moving

I hurt all over

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Moving sucks.  Even when (especially when?) you’re not moving yourself.  We helped Jess move into her new apartment today, and it feels like everything that could go wrong, did.  I know that’s not true – plenty of things went right – but the percentage of bad things was unusually high.

Bad things:

  • We met Jess at the truck rental place first thing in the morning.  John was going to drive it for her, so we had to be there when she picked it up.  Since he’s the driver, he’s basically renting it, and when they asked if we wanted extra insurance, we said no.  The lady said that’s fine, here, fill out this form with your policy number and the coverage you have for 6-wheeled commercial vehicles.  Um, what?  We’ve rented a lot of trucks in the past year, and no one has asked us that.  I called USAA, and no, we don’t have coverage for that.  (So every time we’ve rented a truck, like, EVER, we’ve been tempting fate with the no extra coverage thing.  Oops.)  Okay, so Jess had to pay an extra amount for it, but hey – it’s refundable.  Except…it’ll be higher than previously mentioned and not ALL of it is refundable because she’s changing an existing rental.  Excuse me?  Still, not that much higher, and we can deal with it.
  • Another family came in, renting a 12′ foot truck (ours was 16′), and they were leaving as we were finalizing the insurance stuff.  As they drove out of the lot, the lady said, “Wait!  They took your truck!”  Yeah, they drove out in the 16′ truck with the ramp we needed.  (They eventually came back and we got our truck.)

The lady joked that all the bad things were happening NOW so we’d be all set the rest of the day.  Way to tempt fate, Rental Truck Lady.

  • We loaded up the truck with all of Jess’s stuff without incident, but I’m including it as a bad thing that happened because her furniture is REALLY HEAVY.  It’s like real grown-up furniture weight.

Good things:

  • We were able to get all of her furniture out of her house and into the truck!  (We’ve had bad luck with couches – couldn’t get Emily’s out of their townhouse last year, so she sold it to the new owners.)
  • By the time John and I (in the truck and our car) caught up with Jess at the new apartment, she’d checked in with the leasing office and gotten her new keys and a parking pass so we could start unloading immediately.

Bad things:

  • She overestimated how much of her stuff could fit in the apartment.  She wanted her big leather couch, loveseat, and chair, but we realized that no matter how we arranged the furniture, the couch wasn’t going to make it.  Or the coffee table.  They stayed on the truck.
  • The really $&%^# heavy leather couch could have been left behind in the house.

Good things:

  • Goodwill was still open, we still had the truck, and they took the couch and the coffee table off our hands!  This is getting to be a habit.
  • We were done with the truck early and could fill it up with gas and return it!

Bad thing:

  • Our credit cards were declined at the gas station pump.

Good thing:

  • Apparently that’s just a really sketchy gas station and Navy Federal locks down cards that get used there.  That seems really weird to me, but I suppose I’m glad they’re looking out for us.  Cards are fine.  Crisis averted.

Bad thing:

  • I’m dirty and tired and achy.

Good thing:

  • I’m home.  I can shower and go to bed.

Extra good thing:

  • Jess lives a mile and a half from us now.  Yippee!

To Do, Part 2, Move 3

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We’ve made progress!

  1. We have a trip planned to go to Eugene and try to find a place to live.  I’m starting to get nervous about it (not going, but finding our new place right then), but hopefully we can find what we’re looking for within those few days and start a lease on April 1st.
  2. I called three moving companies and got estimates.  They’re not outrageous, especially when I add up the costs of renting a truck and doing it ourselves.
  3. Getting rid of things.  Well, there are two big paper grocery bags full of books, a trash bag full of clothes, and a box full of random things, all waiting to be given away.  Next step: actually give them away.

Suds

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My #1 priority for our next apartment is NOT sharing anything to do with our water pressure with anyone else in the building.  It’s not about hot water, it’s about HAVING water.  I ran at lunchtime the other day, so I showered at midday.  Water came on, water was hot enough, I got shampoo in my hair, and water stopped coming out of the shower head.  It trickled down to nothing.  I assume that the residents of the other apartments were doing laundry, running the dishwasher, washing dishes, doing SOMETHING that somehow took MY water pressure away completely.  It came back after a couple of minutes, only to disappear again.  My guess is it was the washing machine, but I was stuck in the shower and unable (and VERY unwilling) to run down to the basement to check.

