The car, the packing and moving truck day...

This was a long couple of days, you may want to grab your favorite beverage and a snack – as the post is also long!

I cannot figure out how to get line breaks in here, even though they show up in my post page... sorry!

Car Stuff

My man Issac spent about 7 hour at the house on Sunday working on the car. Ran into trouble with the a/c and could not get it to work… I was a bit panicked, but he was confident the answer could be found in one of his books at home. He came back on Monday about 11 am and was there until 9 pm. He got everything done, including the a/c and he was able to fix the passenger seat with a spring it took me 5 hours to find – it came from a brake drum kit. It works! Whatever. Sorry Sarah, come to Ohio and you can sit in a seat that doesn’t slide about like an amusement park ride. And Sarah, thanks a gadzillion for the loan of your car for those days! I had to use it many many times and simply could not have managed this situation without a set of wheels while Issac got mine road ready.

T Minus 8 and Counting

Well, midnight on Tuesday night and the movers are due here in 8 hours. I had made arrangements to have a packing service come to the house between 2 and 3 today to shrink wrap the furniture and take it to the garage to stage it for loading the truck. Called them at 3:15 and was told that they’d be there about 4 – had to go switch trucks in Alameda, drive thru for some food and then would be at my place. I got a call about 4:10 saying the primary person of the packing service had to head straight for X place (I don’t recall) because her mom fell and maybe broke her hip. She was very sorry but she could not make it. She would call later with the names of the guys that could load the truck at 8 the next morning. She was suppose to have already given me their contact info, but hadn’t. Maria and I suspected it was a bit of a lie. I went out to Home Depot to find some casual laborers and on to U-haul to buy a couple of rolls of shrink wrap. The guys did a great job of shrink wrapping the furniture and getting it to the garage. I took them back to Home Depot at 9 pm with a plan to pick them, plus 1 more guy, up at the same place at 7 the next morning.

Maria has been a pure Angel and deserves something like, oh, I don’t know, a new car maybe? She has really been a great asset to have here. I sent her off to bed at 10 because I had to try to get Snuggie inside, after all the chaos all day and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get him in before 3 or 4 am. He was a doll and came in about 10:45. I now have to take down the blinds and continue to pack the computer and several other boxes…. I have about 7 hours of work to do before 8 am… let the fun begin.

M- Day or Toss the Cookies

Well, I sent myself to bed at 2 and was up at 6. Went to pick up the guys at 7 and when I got back, the Broadway truck was parked in front of the house. I had that o-shit feeling ‘cause I was not ready at all. The guys did a great job of getting things down to the truck – that is, out of the garage and house, and down the driveway to the truck. The driver could not come down the drive, so everything had to be hauled to the street… At least he made it down my street, the wires looked pretty low to me, and I was a bit worried that he would not be able to make it to the house at all and we’d have to drag the stuff down my street. One of the day laborer guys was grabbing everything in sight and throwing it in boxes as fast as he could. That was great, except some of the stuff was meant to be used to clean the place after the truck was gone, and some was meant to go with us in the Jeep for the cats or for use during the week until the truck arrived. I had to keep an eye on him because he had no English, I had no Spanish and Maria’s Spanish was very rusty and she was not always aware of what went where or why.

The boys were, I said were, shut in the bathroom when this all started about 7:30 am. The bathroom has a pocket door. We got the bedroom/office mostly cleared out and I shut the pocket door between the bedroom/office and the bathroom and then the one in the living room, just in case the cats got out of the bathroom. Well, ha ha ha ha. I was outside and walked by the bedroom windows and all 3 cats were walking around the bedroom… Snuggie had broken them out, the little shit! I made a dash for it before he broke through the living room door and would have been able to bolt out the front door. I put them in the bedroom closet, with a folding door. I still shut the pocket door between the bedroom and living room.

Not 10 minutes later, one of the guys starts yelling to me, grinning from ear to ear and pointing into the bedroom. Gatos! He laughed. Yea buddy, real fucking funny – I am trying to make sure you hombre’s don’t grab my roommate or landlords belongings out of the garage and throw them on the truck, and I am trying to keep track of what Dalton, the driver wants to have brought down and in what order, and now the Snuggster has made another escape. I was not laughing, but was a wee bit proud of the little shit. He is a cat’s cat through and through.

I found a screwdriver and managed to lock them in the bathroom from the outside. I then, knowing Snug as I do, locked the living room pocket door in the same way. About that time I got a call from the BE office telling me my bank card was not approved. Nice. She was pretty sure it was just because the charge was so big (that is comforting) and I was to call the bank and ask the bank to raise the daily limit to allow for the moving cost to be run through.

