Matthew and I play a little game with the laundry that I like to call "What did I hide in the pocket of my scrubs?" I don't know if Matthew realizes he is playing this game, but I'd like him to know that he is winning.
This is how the game is played: Matthew wears scrubs to work each day and fills his pockets, intentionally and unintentionally (I'll explain that later), with little "treasures," shall we say. The tricky part about scrubs is that they are reversible, meaning you can wear them inside-out so they have pockets in both the outside AND the inside of the pants and shirt. This means he has four pockets to hide goodies in that I have to find BEFORE they go into the wash.
Every morning the breast pocket gets filled with a list of the patients on his service, a pen, sometimes a little quick-reference book about fractures, and other odds and ends. The butt-pocket on the pants might get more lists, but it always gets a couple of tissues.
Kleenex is the enemy of laundry.
I think Kleenex actually procreates while in his pocket, because, as the day wears on, a tissue can be found in the breast pocket and the INTERIOR pants pocket (how does he do that?...more importantly, why? Then you have to sit on your snot). Later some coins might be added and other various workday flotsam and jetsam...but always the tissues.
My job is to play hide-and-seek with all these tidbits and remove them before they enter the washing machine because, once they're in, the damage is done. So I rummage around and find all these things and sometimes the unintentional gift of blood and human tissue.
Usually this is dried up by the time I get to it, but the real point is that I am a) touching the innards of another human being, which is not something I endeavor to do, on purpose, ever and b) how in the HELL does that get into a pocket? When I ask how this could possibly happen I get upsetting answers such as:
"Sometimes it squirts" (usually accompanied by a hand motion insinuating that a femur is actually a geyser)
or
"Things are flying around in there" (meaning when you're working away on someone's bone the chips get to roaming).
or, my favorite,
"If that's the worst that gets on me in a day, that's a good day" (well that is PLENTY of bio-hazardous material for me, thank you very much, and I'll leave out the story of when Jodi, another orthopaedic surgeon, found maggots on a patient).
But, really, how does this happen? He is wearing his scrubs in the OR, yes, but on top of the scrubs he wears Lead. Lead is a canvas apron encasing a lead plate, like a really long bulletproof vest (except that I don't think the bone chunks are moving at that velocity) that is both heavy and very hot to wear (which is why they keep the OR really, really cold...like my basement in Harrisburg). On top of the Lead is another smock, plus two pairs of gloves (I think, surgeons reading this, correct me if I'm wrong), booties for the feet, a cap and mask. Now he's also wearing a helmet, yes a helmet, that holds a big plastic face-shield (and I'm not kidding you, that helmet is hilarious...it is huge and it has a FAN in it - again, because it's so hot under all that- but seriously, it looks like a big ole' bike helmet with a bunch of plastic straps). The whole get-up is like riot gear for the operating room. So you tell me, how does blood get through all that and into a pocket?
Well, the bio-hazards have made me a little gun-shy when it comes to cleaning out pockets, but that's not really the issue here.
The issue is the tissue.
Somehow there is ALWAYS a tissue that makes its way into the wash and then I'm screwed. I open up that lid and all the wet laundry is covered in wet tissue shreds. Grrrr. Which means once it's dry, the laundry is covered in dry tissue snow that gets all over the house. Which means I could vacuum the entire house every time I do a load of laundry.
Thus, I think Kleenex is actually a hermaphroditic alien species taking over the world one load of laundry at a time.
The end.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Phase III: Unpacking and settling in
Our first night in our new place was wonderful. I can't believe how quiet this apartment complex is at night (well, all the time, for that matter). Yesterday the girls at the office told me they are completely full with a waiting list, so I know people live here...maybe they're all mute.
The air-conditioning in this place is super-powered. I was a little concerned, being on the third floor, that it would be difficult to keep the place cool enough to survive. This is primarily based on our experience at the townhouse in Harrisburg. The top floor, with the bedrooms, was never cool enough during the summer. We could have set the thermostat to 45 degrees and still have been sweating through the night.