That wasn’t the first time.  I totally understand planning when I shower around when appliances use a lot of water.  I’m used to that, and I have no problem doing it when it’s only John and my own chores I have to take into consideration.  It’s ridiculous to think I’d have to knock on my neighbors’ doors to find out when they plan to do THEIR chores so I can shower at other times.

This is a downside of living in an apartment in an old house, I guess, but it’s really really the biggest thing I’ll be looking to avoid in the next place.  Other priorities, in no particular order, are having our own washer/dryer in the unit (which will help with the water problem) and finding a place with 1.5 to 2 bathrooms.

To Do, Part 1, Move 3

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We’re past the halfway mark for Annapolis (that happened a month ago).  These next three months are going to FLY by.  We’re super-excited, but the list of things we have to get done is growing.

  1. Visit Oregon again and find a place to live.  I’m on lots of apartment rental sites, but the first thing we have to do is plan the visit.  When are we going?  How long are we staying?  I need to call places and make appointments and maybe try a real estate agent or two.
  2. Call moving companies.  Get estimates.  The last move was 4 and a half months ago.  On the one hand, that’s long enough to have dimmed the pain.  On the other hand, it’s not that long, and I still want movers.  PLUS, we’ll be driving across the country, and I’d rather not caravan.  How miserable would that trip be with John in the truck and me in the car?  Much more fun if we can do it together.
  3. Continue to get rid of stuff.  The purging won’t be as drastic as the last two times, but there are still things we can (and want to) get rid of rather than take along to Oregon.

Hm.  That’s not too bad, actually.  Those are the big items.  The more detailed lists will come up as we make some decisions and get closer.

I don’t feel any different

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I am officially a resident of Maryland now.  I was a Virginia resident for 12 years.  TWELVE.  So this is big.  My car is registered and titled in Maryland, I have Maryland plates, I have a Maryland license, and I have registered to vote in Maryland.  Maryland Maryland Maryland.  Maryland, My Maryland, which is apparently the state song.  (I had to google that.  Never heard of it.)  Maryland.   That is not my favorite state name.  Lacks imagination.  Even Virginia required a teensy bit of imagination.  (Sorry, Maryland.)  I do think, as far as state names go, that Maryland ranks above New York, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey.  At least the North/South states (and West Virginia) started out as one state.  Splitting and taking a whole new name might have been traumatic.

Calling in tired

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I am SO damn sleepy right now.  I got the normal amount of sleep, and I was the usual amount of awake after my shower this morning, but then we went to the DMV.  Which apparently isn’t called the DMV in Maryland, so I guess we didn’t go there.  We went to the MVA.  I got my title transferred to MD, registered the car in MD, and got a new MD driver’s license.  I’m a MD resident now!  And it only took about an hour.  John only needed to get a new license, but that became a much bigger ordeal.  Turns out they got his name wrong when he registered his car (VIII became his last name instead of the suffix), and they can’t fix that at the Annapolis location.  They had to punt that task over to Glen Burnie, and no one had any idea how long it would take.  But they didn’t tell him that right away, oh no.  First, they told him he had to see a supervisor and that he’s next in line for one when they free up.  That took…I’m not sure how long.  But we didn’t leave until about an hour after I was done, and that hour sucked all of my alertness away.

We got back home, and we’ve been catching up on everything that happened at work while we were away, and ALL I WANT TO DO is nap.  My level of tired is approaching just-got-off-a-plane-in-Europe tired, the kind where it’s not safe to drive.  And Jess tells me (via text) that she stayed home today because she’s sick.  Please tell me that is not where this is going.

Maybe I will nap.

Update: I didn’t nap.  Well, I did, but only for maybe 8 minutes.  I did feel better, though, so maybe the 8-minute nap is a thing.

Greetings from Maryland!

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We live in Annapolis now!

Not my picture. Who's had time to take pictures?

Not my picture. Who’s had time to take pictures?

