this could become a habit

Movin' right along in search of good times and good news,
With good friends you can't lose,
This could become a habit!
Opportunity knocks once let's reach out and grab it (yeah!),
Together we'll nab it,
We'll hitchhike, bus or yellow cab it

straight to the point, i'm great at packing and moving. i could definitely share my expertise with others who have not made 8 large scale moves and several more small moves in 18 years. i'm pretty good at pulling together a timeline of tasks and weeding out the junk and collecting boxes. i don't think my expectations are too high concerning what should be happening at certain junctures of the moving day. however, this was going to prove to be the worst move of all the moves we've done. 

in order to avoid a play by play of the moving day atrocities, i'll do some quick bullet points:

*we interviewed and booked movers who came highly recommended by neighborhood people and they had done a few hauling projects for us previously so we felt good about that. we booked moving and packing and cleaning services. we discussed the moving day timeline and the movers agreed that our plan of attack was not going to be a problem.

*i felt anxious about the time frame so i went ahead and packed 90% of our stuff beforehand to make the day of festivities go smoothly. we had several dear, sweet friends help along the way. we moved the majority of the basement stuff and bedroom stuff to the main floor and garage.

*my worries were not unfounded as the movers showed up 2 and a half hours late with a single uhaul truck, the crew foreman plus only 3 scrawny, first time movers. we had planned on being almost completely loaded by noon. it was 11:30. (how i know i'm not being unreasonable: when we moved from lawrenceville to dacula, we had the first truck loaded, driven across town and unloaded in 2 hours. that's the kind of efficiency i'd come to expect from professional movers.)

*they brought 10 boxes total for packing. TOTAL. 

*the crew foreman announced upon arrival that the movers should take all the breaks they needed throughout the day.

*they(all 4) took 1 hour to dismantle a bunk bed that took thomas 1 hour to put together himself. 

*thomas went to get another uhaul because he knew the one they brought would not be enough. he was concerned that the truck retrieval process took too long and the movers would be waiting on him. nope, after 3 hours, the truck was not even 1/3 of the way filled and they were taking a lunch bunch. it was preceded by a long water break and followed up with a smoke break.

*i went to home depot and bought a boatload full of boxes for the last 10% of stuff that needed to be packed. THEY DID NOT PACK A SINGLE THING, despite our agreement for moving AND packing. i packed like a woman possessed. packing is the only thing that kept me out of jail that day. my wonderful friend lindsay and her girls surprised us to say goodbye, saw our predicament and pitched in without being asked and did more packing and organizing than the movers. 

*by 5 o'clock, they were finishing up the first truck and needed to go to dinner. 

*our whole family went to our favorite mexican restaurant because we knew we weren't going to get out of town in any sort of reasonable time. we were an embarrassing level of disgusting and sweaty and a messy from all our hard work. i fought back tears the entire meal. 

*our dear friends, paula and logan, took our kids for the evening since we STILL weren't on the road at 7.

*one of the movers asked me if i wanted the box with the TV in it taped shut. read that again. 

*thomas had to help the professional movers attach the car dolly to the back of the moving truck in the dark.

*they were finally "done" at 10pm that night. not really, because there was so much stuff still left in the house so thomas and i made the decision to make the 5 hour trek again at a later date and come back and finish up by ourselves. 

*we headed to a hotel, both of us so mad at the whole situation we could chew fire. we had planned on being in waycross by evening and have the moving trucks arrive sometime later that night.

*we got on the road early the next morning and made it to waycross around noon.

*the people who lived in our house previously were renters and they left the house a mess and had allowed the AC unit to flood the ceiling. my mother in law was there cleaning like the dickens so that we didn't have to put our stuff on top of other people's filth. 

*the movers were unloading when we got there but instead of putting things in the assigned rooms they were just dumping everything in the garage or dining room. 

*the movers refused to move the bonus room couch upstairs because said they could not get the couch through the door. they claimed that they "measured it with a shoe" and knew it would not fit. we just wanted them out of our lives at this point so we had them leave it in the garage.

*later that week, thomas and a friend moved the couch up the stair and through the door with ZERO PROBLEMS.

*at the end of move in day, i was hiding in our closet because i could not ever bear to make eye contact with these movers anymore. they were also avoiding thomas because he was about to spit nails and he's quite physically intimidating. we paid them and they left and i burned sage to cleanse the house of their presence. 

*instead of doing a fun overnight trip to the beach for our 18th anniversary, just thomas and me, we drove up to atlanta to get the rest of the stuff out of our house and returned the SAME DAY. 5 hours one way, 5 hours back. 

*we stopped at a peach farm on the way.

*we unavoidably sat in this typical atlanta traffic:

*dear sweet paula came at a moment's notice with her girls to help up clean up the house really quick so we could get it under contract, since the aforementioned cleaning team NEVER SHOWED UP. they did have the gall to text me three weeks later to see if we still needed that cleaning service. the movers also left behind their uhaul dolly and a fancy tape measure, which they clearly didn't even need since they measured my couch in SHOE LENGTHS. the movers texted me about both the dolly and the tape measure but they are now mine forever.

*late night in butts county, georgia with all the stuff the movers left behind in our uhaul. 

*how the TV in our living room looks after the move:

*my back patio for the past two months, including the piles of junk the previous tenants left behind:

*but we're here and everything is fine and everything will be fine because everything has always been fine because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

THE END