The basement was like a meat locker and actually uncomfortably cold. When we staged the house for sale we moved the TV to the basement, which really cut down on the television viewing. Somehow the act of walking down 9 steps seemed like way too much effort to watch crappy sitcoms, so the only time we watched TV was Biggest Loser night (Tuesdays, 8pm - but we're between seasons now, I think the new one starts in Sept?). On Biggest Loser Night we would bundle up in sweatpants and sweatshirts AND wrap up in a blanket just to survive the arctic temperatures.
The main floor was perfect, of course, since that's where the thermostat is located. So basically, we lived in the Goldilocks House: This floor is too cold, this floor is too hot, this one is juuuust right.
Anyway, so this place is perfect - it's a bit of a delicate balance, though, because we've had a few Michigan Winters in the middle of the summer if it gets turned down too far. So we felt quite lovely the first morning we woke up in Michigan...except for The Plague.
The Plague was still draining Matthew's functional capacity, but I was feeling okay (it didn't really hit me until the next day). I like to believe that I have a super-human immune system. I think it's the Chia seeds. So if I feel crappy one day I am certain that it will only be one day, by the next day I'll be on my feet. I think this is borne out of my experience when I was in my teens and early to mid 20s. However, this is now a delusion because things have changed since I turned 30.
And on that note: What the hell is that about, anyway? It's like a switch flips at age 30. Gone are the days of having a few drinks and staying up late on a Friday night and getting up Saturday morning like nothing happened. Now I have one drink, fall asleep in my chair/on the couch by 9pm, wake up feeling like I had 14 drinks and need a nap after breakfast.
Gone are the days when I could remember everything I had to do in a day without writing it down or remember everything about a client's history and relationships the minute they sat down. Now I'm lucky if I remember a quarter of my to do's and I find myself thinking "damn, what was her husband's name again?" 3/4 of the way through a session.
But I digress.
The movers arrived at noon (actually, a little before noon) despite the fact I had given them the wrong address (oops) and didn't even seem slightly concerned when we pulled the 26' truck around. True professionals. They did seem a little relieved when we opened the door and it was only half full. Unfortunately, it was RIDICULOUSLY warm AND humid that day. And they had to haul everything up three flights of stairs.
Again: hiring movers = best decision ever.
Now here's an interesting thing I learned in this process, and I would be curious to hear from my readership who are of the male persuasion on this: Matthew felt guilty about the movers doing all the work. So guilty, in fact, that he had to LEAVE the house.
I noticed this the day before, too. When the movers were there, he went to Subway to get lunch. This seemed kind of strange to me, especially since there were a few special instructions he was to give them, such as 'don't pack those things.' There were some items (e.g. garden hose and reel, some large shelving in the garage, flower pots) that we planned to leave at the house and some other items (mattress, vacuum) that we planned to use and would pack ourselves.
This is why, when the movers in Michigan hauled up the garden hose and asked me where to put it, I was like, WHAT IS THAT DOING HERE? What am I going to do with a garden hose in a third floor apartment with no spigot? Oi...
Anyway, just as they arrive, Matt says: I gotta go
Me: well go, they can just put the boxes outside the door.
Matt: what are you talking about?
Me: you can use the bathroom, they can just leave the boxes out here.
Matt: No, I mean, I feel bad that I'm not helping.
Me: Why? You're sick, you should be sleeping. Besides, this is why we hired them.
This fascinates me. I can intellectually understand how it is sort of un-manly to watch others labor at carrying your own stuff when you are an able-bodied strong man, but we're paying them to do that. Am I wrong? Apparently I am, because Matthew explained that, even though we're paying them to do that, it makes him a "puss-bag" (I believe this a cross between "pussy" and "douche bag") not to be out there sweating it out and doing manual labor.
Sometimes it is really great to be a woman, you know? Particularly when it is HOT and HUMID and you live on the third floor. The thing about being a woman is, I don't have to constantly 'prove' my femininity. I am a 'girl,' even when I'm wearing grubby clothes and no make-up and it's not really a 'threat to my femininity.' If I feel the need to be more 'feminine' I just put on a dress. It's pretty simple.
Being a man requires constant monitoring of masculinity, though I think the importance of this fades with age (or it does for some men, not all). Masculinity has to be 'proven' regularly and can be taken away with a simple omission of manliness or commission of puss-bag-ness. It seems exhausting, y'all should just have a sexual-revolution and move on.
