When Gareth called home the other night to sing bedtime songs with Gaby and chat about our respective days...his in New York and mine here at the asylum, he asked me how many boxes I'd gotten packed.
It took me a few minutes to peel myself off the ceiling and when I'd calmed down I told him that not as many as I would have liked because I had a lot of "interference." He then asked me, "Right, what do you mean interference?"
I told him I'd send him a couple of pictures of exactly the kind of "interference" I was dealing with.
So now, when anyone has the nerve to ask me how much packing I'm getting done and how things are coming with the move, I'm just going to direct them to this post. Seriously people, I can't get a damn thing done with these cats around. I don't know whose idea it was to have FOUR cats. FOUR damned cats that love boxes and eating paper. And when they aren't eating paper, the little shits are shredding it.
Pardon my messy cabinets. I've been neglecting them as I slam boxes around my kitchen and haven't had a chance to wipe the smoodge off the front of them.
Damn cats!
Those two boxes pictured above, just happened to be the boxes I was planning on putting things in to go to Goodwill. So, if someone out there gets a overweight Ragdoll cat along with their hand mixer or electric can opener, it's not my fault!
*******
Realistically, as far as the packing goes, that situation has changed rather dramatically recently. The company that offered Gareth his new job has a very small relocation assistance program and we originally had planned on taking care of it ourselves...packing and doing all the moving. Hence my current mental state of mind. A move this big on less than two weeks notice was going to send me completely 'round the bend, which honestly is not that long of a trip for me as it is. We had talked about getting a few quotes from movers but assumed it would be way out of our budget so I didn't seriously pursue it.
Ever since we got home from NY late Saturday night I have been stressing worse than anything over the move. There's just absolutely no way I can handle this alone. Even having Matt here to help wasn't enough as he has been working more hours with the approaching Christmas holiday. I was feeling overwhelmed and at loose ends with the whole thing.
Gareth asked me if I'd ever gotten around to calling any movers and I told him no and he asked me just to do it anyhow to humor him. So I did. We had three companies come in and do a walk-through of the house and all the crap and give us estimates. I asked them to give us separate estimates for load and unload only and then a full service pack, load, and unload.
One of the companies we asked to give us a quote was someone Gareth had worked with at his former company. They'd moved them and were, in Gareth's words, "Brilliant and utterly professional." The VP of the company was the one who actually showed up to do our walk-through and he was beyond professional and answered all of my questions and even took time to answer Matt's questions as well...this can be a challenge at times because Matt gets a little overly-focused and tends to be repetitive and sometimes has trouble understanding more than one concept at a time. Mr. Mover Man was patient with him and spent a lot of time explaining everything to him. To be honest, I didn't think we had a chance in hell of any of these three companies coming back with a quote/estimate in our budget, but if by some chance they did, I wanted it to be this company. Mr. Mover Man impressed me, while the others? Not so much. I have "issues" dealing with men anyhow, especially strange men, and the other two men who were here were a tad abrupt, almost cold and didn't even bother to ask me if I had any questions.
Mr. Mover Man's company (that's not the real name of the company...if you want to know who it is, email me. They are international and very reputable), was even recommended to us by other people when they first heard there was a chance we'd be moving. No one had a bad word to say us except that "they tended to be on the pricey side" but to be honest, I was expecting that.
After the all of the walk-throughs were completed I had a mini-meltdown and I'm not real proud of how I handled the stress. I felt like things were spinning out of control and I ended up binging and purging. Yeah, I know...I've still got a long ways to go.
Anyhow, after about an hour of crying, I went out and sat on the back deck and looked up at the sky. I threw my hands in the air and said, to no one in particular, "OK I give up! I'm obviously a physical failure and a mental reject, so help me out!" I guess I said a little prayer because I asked God to either grant me more mental and physical stamina and sanity to cope with this and get me through all the packing and moving, or bring me more help in the form of other people - hell I'd even settle for green aliens from Mars just as long as they helped, or provide me with copious amounts of Valium and Xanax and enough string to make myself a necklace and bracelet out of both.
A couple of hours later I got the first quote back from Mr. Mover Man himself. I had a slight heart attack when I saw the quoted price for a full service move which meant they come in and do the packing, loading, move all the shit to NY and then unload. It was within our budget.
I waited a few more hours to hear from the other two and nothing came in, not until the next day and both were more than $1500 over the price given to us from Mr. Mover Man.
Long story short...Mr. Mover Man's company will be packing up the asylum and moving us.
There is one caveat. I have to get rid of 3000lbs of stuff before the 12th. This is harder to do than I thought because Gareth isn't here to tell me not to take something to Goodwill, but then again, maybe that's a blessing. Besides, if he hasn't used whatever it is, in the 2+ years we've been here, what are the chances he's going to miss it?
I guess God decided that dealing with the money end of things was a hell of a lot easier than dealing with my sanity (or lack thereof) and physical coping issues...
Toady I got rid of somewhere between 250lbs-350lbs of clothing, kitchen crap, toys and odds and ends. Only 2750lbs to go!