Sedi showed up with a most generous gift of a very large blue Persian rug we used to have in the living room. A gift for the new house. It was hard to accept it, as it is such a nice rug and, all things considered, I didn’t feel I should have it. She was adamant, and we loaded it on the truck. Not long after this, running helter skelter, checking on the escapees and trying to keep only the right stuff headed for the truck, the driver, Dalton, calls me over and says, “There is no way all your stuff is going to fit in the 10 foot that was reserved for you.” It is 11 am and I am anticipating hitting the open road in the Jeep by 1 or 2 pm… I swallowed HARD, what? (he seemed to have a sense of humor and I was praying he was just fucking with me for some entertainment) – sadly, I was not a source of amusement for him, he was dead serious about it.

My chest started to constrict and my brain went whirling. I protested, “your office staff said 10 foot was appropriate for a one bedroom…” He was confident I had WAY more stuff than your average one bedroom… he’s been doing this for 5 years, so, how do I argue with that????????????? His wife, Kitty, was on the scene and concurred, except she thought all that stuff was shoved into “a bedroom.” Hmmmmmmmmm, she went back up to the truck cab to sleep. Apparently I have too much shit for my own good! I inquired as to what one does in this situation.

He said he could call another driver in the area (seems they had 8 trucks in Northern CA all picking up people moving out of state) and see if another driver could pick up 3 feet of stuff from the load that was to be last on Dalton’s truck. He said I had way more than the extra 3 feet he had to give to me. Again, I inquired what one does in such a situation. About this time, Todd from the BE office called. At this point, I AM HAVING A BLAST.

Maria and Sedi were concentrating on putting up the tinting film I got to help keep the heat down in the back of the Jeep, and were wisely giving me a decently wide berth. Self preservation I expect. Dalton responds to my inquiry with “rent a truck and drive it” as if, I with 3 cats and a vehicle, was in a position to go get a rental truck and now have Maria and I both drive straight through. Pull the car? No sillies the cats had to have a climate controlled place to hang. Well at this point I was at that holy fucking cow point. I began to pace in the truck, I had 3 guys on the clock just hanging out while Dalton looked at me – he was also on the clock – wondering what I was doing with all this crapped. He then said, and Dalton said a great many things to me and Maria throughout the day, that my cats sure did have a lot of furniture. I did not find that amusing in the moment, but I will admit in typing it up that I am laughing out loud. I cannot say it is because I find it funny, but that I am worn to a freaking nub. Punchy. I am actually sitting outside a truck stop somewhere in NM while Maria grabs a nap in the car. It is about 7 am and the heat is starting up. I am tired and remembering the hellish fun, all I can still do is laugh.

Back to pacing in the truck… I walk down the ramp and ask Sedi to put blue tape on the remaining, yes, remaining furniture on the ground to identify it as priority for trying to fit into the remaining space on the truck. I can hear you wondering what was on the ground… well, a large leather recliner, 4 bookcases, a tv stand, a microwave stand, my office sized fridge, the microwave, a couple of smaller shelves, my massage table, the lawn chairs and few assorted odds and end – that constitutes the “furniture. ” The other stuff, the no room at the inn stuff, comprised the rowing machine, the bicycle, the puppet theater, 2 utility shelves for storage, the kayak, a couple of cat trees, and a few other things that escape my attention at the moment, but the pile was big. The knot in my stomach was bigger, as I pointed to things that were to be moved over into the “not moving to Ohio” side of the driveway.

I would have thrown up, had I bothered to feed myself, or Maria, that morning, but since I had not done so, there was nothing to offer up. Apparently I was pale. I felt pale. It was a bad stretch of time. While waiting to hear about the approval for the extra 3 feet of space on the truck, Dalton proceeded to tell me that Mormons are walking slide rulers. He told me a group of them packed his truck so full that you could not see any gaps in the packing. He said one guy would yell out that he needed something that was x by x by x and the ground crew would produce just such an item. Said he never saw anything like it. He professed to not be a Mormon and then told me how he was thrown out of a Mormon service for outing the Bishop’s wife for sneaking cigarettes – apparently Dalton, the bad boy non-Mormon dating a Mormon woman was being singled out in service for smoking, drinking and cussing. He says he stood up and said he was proud of his behavior and did it in the open, unlike the Bishop’s wife, who would come bum a light from him then go hide and smoke. He said he was thrown out before he was able to sit back down. Having spent 6 hours with Dalton, I am not surprised at any of it.