Well, I don't really care if Matthew is a puss-bag, so I sent him to Starbucks to get me some coffee and food. When he got back, I put him to work arranging and re-assembling the furniture while I told the movers where to put items. Telling people what to do and where to go is a role I feel quite comfortable with :)
Do you think the movers even noticed or cared? I was really convinced that they could care less that he wasn't hauling stuff, since it's their job and all, but I may be wrong because as the two-hour window we had the movers for was drawing to a close I realized they were not done. Not even close. Well, I'll be damned if, after all that, Matt and I were going to have to haul the heavy furniture up by ourselves. So I followed them down to the truck and headed for the boxes.
First, they freaked out a little. "Oh no, that's really heavy, why don't you take this?"
It was a fricking laundry basket.
An empty laundry basket.
Be-still my heart, I might collapse from the vapors under the burden of that weight. Again, my femininity, thus weakness and incompetence, is automatically assumed, which invariably has the effect of pissing me off. So I grabbed a big ole' box of BOOKS. (Proving my masculinity of course.)
Holy GOD, who packs a large box with BOOKS? Don't you know that's what the small boxes are for, they even say "recommended for Books" on the side. I'll tell you who: my husband. Well god bless him, because I hauled that box of books up those stairs the whole way thinking a) I will kill you for this and b) this is just like being at the gym, just one more rep...I mean, step. It was HOT in that stairwell and by the time I got in the door and Matthew walked up and said, "oh my god, what are you doing? give me that," I was done with being manly.
Now, however, Matt had to help with the unloading because I was being more manly than him, so we both made a bunch more trips, up and down, up and down. Toward the end I commented how unbearably hot it was in the back of our mobile sauna/moving semi and one of the guys said, "at least you notice, some people never even walk into the truck and then they get mad when we sweat on their stuff."
Can you imagine? It was literally90 degrees and 80% humidity and they were going up and down three flights of stairs...
"Don't you touch that table with your sweaty hands! I'm going to need you to put towels between yourself and my belongings so you don't contaminate them."
Even I'm not that OCD.
The air-conditioning in this place is super-powered. I was a little concerned, being on the third floor, that it would be difficult to keep the place cool enough to survive. This is primarily based on our experience at the townhouse in Harrisburg. The top floor, with the bedrooms, was never cool enough during the summer. We could have set the thermostat to 45 degrees and still have been sweating through the night.
The basement was like a meat locker and actually uncomfortably cold. When we staged the house for sale we moved the TV to the basement, which really cut down on the television viewing. Somehow the act of walking down 9 steps seemed like way too much effort to watch crappy sitcoms, so the only time we watched TV was Biggest Loser night (Tuesdays, 8pm - but we're between seasons now, I think the new one starts in Sept?). On Biggest Loser Night we would bundle up in sweatpants and sweatshirts AND wrap up in a blanket just to survive the arctic temperatures.
The main floor was perfect, of course, since that's where the thermostat is located. So basically, we lived in the Goldilocks House: This floor is too cold, this floor is too hot, this one is juuuust right.
Anyway, so this place is perfect - it's a bit of a delicate balance, though, because we've had a few Michigan Winters in the middle of the summer if it gets turned down too far. So we felt quite lovely the first morning we woke up in Michigan...except for The Plague.
The Plague was still draining Matthew's functional capacity, but I was feeling okay (it didn't really hit me until the next day). I like to believe that I have a super-human immune system. I think it's the Chia seeds. So if I feel crappy one day I am certain that it will only be one day, by the next day I'll be on my feet. I think this is borne out of my experience when I was in my teens and early to mid 20s. However, this is now a delusion because things have changed since I turned 30.
And on that note: What the hell is that about, anyway? It's like a switch flips at age 30. Gone are the days of having a few drinks and staying up late on a Friday night and getting up Saturday morning like nothing happened. Now I have one drink, fall asleep in my chair/on the couch by 9pm, wake up feeling like I had 14 drinks and need a nap after breakfast.
