Adventures in Moving

This week was moving week. In other words, this week was hell.

Last Saturday, six days before movers were to arrive and needed to clear out of my place, I arrived home from my race, surveyed the situation, and determined that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to get everything packed up in six days. So I did what any responsible 32 year adult does when faced with an insurmountable task -- I called my mother, begged her to get on a plane to Chicago and come help me, and then took a nap. When I woke up, I went out for drinks. That's good, old-fashioned workmanship for ya.

I despise moving. Absolutely hate it. Which may explain why I found myself in such a desperate sitaution less than a week before moving day. This move was particularly daunting because of the organization it required....I essentially divided all of my belongings into five categories: 1) pack for trip; 2) pack for my six-weeks of pre-trip couch surfing/ Ironman training; 3) storage; 4) goodwill; 5) trash. I'm not real big on organization either. I really hated this week.

Fortunately you are never to old to rely on the help of mom, and my mother saved the day by dropping everything to come help me. She also helped out with the mid-week drive to and from Cleveland to drop my two cats off with my sister (and her dog) for the year. Yeah, I'm a cat lady. A really guilty-feeling, slightly traumatized cat lady, though, so let's talk about something else.

I don't have any particularly interesting anecdotes about moving this week, we've all been through it and we all know how stressful and exhausting it can be. But for anyone out there who may be contemplating a move and needs a gentle reminder of the perils that may befall you, here are a few lessons:

• You may, in an effort to just get one room done, accidentally pack up all your silverware on Tuesday, and then, on Thursday, realize you've fallen to a new low when you eat an entire bowl of rice with your hands.
• You'll probably, at some point, drop something heavy, like, say, a printer, on your foot, and have that momentary panic that you've just ruined your triathlon season.
• You'll make so many runs to the Salvation Army drop-off that the volunteers start calling you by name.
• If you have swim practices on your schedule, you'll start squeezing them in very late at night, and you'll realize that the midnight crowd at the 24 hour gym is very, very... special.
• You'll sorta forget to eat real meals and will reach moments of insane hunger that lead you to make really bad nutritional decisions.... like snacking on gels because there's nothing else around, or eating caramel corn for "lunch."
• It is possible to have a strong 17 mile run just a few hours after said "lunch" of caramel corn. It is not, however, suggested.
• You'll suck it up and ask friends to do favors for you that seem completely unfair to ask-- like taking both of your bikes in to the bike store to get repaired before RAGBRAI while you drive to Cleveland.
• Inevitably, something else in your life will go wrong (like, say, a bank, completely botching the replacement of a lost debit card, leaving you without the ability to obtain cash when you have movers already at your condo that need to be paid in cash), and you will respond in a completely uncharitable (read: bitchy) way.
• If there's enough stress in your voice when you're speaking to customer service at a bank, they'll immediate escalate your call to the VIP division, even when you're not a VIP. There needs to be a lot of stress in your voice for this to happen.
• You'll start to get by on 3 hours of sleep a night, and you'll ask yourself, "didn't I just quit a job to get away from this nonsense?"

So it was a fun week.

But now, I'm all packed up, with my stuff split between a storage facility and my car. And we're in a car on the way to RAGBRAI. So things are looking up!

 

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