Adventures in moving...

Finally moved in to the new place and it was more of an adventure than I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it turned out better than a lot of people have experienced, but it still didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. Allow me to explain… Saturday morning rolls around and we have the house all packed up and ready to go. We literally sat there and waited for them to show up because we were THAT prepared. The movers from All My Sons were supposed to be there between 8 and 9 am. I naively thought that they would be earlier rather than later. Wrong. They showed up at 8:45 and all James and I had to do was sit there and watch. I expressly pointed out to them the boxes that were most fragile, in addition to having written all over the boxes in big, black letters “FRAGILE.” I had a point to make. One box in particular was loaded with picture frames, candles and Willow Tree figurines and though those items are not particularly valuable, I still didn’t want any of it broken – obviously. The box was also really heavy and we debated on taking it with us in the car, but since they had the proper equipment, we assumed they would be able to handle it. After about 2 hours of loading up the truck, they tell us they’re going to go by their shop to pick up an extra mover to make things go quicker so we could stay in the estimated price range that was given to us. I’m thinking, “yes, please do, cause this is already costing a freaking fortune and you guys aren’t exactly hauling tail here…” James and I headed down to Boiling Springs to finish up the paper work for the new apartment and then waited some more on the movers to arrive. When they finally showed up with their new cohort in hand, I expected things to really pickup and they’d be outta there in no time. Wrong again. The first thing I heard when they arrived is that the one box that I pointed out to be the most fragile and most important WAS DROPPED. DOWN THE STAIRS. AND STUFF DEFINITELY BROKE. I was FURIOUS. When they brought the box to me, they said that it looked like only one thing was broken but upon further inspection there was far more than one thing broken… like several picture frames, busted up candles, a broken Willow Tree figurine, and broken candle sticks. After totaling up the damage, I figured they broke about $150 worth of stuff. I get to turn in a claim on the items once they send it to me in the mail, so we’ll see how much of that I actually get back.

So as things moved right along, I noticed that even though they’ve picked up another compadre, they’re not moving any faster. And oh, by the way, go ahead and pay up until 3:30 and if we don’t get done, then you don’t have to pay past that point. That seemed kinda fishy, but they brought another person with them to speed things up so I thought that would mean that they’d definitely be done by 3:30. Wrong. They took about 4 breaks in the span of 2 hours, which cut into the schedule more than you would think. In addition to their breaks, they couldn’t seem to carry as many boxes up the stairs as they took down the stairs, despite using the same equipment and – I MUST SAY THIS AGAIN – another mover. They falsely lead us to believe that unloading goes quicker than loading, but I beg to differ. When it was all said and done, they finished at 3:00 but when the head mover called in to say they were done, we were charged as though they finished at 3:15 because they charge by the quarter hour. How that even makes sense, I’m not sure… so it took 2 ½ men to move a 1 bedroom apartment 5 hours (not including travel time of 1 ½ hours.) That hardly seems reasonable to me. Granted they moved us from a 2^nd floor apartment to a 3^rd floor apartment, I still find it hard to believe that it would take professionals that long. I think they were just trying to milk it for all it was worth. From the beginning all we heard was “Oh wow, you got a lot of boxes” and “Man, that’s a big TV” or “There’s a washer and dryer too?!” I’m sorry, is this the first time that you’ve moved someone? Be glad that you don’t have to move a whole family with multiple beds and 3 times as many boxes! Thinking about it gets my blood boiling all over again… It was great to not have to move anything ourselves or have to put anyone else through the ordeal either. But when we pay good, hard earned money for a professionally done job, I expect a good job to be done. Imagine that.

Now that everything is done, I’m glad we did it, but I think next time we’ll hire movers to load up a U-Haul, drive the truck ourselves, and have them unload it. Hiring movers is not cheap. I have the week before I start my job at Denny’s to put the place together and so far, most of it’s done. I have a few more boxes to unpack and some more pictures to hang, but other than that, it’s practically home again.

On Monday I made my first grocery run to the Wal Mart down the street. It made me sad cause it’s not like the Wal Mart in Mooresville. For starters, the groceries are on the wrong side, which totally threw me off. I ran all across that store trying to find what I needed. Kinda frustrating, but at least there’s a Wal Mart close by. I’ve always said that no matter where I am, as long as I know where Wal Mart is, then I can feel like I’m home. I really like our apartment; it feels bigger even though it’s technically 36 square feet smaller than our last one. It’s short on drawer space in the kitchen, so I asked James for a big kitchen when we buy a house. And I never thought I would find a coat closet valuable until we didn’t have one. Thankfully, most of the space that we’re missing from out last place seems to be utilized in a pretty big storage closet outside on our deck. That thing is a DREAM. So much got to stay in boxes because I know we won’t need it anytime soon (if ever again) so when we move next time, it will be that much less to have to pack up.

I’m still getting acclimated to the area, even though I’m pretty familiar with it from the time I spent here while James and I dated. It’s nice to have him home when normal people get home, so I really look forward to establishing that sort of normalcy that most people experience. Hopefully that won’t change when I start work on Monday – fingers crossed that I’m not pulling super long hours where I become the one who comes home late. That would really suck.

That’s life for now. More to come when I start work on Monday, but until then, I’m loving sleeping in late and being a wifey. Gag, that was cheesy. I’ll refrain from that in the future.