Gone are the days when I could remember everything I had to do in a day without writing it down or remember everything about a client's history and relationships the minute they sat down. Now I'm lucky if I remember a quarter of my to do's and I find myself thinking "damn, what was her husband's name again?" 3/4 of the way through a session.
But I digress.
The movers arrived at noon (actually, a little before noon) despite the fact I had given them the wrong address (oops) and didn't even seem slightly concerned when we pulled the 26' truck around. True professionals. They did seem a little relieved when we opened the door and it was only half full. Unfortunately, it was RIDICULOUSLY warm AND humid that day. And they had to haul everything up three flights of stairs.
Again: hiring movers = best decision ever.
Now here's an interesting thing I learned in this process, and I would be curious to hear from my readership who are of the male persuasion on this: Matthew felt guilty about the movers doing all the work. So guilty, in fact, that he had to LEAVE the house.
I noticed this the day before, too. When the movers were there, he went to Subway to get lunch. This seemed kind of strange to me, especially since there were a few special instructions he was to give them, such as 'don't pack those things.' There were some items (e.g. garden hose and reel, some large shelving in the garage, flower pots) that we planned to leave at the house and some other items (mattress, vacuum) that we planned to use and would pack ourselves.
This is why, when the movers in Michigan hauled up the garden hose and asked me where to put it, I was like, WHAT IS THAT DOING HERE? What am I going to do with a garden hose in a third floor apartment with no spigot? Oi...
Anyway, just as they arrive, Matt says: I gotta go
Me: well go, they can just put the boxes outside the door.
Matt: what are you talking about?
Me: you can use the bathroom, they can just leave the boxes out here.
Matt: No, I mean, I feel bad that I'm not helping.
Me: Why? You're sick, you should be sleeping. Besides, this is why we hired them.
This fascinates me. I can intellectually understand how it is sort of un-manly to watch others labor at carrying your own stuff when you are an able-bodied strong man, but we're paying them to do that. Am I wrong? Apparently I am, because Matthew explained that, even though we're paying them to do that, it makes him a "puss-bag" (I believe this a cross between "pussy" and "douche bag") not to be out there sweating it out and doing manual labor.
Sometimes it is really great to be a woman, you know? Particularly when it is HOT and HUMID and you live on the third floor. The thing about being a woman is, I don't have to constantly 'prove' my femininity. I am a 'girl,' even when I'm wearing grubby clothes and no make-up and it's not really a 'threat to my femininity.' If I feel the need to be more 'feminine' I just put on a dress. It's pretty simple.
Being a man requires constant monitoring of masculinity, though I think the importance of this fades with age (or it does for some men, not all). Masculinity has to be 'proven' regularly and can be taken away with a simple omission of manliness or commission of puss-bag-ness. It seems exhausting, y'all should just have a sexual-revolution and move on.
Well, I don't really care if Matthew is a puss-bag, so I sent him to Starbucks to get me some coffee and food. When he got back, I put him to work arranging and re-assembling the furniture while I told the movers where to put items. Telling people what to do and where to go is a role I feel quite comfortable with :)
Do you think the movers even noticed or cared? I was really convinced that they could care less that he wasn't hauling stuff, since it's their job and all, but I may be wrong because as the two-hour window we had the movers for was drawing to a close I realized they were not done. Not even close. Well, I'll be damned if, after all that, Matt and I were going to have to haul the heavy furniture up by ourselves. So I followed them down to the truck and headed for the boxes.
First, they freaked out a little. "Oh no, that's really heavy, why don't you take this?"
It was a fricking laundry basket.
An empty laundry basket.
Be-still my heart, I might collapse from the vapors under the burden of that weight. Again, my femininity, thus weakness and incompetence, is automatically assumed, which invariably has the effect of pissing me off. So I grabbed a big ole' box of BOOKS. (Proving my masculinity of course.)
Holy GOD, who packs a large box with BOOKS? Don't you know that's what the small boxes are for, they even say "recommended for Books" on the side. I'll tell you who: my husband. Well god bless him, because I hauled that box of books up those stairs the whole way thinking a) I will kill you for this and b) this is just like being at the gym, just one more rep...I mean, step. It was HOT in that stairwell and by the time I got in the door and Matthew walked up and said, "oh my god, what are you doing? give me that," I was done with being manly.