We moved (out and in) last Saturday.  I think you’ll find it marked in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest day ever for us.  Well, maybe the longest hard day.  I’ve been up more hours in a row before, but not working that hard the whole time.  We got up stupid-early to make sure we were first at the truck rental place (not only were we first, we were the only people there), picked up the truck and drove it back to the old apartment, and called Susan and Ken, who had insisted on helping us move out (for which we are eternally grateful).  Their insistence means we had the truck loaded in three hours.  Then we cleaned, turned in our keys (and parked John’s Camaro in the visitor lot – two drivers, two cars, and one truck = return trip), and headed for Maryland.  It took us a little longer to get here than usual, but we showed up about 4pm and met Chuck, whose help was invaluable in discovering that we definitely could not fit the couch through the front door.  I mean, we would have figured that out eventually, but if we hadn’t had Chuck around to help manhandle the couch through every possible angle, it would have taken us much longer to give up.  We left the couch on the curb and continued to unload (2nd floor is WAY preferable to 4th floor).  I finally got around to calling Goodwill to see if they would take the couch, but I nearly left it too late.  I called at 6:45.  They said they’d take it, but they stop taking donations at 7.  Two of our new neighbors practically threw the couch back into the truck, and John and I raced the two miles to Goodwill.  Our couch, which served us well for 13 years, is gone.  Hopefully someone who needs it will pick it up.  In the meantime, we’re couchless.  We finally returned the truck, totally empty, around 9pm, picked up Wendy’s for dinner, and then sat on the floor of the apartment to eat it.  We had almost nothing to sit on.  One papasan chair, one wooden chair.  Oh, and the bathroom was not exactly clean (and neither were we), so we scrubbed it and then scrubbed ourselves, and finally went to bed around midnight.

Sunday, we went to Ikea.  We did NOT go overboard, but we needed workspaces (since we were both working on Monday), and we needed at least a couple more chairs.  So now we own a papasan chair, a wooden chair, two kitchen chairs, and a desk chair.  And two tabletop desks.  We’re still considering how we’re going to replace the couch.  Do we want a new one?  A loveseat?  Two comfy (but not overly large) chairs?  That might be this weekend’s project.  Also to do this weekend: buy a new mattress.  Ours is over 15 years old, and we’re no longer sleeping well on it.

But the apartment!  The apartment is great.  I’ll post pictures after we get past the tornado-wreckage phase of unpacking.

All moving, all the time

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Fair warning: this is probably going to become a Hey, We’re Moving! blog for the next couple of weeks.  Not like it wasn’t before, but we’re kicking it into overdrive!  (I don’t know what means.  Does that refer to cars?  Does my car have an overdrive setting?  Do I have to kick something to make it happen?  I find it unlikely that I would.)

We spent all of last Saturday moving from one storage unit to another.  You might think that sounds like an exercise in futility, a zero-sum game.  Why do it?  Why waste our time?  But you’d be WRONG!  It was the RIGHT thing to do, and it needed to be done, and we feel extra-special good about ourselves for getting that chore behind us.  (I may have had a little extra coffee this morning.)

Why would we leave our storage unit in Ashburn when we won’t be living there anymore?  Wouldn’t it be better to take a smaller unit (one JUST being enough to hold our stuff) that’s close to someone we know and trust?  Someone who could check on things in case of an emergency?  Someone who isn’t going to move again, at least not for a few years?  And if we did need something out of it, we could get it AND visit relatives rather than go back to the place we don’t live anymore.  Yes, it would be better to do that.  To sweeten the deal, the unit up near them is less than half as expensive as the one in Ashburn AND it’s climate-controlled.  So we wore ourselves out moving stuff out of the apartment (dining room table and chairs, my big dresser (which is EMPTY!), and a few boxes), then emptying the storage unit into the truck, then emptying half of the truck onto Sean and Emily’s lawn so we could unearth the eight bookshelves they were taking, then repacking the truck and driving it to the new storage unit, and then emptying the truck into the storage unit.

EVERYTHING FIT IN.  It’s tight, and when you open the door, it looks like it’s all going to explode out onto your head, but it won’t.  (Mom, you were right.  There is a name for that type of closet, and it is named after an old radio show – Fibber McGee’s closet, from the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show.)

If all goes well, we won’t even have to think about that storage unit (except for paying for it) or anything in it for years, not until we get tired of our new life and start thinking about settling somewhere.  That’s kind of cool.