Not Dead Yet, part 5

The Move

The sale of the house in New York had been closed, money had been deposited, the date of the new owners moving in had been set, and we had time to pack and do laundry while J & V went to FantaSci in North Carolina. Right?

Wrong!

Let’s start with the fact that the movers, despite instructions to the contrary, had arrived a full day too early! It had been raining on and off all day that day, so they decided to start with the living room… which we hadn’t finished packing up ourselves. We had to stop them at some point because they had packed and loaded boxes that we had meant to pack into the cars to take with us. We had to leave behind the majority of our basement-library bookcases (some of which we had lovingly assembled ourselves from kits) because the movers didn’t even attempt to disassemble them, and were deemed impossible to get up the stairs. (We wound up with almost a dozen shelves with no frames, and had to order MORE bookcase kits from IKEA, of all places!)

Mom and I ended up staying at a motel about a mile away when the movers quit at 3 PM, after telling us a fourth (!) truck was never ordered for us. (How strange is it that we needed three trucks in the first place?) We had apparently misunderstood the lady we spoke with about the available space on each truck and how much we would actually need. (It’s apparently standard practice to SHARE moving space between one or more households.) After they loaded up the books in our rented Pod (last, after the furniture), it became our backup; we didn’t see that coming. We filled it with various small things left behind, like crockery, cutlery, pre-packaged food we never got to eat, and books that had been left behind during the initial packing of the library — or were ordered after the initial pack. (Thanks, Dad.)

We were still packing the Pod, even with the help of Patricia M., one of Dad’s former students, who had taken it upon herself to make sure we were healthy and relatively sane between Dad’s death and the move. Mom and I were late to the closing with J & V, in a separate room from the Buyers because their lawyer’s office was a second-floor walkup; at the time, Mom couldn’t handle stairs without almost crippling herself. (It was bad enough for me on my ankles — each of which I’ve sprained at least once — after five hours, but for Mom, it was almost impossible.)

After we signed the paperwork, the Buyers suddenly wanted an additional thousand dollars to remove the bookcases from the basement because they didn’t want them! (J actually looked mad enough to kill.)

The following morning…

We agreed to split up while traveling; they would drive J’s car, and Mom and I would be on a Delta flight the next day.

During the day, Patricia decided to pull a rabbit out of her hat, because she convinced the Buyers to keep all but one of the bookcases. She also made sure I was nowhere near so I could plead ignorance if necessary. Mom and I packed a few more things in the Pod before the driver (finally!) picked it up at 5:30 PM. At that point, J & V were on their way south, and Mom and I were camped in the home of Jane, Mom’s college best friend. (Jane had originally told us about the house three doors down from her own, which I really thought would be our forever home.) Because of the flight the next morning, Charles, Jane’s husband, was kind enough to drive us to LaGuardia airport.

And to think — we originally planned to drive to Texas because Dad didn’t like the idea of flying. (Keep in mind, this was over a year before all the current Boeing difficulties started coming to light.)

Once in Texas…

We had the closing scheduled for day after arrival, but there was a new wrinkle: the money had to be wired to the real estate company by 4 AM the next day, but there was NOTHING in the paperwork about that. On top of all of that, the checks from the sale of the NY house hadn’t cleared yet!

It turns out, because the checks were paper and not transfers, they had to got through several departments of the bank, including Fraud, because they were so big. Then the movers called for more money because our stuff was still in New Jersey! So we all wound up staying multiple nights in two different motels, with only one sedan between us. (Making me wish J & V had taken the SUV instead of leaving it behind for the time being.) Thankfully, despite no money to go with it, the realtor agreed to let Mom sign the closing paperwork, and both she and the movers realized it would take another 36 hours for the payments to clear.

Despite the cleared payment and having keys to our new home, we had to stay at the second motel, we had to set up our water, gas, and electricity through the websites, specific companies and co-ops. One company didn’t even recognize our new address for several days.

The movers arrived a week after we did, dropping half our books and a lot of our furniture, some damaged, and some so old, they were impossible to replace. We still only had one out of three trucks arrive. The boxes of books piled up in our attached garage (because there was some rule against the movers actually, you know, putting them in our designated spaces!).

Grand total between move and getting ALL our stuff (including the Pod and the SUV all the way from NY): five weeks.

Unpacking, organizing, and living: 14 months and counting.

Texas starting to feel like home: to be determined. (What? I wasn’t going to copy the old Mastercard commercials.)

I end this entry and series of blog posts with an apology. I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I’m not used to condensing so much in as little space as possible. When you have to read through your journal to remind yourself what happened, it becomes hard to choose what to report and what to leave out.

I will return with a story review, maybe even a retrospective of a favorite, long-running TV show. Haven’t made up my mind yet.

Thank you for your patience, my dears. I shall return. Never stop making your own magic.