Now, however, Matt had to help with the unloading because I was being more manly than him, so we both made a bunch more trips, up and down, up and down. Toward the end I commented how unbearably hot it was in the back of our mobile sauna/moving semi and one of the guys said, "at least you notice, some people never even walk into the truck and then they get mad when we sweat on their stuff."
Can you imagine? It was literally90 degrees and 80% humidity and they were going up and down three flights of stairs...
"Don't you touch that table with your sweaty hands! I'm going to need you to put towels between yourself and my belongings so you don't contaminate them."
Even I'm not that OCD.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Phase II: departure and travel
Thursday morning, moving day, dawned bright and sunny. We got up, quickly and efficiently packed our bags in the Uhaul, loaded the dog in the car and hit the road earlier than expected. There was little traffic, no construction and we only stopped once for gas and food. The weather forecast called for mostly sunny skies with a chance of rain late evening at our destination, but we arrived to sunny skies with a few gossamer clouds lazily drifting across the glittering city-scape. We were met at the front door by our Leasing Consultant, who let us into our new home, which was pristine, as though no one had ever lived there before, and wonderfully cool, despite the heat outside. Our first night in our new home consisted of a delightful picnic on the floor of our living room of Chinese take-out and a fresh bottle of wine, then we retired to sleep through the night on a light mattress in the bedroom.
WRONG.
That is not how the day went. At. All.
Thursday morning we got up early and started hauling the last few things out to the Uhaul. When I got home the night before the movers had packed everything but our suitcases, the mattress and cleaning supplies. I had spent the night before cleaning every inch of the house and it was pretty close to SPOTLESS (which totally appeals to my OCD - cleaning a house with nothing in it is so much easier, you don't have to move any furniture or knickknacks or toothbrushes, etc, so you can see every clean inch...love it love it love it. I love it so much, I now have fantasies of living in a home with absolutely nothing in it so I can clean and clean and clean...but that's a little crazy, so we won't talk about that anymore).
It was HOTTT in PA the day we were leaving, so when we rolled open the door to the semi-truck it was like getting into our very own mobile sauna...except that it smells like cardboard and metal and minor domestic violence. Loading the last few bags into the truck was easy, it just took a little longer than expected (like everything does) and then we had to embark on the complicated series of actions to get all trucks, trailers and cars ready to go.
Trip one: Matthew drives the Uhaul semi truck back to Uhaul on Allentown, I follow in his truck. At the Uhaul location they will hook up the trailer that will hold my car, while I'm waiting for them to find our trailer (yeah, because we didn't take it the day before when we picked up the semi - because it would be much harder to load the truck with the trailer attached - they thought they might have RENTED IT TO SOMEONE ELSE, delightful), Matthew took his truck to Starbucks to get me my drug, I mean, coffee.
Trip two: Matthew and I leave Uhaul, with coffee, and drive back to our house. The goals of this final visit are to pack up the dog and get my car, as well as do a final walk-through of our home. Matthew, still sick, realizes we should probably document the condition of our place because we have renters moving in the next week. I think this is a great idea because I can savor the cleanliness over and over. While he walks through taking video of each room, I put the dog's belongings in my car, then sit down to enjoy my breakfast and coffee, which I left sitting in the entryway...
A full grande mocha.
Sitting on the floor.
At the front door.
Where I promptly KICK IT OVER completely upside down and dump the entire contents of the aforementioned grande mocha on my FRESHLY CLEANED entryway and CARPET.
Where my BLIND DOG, who hears the possibility of spilled food, promptly walks through the middle of the spill and somehow manages to rub it on the wall.
The freshly painted wall.
Me: SON OF A BITCH!!!
Matt: (from the bedroom upstairs) What? What happened?
Me: NOTHING! Bandit, no no no no!
Matt: Did you knock over your coffee? (like he knows me or something)
Me: BANDIT NO NO NO! (blind, epileptic dog with notoriously delicate gastrointestinal system drinking cafe mocha before a 9 hour car ride...excellent)
Towels = all packed
Paper towels = packed
Sponges = packed
Two napkins from Starbucks = inadequate
I had nothing left but the clothes on my back.
