Moving

I keep waiting to post the moving story until it's done, but it still isn't done, and we supposedly moved May 1, so I'm going to at least send an update.

I suppose we really started moving December 12, when we found out Tim was in the show. So I've not had a home and a place to settle down and work happily for 5 months now.

Anyway, for the first time we had 30 days to move, so, with much "are you sure you'll be ready by may 1"-ing at the new landlords, and many reassurances, we planned our move carefully so the two houses crossed over 5 full days so we could get the one clean without too much stress. May 1 was a Thursday, Tim's day off, so we planned to move some things that day, just us, and then move more on Friday--a lot of stuff that day--and then get a truck and help on Saturday and move everything else on May 3. Then we could clean for 2 days--not quite so rushed--and be done at a reasonable time on May 5.

So the first thing that happened was Tim got sick--a nasty cold that stole his voice. Not great for a singer!

April 30 we got a call from the house manager saying the house wasn't ready and it wouldn't be clean for us, and they were upset about. With some back and forth, they let me hire a cleaning company to come in on Friday, May 2, to clean.

We packed and packed and packed and then May 1, we each chose a toy friend to take to the new house so we could look around, measure the rooms, and leave our friends to guard the house for us. When we arrived, we found the house full of stuff--dishes in the cupboards and dishwasher, furniture (some of which we had said we might want, but it was all coated with cat hair), rugs on the floors, videos and the ashes of the owners' husband in the cupboard (yes--I did just say that). Not to mention the room we were going to set up as our main living space--the school room, where all the computers, and my rocking chair, and all the toys go, and where the only storage room for the entire house was--was completely locked and we didn't have a key for it. We made a list of all the things left in the parts of the house that we could get to--a 4 page list--and went home and called the manager. OH, and the house was filthy.

Turns out they had entrusted the "moving out" to the owner's family, who had been living there, and they had no concept of what "empty" meant. The owner, mortified, rushed in from California, arriving at 2:00 am, and started emptying the house so that the cleaning company could even get to it on Friday at 2:00 pm.

We came to supervise the cleaning company, help a little, and tell them what things we actually wanted to keep--which ended up being very little because everything smelled so strongly of cats, we decided we just wanted it all out of the house. We also did a walk-through in which the owner of the house and I disagreed about how dirty the carpets were. I said they needed to be professionally cleaned. She said it was just the light--they were clean. She was actually mad that the cleaning company hadn't washed all the walls, which are still filthy and needing paint (because someone painted them with eggshell paint--the stuff that absorbs dirt and can't be washed). I hired the cleaning company because they guaranteed removing all pet hair and pet dander from the carpets--and I actually had to re-empty the master bedroom so they could do it again to get the cat hair off, but that comes later in the story.

By the time we got home, it was late and the truck and ward were arriving at 8:00 -9:00 am to help move on Saturday, so we packed all night to be ready for the truck.

At 4:00 am I climbed into bed--and was immediately hit with the worst case of diarrhea that I've ever had. I was literally up all night, running to the bathroom every 20 minutes. When 8:00 came, I was afraid to leave the house, so Tim found someone in the ward to help him get the truck, he gave me a blessing that I would function all day despite no sleep and that I would recover very quickly, and then off he went.

When he came back, I slept in the first emptied room with the kids for a couple of hours until the truck was full even though the house wasn't empty--and then off we went to the new house, where the new ward helped us empty the truck.

Have to go change a diaper, so more in a bit....