Well, we got approval for the extra 3 feet and Dalton committed himself to getting as much of my stuff in that 3 feet as his non-Mormon self was capable of. I roamed around sick to my stomach trying to formulate plans for dealing with the leftovers.

Meanwhile, Sedi and Maria went for much needed food and some items to help “cat trick” the Jeep. They worked on the Jeep most of the day while I tied up loose ends, and paced, and tried not to toss my cookies. I have had toooooooooo much stress over the last year plus, and my tolerance is now nearly non-existent. The clock was ticking by as he rearranged and pushed and pulled and calculated. I checked periodically on the boys, who remained secure in the bathroom. Thank goodness for small favors. Dalton managed to get almost everything crammed into that 13 feet of space. I had to sacrifice a few items, and most of them Sedi was willing to take. A cooler, a bike, both utility shelves and sadly, the puppet theater that I so wanted to give to my great nieces. Such is life. None of it was worth sorting out a way and paying more to get it to Ohio. The kayak and the rowing machine made it, as did all the cats’ furniture.

It was 2 pm when Dalton and Kitty pulled out. Those 6 hours produced many stories that Maria and I intend to share with each other on the road. We know way tooooo much about Dalton. He is very family oriented though. He asked if it was ok if he got my stuff to me on the 6^th so he could spend the 4^th with his family and grandkids. Given his heroic efforts to get my excessively large one bedroom on the truck, who was I to say no to family time? The house is still not closed, so later may be better…

Well, I slammed the fellows back to the Home Depot and came back to commence to the final cleaning. Maria and Sedi were still working on the Jeep. By 8 pm, yes 8 pm, we had the inside “cat ready” and had the rooftop carrier on and loaded – (Christi – ask me about the strapping for the cargo carrier--Maria would prefer to not have to remember it – something about burning a hole in her brain…), and we had the hitch mounted cargo carrier secured, loaded and cinched down. Only thing left was to load the boys, turn in the keys and return Sarah’s car to her. Long ass day, but I did NOT throw up!

Maria did an amazing job of Snuggie proofing the back of the Jeep. We are “almost” sure he cannot breach it. It is the Snugmiester though. We rolled out, with me in the lead in Sarah’s car, Maria driving the Jeep and the boys, and Sedi following to check for any issues with the cargo carrier or the roof rack. Aside from leaving a bag of extra cinch straps on the roof, we were road worthy. We had the extra Boston Market cornbread that Anne gave us for the road, a bag of beef jerky and a big bag of cashews that Sedi got at the Persian market and three 12 packs of sodas riding in a cat carrier on the hitch mounted cargo rack. We rolled down to Berkeley and dropped Sarah’s car off and collected a bag of very tasty homemade biscuits. I double checked the strapping. We committed the first of a long string of dietary sins and drove through the McDonalds. We rolled out of town by a glorious orange sun hanging low in the sky that gave way to a glorious orange moon. I gave the credit to Dad for making sure my parting views of my beloved home was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Yes, the smoke from the wildfires helped… but I am giving this one to Dad.

We were headed to Bakersfield or bust. We stopped a few times to check our rooftop strapping and our cargo carrier cinching and all was well except we drove 200 miles without fully zipping the cargo carrier on the roof, but don’t seem to have lost anything…Maria was driving as we neared the vicinity of Bakersfield and the lovely “check engine” light came on, but not before I woke up and realized I may have failed to give her very explicit directions on catching 58 in Bakersfield. Well, we had missed 58 about 10 miles back so we turned around and on the way back, we got the lovely engine light warning. We pulled off on dark and desolate exit, checked the oil (we are adding a pint every half a tank of gas – that’ll help you make good time..) and when we started the car back up the light was gone off. We decided to ease our way back to the junction of 5 and 58 and bag it at the Motel 6 there and check further on the situation in the morning. It was about 2:30 am when Maria went to the room and I bedded down, well as down as I could get, in the back of the Jeep with the boys.

The boys, you ask…

Hardly a peep out of them. Eerie really. Jaz sat on the single tier condo looking out the window, very dog like, Tashi installed himself inside the condo and Snuggie claimed the pet carrier for his hideaway. Quiet. I began to place bets with myself about how long it would be before the howling started and how long before Snuggie was in the front of the Jeep. Maybe they feel too sick to be pissed off.