So I sat on it.
Matt: (coming down the stairs) What are you doing?
Me: (scooting around on the floor on my rear, trying to utilize dry parts of my shorts while simultaneously fighting off the dog who is now trying to lick the floor, walls and my ass)
Matt: Honey!?
Me: nothing, it's fine, I got it.
Matt: oh my god.
Coffee fricking everywhere. EVERYWHERE. All over the floor and seeping under that little strip of metal they nail between the carpet and hard floor...and now all over me. It looked like I'd had explosive diarrhea. And my clothes were all packed in boxes, except the suitcase I'd packed with a couple day's worth of clothes.
Which was in the back of the Uhaul semi truck.
Which was sitting in the parking lot of the Uhaul store on Allentown Blvd with a trailer hooked to the back.
And the worst part? I had only had one or two sips of that coffee! Not anywhere near enough to survive this day.
My husband has a cool head in a crisis (probably a good thing, you really wouldn't want your surgeon screaming and running around in a panic...or mopping liquids off the floor with his pants, for that matter, but whatever). He found a sponge on the top of the trash, washed it off and wiped down everything as best he could. Then he gave me his coffee. I would marry him again in a second.
Trip 3: Back to Uhaul with both cars, dog and a mocha-scented pair of shorts. Delightful.
So our plan to get on the road by 9am was not successful and at 11:00am we hit the turnpike. Bandit and I are leading the caravan in Matthew's truck (I plan to do most of the driving, after all, Bandit is blind), he is following in the semi truck pulling my car.
For the first several hours, we were doing okay...even though we were going slow enough to be passed by the real semi trucks. We stopped for gas just before Pittsburgh and got a bite to eat. Then we hit Pittsburgh. And construction. Narrow two-lane stretches with concrete barriers inches from the side of the semi left no room for error, but he made it through (white-knuckled all the way).
Ohio was rolling by easily until we were just outside of Toledo. That's when the thunderstorms hit. And the rain. And the tornado warnings.
SERIOUSLY? Could we just get to Michigan? It was raining so hard I would have had better luck blowing on the windshield because the wipers were completely ineffectual. Traffic was going 35 miles and hour. Fan-fricking-tastic.
This entire day was becoming a test of the actual strength of my deodorant. Watching the Uhaul semi-truck weave through construction, getting caught in a monsoon...what next? Oh, I'll tell you 'what next'...
A damn TORNADO.
Some of you may know how I feel about natural disasters (tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes) = Bad. I do not feel good about these at all. We do not have these things in Oregon. None. The worst we get is flooding, but not even flash flooding (typically), there's usually plenty of warning.
The Emergency Broadcast System keeps popping up on the radio to tell us there are severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings, then a tornado sighting, in all these counties, etc. Of course, I do not know where these counties are because I DON'T KNOW OHIO GEOGRAPHY. Well that's just awesome. Now I'm going to get swept off to Oz in a pair of coffee crusted shorts. Not okay.
After a 35 mile an hour crawl we finally reached our exit and the tollbooth operator says: Now you know, there's a tornado in this area. Goody. At this point, I just didn't even care. I couldn't care. I just wanted to get to our new home because, oh guess what? I was starting to get sweaty and chills...a fever. The Plague was creeping in.
At 9pm two sick adults (one who smelled of coffee and looked like she'd pooped her pants BIG TIME), one blind dog, a Uhaul semi-truck pulling a trailer and a small white pickup truck pulled into The Heights in Madison Heights, MI. It was about 88 degrees and 90% humidity.
When our leasing consultant met us at the office we must have looked like a bad mistake, but she took us to our apartment anyway. It looked great, very clean, nice space, but on the third floor and a wee bit toasty since the air conditioning was turned off. We could have cared less at that point, we just hauled the mattress up the three flights of stairs (SOOO happy with each step that we had movers coming the next day to unload everything else), got the dog fed, pottied and put to bed, and went off in search of food.
