The Move: Finishing the House

I realize that I should have backed up and given some additional information.  Which is to say, this is not the actual, final, never-go-back-to-the-house-again move.  Or at least, not for Mick and perhaps not for me.  It is likely that move for the kids, if we can somehow finagle it.  This was the move meant to take the bulk of our "everyday living" stuff North, and to transition from saying we live in Georgia to living in Maine. 

You might remember that we were planning to leave Monday, but pulled that forward to leave Friday.  I had more packing to do than could possibly get done by Thursday night, but grand ambitions are nice, right?  (Keep in mind that I had to not just pack for the trip we were making, but also to get the rest of the house packed and ready for Mick to come back down with a real moving truck and just load it all up. And our basement is like a junior episode of Hoarders, which is to say that as much space as we had, we sprawled to take over and use.  And we still had a good bit of Mick's "Stuff-I-Know-Not-What-It-Is" to go through, too!)  Oh well; we pushed onward. 

Well, Wednesday, our upstairs AC went.  Kaput.  Gone.  Not that it was blowing warm air or couldn't keep up with how hot it was.  It simply wouldn't crank. Period.  Not even a click. 

It was roughly 90 degrees upstairs all day.  I think by bedtime it was 87.

Mick and I slept with just a sheet instead of the big heavy covers, but it was a terrible, terrible night's sleep.  I was hot, he was hot, I couldn't sleep because of how stressed I was about the move and all the non-move-related things I still had to do that I was afraid to forget about ... Thursday, we were both running on empty.

We kept at it, though, working and packing.  And making runs to Home Depot.

By mid-day Thursday, it was clear we would not come close to finishing, and Mick and I made the decision that for one night, we could leave the trailer mostly loaded in the street, continue to pack Friday, and leave Saturday instead.  One extra day.  It had to help.  (We're typically hesitant to leave the trailer in front of the house, and we were petrified of vandals and thieves when it was loaded with what amounted to most of our worldly possessions.)

Dominick came up to the house to help Mick load the trailer Thursday while I continued to pack.  At that point, we'd had almost the entirety of the bedrooms packed and the boxes all staged in CAM's "empty" room ("empty" in quotes because it was hardly empty -- it was filled floor to ceiling with moving boxes!), a good bit of the basement done -- but still an awful lot left to do -- and I was working on the kitchen and my office.  Basement aside, we were really not in a bad place ... just running short on time.

Anyway.  Thursday night, I made the executive decision to "camp out" on the living room floor.  Directly under the ceiling fan, with the downstairs AC at least working, if not cranking (it couldn't keep up, especially with the upstairs being out completely).  We were all running on empty, both mentally and physically, and I am not above rash actions to try to get some sleep.  Mick was in full agreement -- in fact, he started out trying to camp out with me, but he ended up going upstairs at some point.  (Wimp!  Took the bed over the AC!)  I slept like a champ. Best night's sleep I'd had in ages.  A few blankets and some cold air, and I didn't miss the bed for a moment. 

The end result was that Friday was a great day.  We slept in a little and because we'd gotten quite a bit done Thursday and because we'd made the decision to stick around one more day, there was a huge burden lifted.  We were generally in great moods.  After a lazy morning, we took the kids to On the Border for lunch to say good-bye to our friends there.

We came home and continued packing, finished loading the trailer with as much as we could, did some laundry, and called it a night.  Big drive in the morning:  our goal was to get to Winchester, Virginia, which was all of a twelve-hour drive.

This time, the kids slept with me downstairs.

Or more accurately, I had promised WHM he could camp out with me and CAM would sleep in the bed under the fan.  But WHM fell asleep on top of my bed while I was folding laundry, and so I scooped him and put him in his bed, and let CAM camp out with me.

I had the baby monitor downstairs with me and around 4 am I heard a cough.  I thought, "That sounds an awful lot closer than the monitor," and I looked up and there was WHM at the top of the stairs wondering why he wasn't camping out!  (Oh, did I forget to mention?  In the midst of all the moving madness, WHM came down with a cold -- a runny nose and a dry cough.)  Before he could cry, I ran up the stairs and swooped him into my arms and whisked him downstairs to snuggle with me ... at that point, I couldn't risk Mick waking up that early because I knew he wouldn't get back to bed and he needed sleep.  We were bracing for a big drive, in separate cars, so he needed to get as much sleep as he possibly could.

I was also nervous about following, because the last time I followed I really struggled with staying awake.  That was when CAM was an infant, but it was a terrible drive.  So I was super concerned that we ALL got a good night's sleep.

We did.

Thank goodness, because we were going to need it Saturday ...

--Jen

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