Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Details

Well, I suppose I've kept you all waiting for the details of the move long enough. Let's see, I was hoping to have the house ready to be loaded into the moving van the night before the move so that we could clean and get out at a decent time in the morning. Instead it too us all of Friday and most of Saturday to even get the van loaded. By 4:00 we had all our stuff in a van, and the apartment and its' left-over contents were a wreck! My mom stayed behind to clean up after us...poor thing. She did the best she could with what she had to work with and the fading light. (PS, there's still a kitchen table and 6 chairs, and an entertainment center in the building if y'all know anyone who needs them.)

Cut to our little road trip. So we didn't leave the house til 4pm. Jeremy had picked up our new puppy (Superman) at about 10:30 that morning. He was so good during the ride! He laid down between Jeremy and Daniel in the moving van and slept most of the time. Anyway, we were wiped out and by the time we got to, I can't remember the name, someplace in KY, Jeremy decided it was a good place to stop for the night. We got a motel room. Superman pooped in it. We tried to sleep, but Daniel's bottom started to itch, so he was kicking around and freaking out at 1:45 am. I got up and put him in the shower. THEN I got to sleep. (Did I mention that the only room they had was a smoking room with a king bed and a whirlpool that cost $15 extra? They waived the pet fee for us.) We got a later start on Sunday than I had hoped. One of our friends gave us two $10 gift cards for McDonald's, so we decided we would use it for our trip. We had been making good time until we decided to stop for gas and McDonald's. I took Daniel to the rest room and then went to order McDonald's. I waited for a good 5 minutes in an unmoving line in the middle of the lunch rush. Finally it was my turn and a girl shouted that they could only take cash because their card reader was down. I went out to talk to Jeremy. He just handed me some cash so I could order our food and we could get on the road. Ah but we are naive. Once again, I had to wait in a ridiculously slow moving line. When I get to the front, I find out why: the whole thing is out of order, cash registers and all! They are writing down people's orders on a piece of paper and using a calculator to figure up the totals! When I finally get all of our food, I don't have enough hands to fill our cups, so I make a trip out to the car to deliver the food (we had to stay in the car since we were traveling with the dog), then run back inside to get the drinks. When I get back out to the car, Daniel is crying. I ask what's wrong, and find out he wanted his usual, plain cheeseburger and not chicken nuggets. Well, I ordered his a plain cheeseburger, but they gave us 2 nuggets. I take the offending nuggets back to the restaurant, and have to wait for someone in the mixed-up crazy, confused madhouse to notice me. Finally, I got the cheeseburger. I go out to the car, deliver the cheeseburger to Daniel, Jeremy's already most of the way through his meal. I tell him he's just going to have to wait for me to eat my food, because I will not eat and drive at the same time. Did I mention that all this time, Launa is sleeping peacefully in the back of the car? I'm finally done eating, and I'm ready to go when Launa wakes up. She needs to use the bathroom, so it's back to the restaurant for me. We finally get out of there, and we're all itching to get back on the road. I get Launa in her seat, but there's a box next to the seatbelt buckle (which I can't move, since it's packed tightly into the car) that is greatly inhibiting my ability to get the latch right on the seatbelt. I am trying not to lose my cool when this whole stop had lasted a good 45 minutes longer than we had already wanted it to. Jeremy is in the moving van watching me, but he can't really see what's going on, he just knows that I've been leaning into the back of the car for 3 minutes or longer. He gets on the walkie-talkie (that he bought special for the trip) and says something jerky like "Well Daniel, I don't know what's taking those girls so long, I wanted to be on the road 45 minutes ago!"

I lost my cool.

It wasn't pretty. The crazy thing is, when I was finally ready to talk to him about it an hour later, he still had no idea why I was upset with him. (My incoherent ranting obviously hadn't made an impression on him.) So I had to explain it using small words. His reaction,"Oh, well you were in a good mood when you got out of the restaurant..." Meet the greatest actress in the world. I was NOT in a good mood. Anyway, I think we got to Georgia by 5pm on Sunday night? Maybe it was 4...anyway, fortunately, my father-in-law and my 2 brothers-in-law came to help unload the van, and they got it knocked out in maybe 1/2 hour to 45 min. Then we went back to the house and crashed. I don't really remember what happened after that. At all.

So Monday was Jeremy's first day of work. Any of you living in the Wood River area will understand what I am talking about: Guess what? At Shaw carpet, they actually reward hard work and good behavior. You are promoted based on your work ethic and abilities. They help pay for college. They like to promote from within. Basically, if you do your job and do it well, there is a future for you at this place! Jeremy is beside himself with joy. He gets to work in a fulfilling and rewarding environment. I think he is really looking forward to this job. At least it's a step-up in the atmosphere dept.