By this time (10pm-ish), Matthew was actually feeling a bit better and, for the first time I can remember, said he couldn't eat junk food for another meal. I just wanted to put some french fries and a milkshake in my mouth and lay down for about, oh, 17 hours of sleep. Given that we had just left an area where restaurants close by 10pm, I was not feeling hopeful about our options, but we went into downtown Royal Oak, MI.
It was at this moment, through a haze of fever and irritation, that I was able to recognize one thing very clearly: I am going to love this place. It was 10:30pm and there were restaurants open everywhere...and people sitting at the outdoor tables drinking beer and talking about interesting things...and smiling at strangers (no longer wearing poopy/coffee pants because I'd found my suitcase. I suspect they would have been less smiley if I looked like I had mismanaged incontinence issues)...and the waiter was so friendly.
And we had sushi.
And life was (feverish, but) good.
WRONG.
That is not how the day went. At. All.
Thursday morning we got up early and started hauling the last few things out to the Uhaul. When I got home the night before the movers had packed everything but our suitcases, the mattress and cleaning supplies. I had spent the night before cleaning every inch of the house and it was pretty close to SPOTLESS (which totally appeals to my OCD - cleaning a house with nothing in it is so much easier, you don't have to move any furniture or knickknacks or toothbrushes, etc, so you can see every clean inch...love it love it love it. I love it so much, I now have fantasies of living in a home with absolutely nothing in it so I can clean and clean and clean...but that's a little crazy, so we won't talk about that anymore).
It was HOTTT in PA the day we were leaving, so when we rolled open the door to the semi-truck it was like getting into our very own mobile sauna...except that it smells like cardboard and metal and minor domestic violence. Loading the last few bags into the truck was easy, it just took a little longer than expected (like everything does) and then we had to embark on the complicated series of actions to get all trucks, trailers and cars ready to go.
Trip one: Matthew drives the Uhaul semi truck back to Uhaul on Allentown, I follow in his truck. At the Uhaul location they will hook up the trailer that will hold my car, while I'm waiting for them to find our trailer (yeah, because we didn't take it the day before when we picked up the semi - because it would be much harder to load the truck with the trailer attached - they thought they might have RENTED IT TO SOMEONE ELSE, delightful), Matthew took his truck to Starbucks to get me my drug, I mean, coffee.
Trip two: Matthew and I leave Uhaul, with coffee, and drive back to our house. The goals of this final visit are to pack up the dog and get my car, as well as do a final walk-through of our home. Matthew, still sick, realizes we should probably document the condition of our place because we have renters moving in the next week. I think this is a great idea because I can savor the cleanliness over and over. While he walks through taking video of each room, I put the dog's belongings in my car, then sit down to enjoy my breakfast and coffee, which I left sitting in the entryway...
A full grande mocha.
Sitting on the floor.
At the front door.
Where I promptly KICK IT OVER completely upside down and dump the entire contents of the aforementioned grande mocha on my FRESHLY CLEANED entryway and CARPET.
Where my BLIND DOG, who hears the possibility of spilled food, promptly walks through the middle of the spill and somehow manages to rub it on the wall.
The freshly painted wall.
Me: SON OF A BITCH!!!
Matt: (from the bedroom upstairs) What? What happened?
Me: NOTHING! Bandit, no no no no!
Matt: Did you knock over your coffee? (like he knows me or something)
Me: BANDIT NO NO NO! (blind, epileptic dog with notoriously delicate gastrointestinal system drinking cafe mocha before a 9 hour car ride...excellent)
Towels = all packed
Paper towels = packed
Sponges = packed
Two napkins from Starbucks = inadequate
I had nothing left but the clothes on my back.
So I sat on it.
Matt: (coming down the stairs) What are you doing?
Me: (scooting around on the floor on my rear, trying to utilize dry parts of my shorts while simultaneously fighting off the dog who is now trying to lick the floor, walls and my ass)
Matt: Honey!?
Me: nothing, it's fine, I got it.
Matt: oh my god.
Coffee fricking everywhere. EVERYWHERE. All over the floor and seeping under that little strip of metal they nail between the carpet and hard floor...and now all over me. It looked like I'd had explosive diarrhea. And my clothes were all packed in boxes, except the suitcase I'd packed with a couple day's worth of clothes.
