I won’t make a habit of these ‘the truth’ posts, honest, but here’s one more.
Our move was a multi-stage process. First, we had a professional moving company come with a sizable truck and a four-man crew to load the vast majority of our belongings into said truck and take it away.
Notes on that: the loading crew was amazing and their expeditor did a great job. The next steps were, well, not 100% optimal. From the original truck, our stuff was offloaded somewhere, then loaded again onto a full-size 18-wheeler along with two other sets of belongings. Both of those smaller jobs were delivered before ours. When the big truck got into our state, our stuff was taken off of it and put onto a smaller truck that the local affiliate’s dispatcher was confident could get up our street and turn around in our cul-de-sac. So all of our stuff got handled a bunch of times, and while nothing was lost, there were a few dings. The company took care of us. It’s okay.
Anyway, the second stage, a few days later, was moving the people and cat and other things that absolutely needed to remain in our direct control. We had one plan going into the day after the moving truck came and went. By the next day, we had to change that plan, because one of us had too much stuff left and we needed a larger vehicle. Cue some frantic calling & running around to get ourselves a 12-foot truck rental. And then of course all that shit had to be loaded. We did not get out of town as early as we should, so Day 1 of the cross-country trip was stressful, exhausting, and long.
But we got out of town. The truck was decent to drive, and our cat was a champ. I’d booked us six nights on the road, so no day was terribly long (after Day 1, that is). The cross-country week was time off of work for me, and mi esposo had officially retired a few weeks before we left LA.
We arrived at the new domicile, my parents’ house, on September 20. The next day, we unloaded the 12-foot truck with the help of a neighbor’s college-age kid, who got a big fat tip from me. The day after that, I signed on for work.
The professional movers showed up on September 27 with a two-person unloading crew. Honestly, I don’t know how those guys did it. They each also got a big fat tip from me.
I spent the following week unpacking all of my cartons, getting my books et cetera onto shelves. Then we spent a Saturday hanging artwork so the main living space felt like “ours.”
It’s now been 8 weeks since the big truck arrived, and mi esposo has still not unpacked all of his cartons. He is taking his own sweet time, because he can, and not having all his stuff ready to hand doesn’t bother him as much as it would have bothered me.
Yesterday, we finished a small home improvement project in the garage, which my parents had started. The four of us are sharing one car, so the other half of the 2-car garage is workshop and workout space - and it’s now nicely set up for those uses.
My room, including home-office space, is almost completely done. I had some painting to do, window treatments to change, closet doors to change, and a lot of pictures to hang. I have a west-facing window so there’s plenty of afternoon light. Someday soon, the switch will flip and I’ll start writing some new fiction.
It has taken several iterations to get all of our electronics integrated with the parental systems, and we’ve utilized several different trash-handling systems (moving: it’s trashy). We will be hosting a modest Thanksgiving lunch with parents, my sibling & her wife, and possibly a family friend.
Another truth about this move: we’ve been shopping fiends. We moved from a residence with 6 rooms - four of them quite small - into a house with 10 rooms - all of them quite large. We actually needed a few more pieces of furniture. A new rug or three. Lighting. Kitchen gear (mine had been drastically purged when we moved to the small house and purged again before this move). And all the home-improvement hardware, etc., one needs for nesting.
Fortunately, we had a chunky cash-in-hand fund thanks to selling a piece of property five years ago. That fund was always intended for something like a big move, because there was always going to be a big move. And now, it’s just about done, and we didn’t go broke!
Fair warning, the next few things I want to write all have home improvement aspects. It’s where my brain has been for the past 2.5 years (with a detour for figure skating). Once those are out of my system, we’ll see what bubbles up.