I had to get Daniel registered for school on Monday, guess what? I have no idea where his SSN card is AGAIN! I have everyone else's! Not Daniel's. Did you know that you are only allowed 3 replacement SSN cards in your lifetime? Yeah. Daniel's about to get replacement number 2. I can't believe his card wasn't with everyone else's. I was EXTRA careful with his! I should have been with all the other important documents.

I went grocery shopping yesterday. Anyone want to guess how much milk costs here? C'mon, guess! $3.50? $3.85? $4.00? You're all wrong! Ladies and gentlemen, milk, from a cow, in the state of Georgia, costs a whopping $5.68! Oh yes. It really does. I was able to find it for less at Wal-mart, but even their brand-name was that expensive. Good thing I'm not too good for generic! Anyway, I haven't found the local discount food chain yet. It's on my mission list. Find the closest discount grocery chain. Anyway, this is the longest post in the history of long posts, and my dog needs to be let out for a few minutes. I'll let you go for now.

8 comments:

Dana Cheryl said...

Drum roll please...

And the Oscar for Best Leading Actress in a Drama/Horror Movie goes to...MC...for her part as the stressed out, fed up, overly tired, yet smiling mom in motion picture "Die Ronald McDonald Die!"

Milk's better pretty outrageous back in KY too. My friend, Sarah, called a while back and said that it was over $5 a gallon. Yay! I'm glad to be lactose intolerant. :)

What kind of puppy did ya'll get?

Mary said...

That is a very good title for my movie! I think you should be a writer for the upcoming theatrical release! And you're right-it's ridiculous how much milk costs! It's more than gas! Almost as much as printer ink! ;)

I wanted to get a picture of my pup on my blog, but I need to get his pictures developed first (SOME of us don't use digital cameras, see June 30). Anyway, he's 3/4 boxer, and supposed to be 1/4 Golden retriever, but I think his parent's owner must be mistaken, because the mom is all black, and looks just like a lab, and his vet told me he looks like a lab. So my guess is 3/4 boxer, 1/4 lab. He's VERY pretty, and super sweet. I'm so glad we decided to take him, even though we don't really have a good place for him yet. He will have a great place in the space of 2 months (I hope...).

Good news on that front, Jeremy gets paid weekly, so we should be able to start looking for a house earlier than planned.

timpani76 said...

I had a similar problem with getting gas on our way back from Minneapolis. A bad rain storm took out power and they were reading all the credit cards with an old fashioned slide across card copier thing. I didn't like it because now they have a hard copy of my debit card numbers.

We also hit rain so hard that we had to stop under an overpass for 45 minutes when we were only 90 minutes from home and the kids had been in the car for about 10 hours already. They were not happy and neither was I. Car trips are still the funnest, no matter how much stuff happens.

Eyepoke said...

Hmm thats too bad. When we moved I broke a nail. It was way tough.

Lol...

I would have liked to have seen you lose your cool!

Miss youall

Mary said...

Oh yeah, I forgot about the rain! We hit some really bad rain that we couldn't see through for maybe 5-10 minutes in the Tennesee mountains, and then it suddenly stopped. And also a guy lost a tire right in front of Jeremy's moving van. He almost hit it. Man, I left out a LOT of details... I have a 1-track mind. You know Timpani, it's the adventure, and the never knowing exactly what'll happen to you when you're on the road that makes car trips interesting. Was this story from your latest trip?

John, I probably looked like a maniac waving my arms in the air and pointing, and yelling, with my frizzy wavy hair sticking out at all angles and no makeup (so no eyelashes). I'm sure the people in the restaurant were like, "Man, I'm glad *I* didn't marry that freakshow!"

timpani76 said...

Yes Mary, that was the story from my latest trip. I also left out the part about a 30 minute unscheduled stop so I could put in some bathroom time.

Good thing my mom went with us! She just let the kids play at the rest stop playground. Why didn't rest stops have playgrounds when I was a kid?

Anonymous said...

Oh you poor thing! There's nothing worse than being ill on a car trip!

MC

Anonymous said...

I'm dying laughing here. I can just picture you having a melt down in the McDonalds parking lot.
Poor Jeremy, still hasn't figured out what he got into when he married you, has he? He would not have made any kind of comment if he had.
Actually, I hope he knows how lucky he is to have married my beautiful, funny cousin, and I love you.

-L