Which was in the back of the Uhaul semi truck.
Which was sitting in the parking lot of the Uhaul store on Allentown Blvd with a trailer hooked to the back.
And the worst part? I had only had one or two sips of that coffee! Not anywhere near enough to survive this day.
My husband has a cool head in a crisis (probably a good thing, you really wouldn't want your surgeon screaming and running around in a panic...or mopping liquids off the floor with his pants, for that matter, but whatever). He found a sponge on the top of the trash, washed it off and wiped down everything as best he could. Then he gave me his coffee. I would marry him again in a second.
Trip 3: Back to Uhaul with both cars, dog and a mocha-scented pair of shorts. Delightful.
So our plan to get on the road by 9am was not successful and at 11:00am we hit the turnpike. Bandit and I are leading the caravan in Matthew's truck (I plan to do most of the driving, after all, Bandit is blind), he is following in the semi truck pulling my car.
For the first several hours, we were doing okay...even though we were going slow enough to be passed by the real semi trucks. We stopped for gas just before Pittsburgh and got a bite to eat. Then we hit Pittsburgh. And construction. Narrow two-lane stretches with concrete barriers inches from the side of the semi left no room for error, but he made it through (white-knuckled all the way).
Ohio was rolling by easily until we were just outside of Toledo. That's when the thunderstorms hit. And the rain. And the tornado warnings.
SERIOUSLY? Could we just get to Michigan? It was raining so hard I would have had better luck blowing on the windshield because the wipers were completely ineffectual. Traffic was going 35 miles and hour. Fan-fricking-tastic.
This entire day was becoming a test of the actual strength of my deodorant. Watching the Uhaul semi-truck weave through construction, getting caught in a monsoon...what next? Oh, I'll tell you 'what next'...
A damn TORNADO.
Some of you may know how I feel about natural disasters (tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes) = Bad. I do not feel good about these at all. We do not have these things in Oregon. None. The worst we get is flooding, but not even flash flooding (typically), there's usually plenty of warning.
The Emergency Broadcast System keeps popping up on the radio to tell us there are severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings, then a tornado sighting, in all these counties, etc. Of course, I do not know where these counties are because I DON'T KNOW OHIO GEOGRAPHY. Well that's just awesome. Now I'm going to get swept off to Oz in a pair of coffee crusted shorts. Not okay.
After a 35 mile an hour crawl we finally reached our exit and the tollbooth operator says: Now you know, there's a tornado in this area. Goody. At this point, I just didn't even care. I couldn't care. I just wanted to get to our new home because, oh guess what? I was starting to get sweaty and chills...a fever. The Plague was creeping in.
At 9pm two sick adults (one who smelled of coffee and looked like she'd pooped her pants BIG TIME), one blind dog, a Uhaul semi-truck pulling a trailer and a small white pickup truck pulled into The Heights in Madison Heights, MI. It was about 88 degrees and 90% humidity.
When our leasing consultant met us at the office we must have looked like a bad mistake, but she took us to our apartment anyway. It looked great, very clean, nice space, but on the third floor and a wee bit toasty since the air conditioning was turned off. We could have cared less at that point, we just hauled the mattress up the three flights of stairs (SOOO happy with each step that we had movers coming the next day to unload everything else), got the dog fed, pottied and put to bed, and went off in search of food.
By this time (10pm-ish), Matthew was actually feeling a bit better and, for the first time I can remember, said he couldn't eat junk food for another meal. I just wanted to put some french fries and a milkshake in my mouth and lay down for about, oh, 17 hours of sleep. Given that we had just left an area where restaurants close by 10pm, I was not feeling hopeful about our options, but we went into downtown Royal Oak, MI.
It was at this moment, through a haze of fever and irritation, that I was able to recognize one thing very clearly: I am going to love this place. It was 10:30pm and there were restaurants open everywhere...and people sitting at the outdoor tables drinking beer and talking about interesting things...and smiling at strangers (no longer wearing poopy/coffee pants because I'd found my suitcase. I suspect they would have been less smiley if I looked like I had mismanaged incontinence issues)...and the waiter was so friendly.
And we had sushi.
And life was (feverish, but) good.
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