $1,600, and he felt he was forced to say yes because everything had to stay on schedule. I didn’t ask for the details – I was in a bad mood that day.

At 5:32 pm, the movers were still wrapping and loading our stuff.

Waiting around with nothing to do wasn’t fun. They didn’t finish until around 8 p.m.

After S signed the completion form, it was already too late for us to vacuum, wipe the floors, or pick up the trash. If we had done the move ourselves, we would’ve had much more control. We could’ve loaded most of our things the day before, vacuumed the same day, and left a few essentials to grab the next morning, followed by a quick final clean. That way, we’d have had plenty of time and could’ve enjoyed the drive. With the moving company, everything depended on their timeline. All we did was wait around until the evening. Since we couldn’t leave early, S had to call his boss and ask for an extra day off work, and drive overnight to our new place – no sleep at all.

Because it was late, we just decided to skip cleaning the house and start driving instead. S would go back the following weekend to clean it, as our truck, 4-wheeler, lawn mower, and some of his tools were still there.

The trip wasn’t fun because we had to take care of Sam. While Dozer sat quietly the whole time, Sam was a different story. Though we gave him another half of the pill, he still moaned, cried, and moved around in the car. We had to take turns holding him on our laps. Our clothes and the car were full of his hair.

We arrived at the new house around 5 the next day, slept on a thin mattress on the floor that we had brought with us.

The moving company called later and said there was an issue with the truck, so they would not deliver until 3 pm the next day. Since we didn’t have much to do, we spent the rest of the day exploring the city, and it was so beautiful.