Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Cooler War - The Move Odyssey: Day -2

We wake up at the crack of Dawn's Butt (which for my hubby means about 8am) and stir up some freeze-dried coffee. We're really going to make it out of here today. Still completely unreasonable. Still way too much going on and needing to pack to actually leave.

Now I absolutely adore our buddy Steve, who was kind enough to show up early and help us load the trucks. Unfortunately he also brings along his other buddy J. J is a...nice guy who specializes in drinking beer, sitting on crates, cracking jokes, and being just useful enough...lifting a box when absolutely pressed to do so, that he comes off as helpful and worthy. Plus he IS okay with the dogs and can help corral them when needed. (The dogs being our Zen and Steve's Crab, boundless friends, and of course we wouldn't expect Steve to come help unless his boy was there and safe,)

But today, surprise surprise, is the day of the Cooler War. If only I'd have known I would have baked cupcakes!

I send stuff down to be packed into the back of the pickup. Quantum, despite the fact that he is having massive leg pains, is doing pretty much all he can do to pack, and send things to be stuffed into the back of the pickup,

CK, our roomie, is wandering around looking lost. He's terrified to do ANYTHING WRONG because I'm in a foul, freaked out mood and he's afraid he'll be blamed. So instead he's completely ineffectual. Pretty much as usual. (Okay granted, I'm in Pure Bitch Mode atm, so I probably WILL jump down his throat if I can find an excuse, My usual excuse is that he refuses to get off his butt to do ANYTHING, and I'm having my point proven.)

So I go downstairs - we've got a pile of stuff that needs to go into the trucks. I make a small pile of these things - last minute first-aid type meds, dog food, cat food, people food. The kind of stuff I'd like to have near at hand if we have an emergency, or if we merely want to make diner on the road. Okay folks, haul ass, put everything else in the truck and put these 5 or 6 boxes in last.

An hour later hubby and I look out the window. Pretty much nothing has moved.  It's just been stirred around a bit.  We finally go to investigate. The major contention is that we made a cooler of two tuperware-type crates, one inside the other and packed them with ice. But according to J we MUST leave this cooler accessible to add more ice (which has already melted) or all our food will go bad. Therefore we can't DARE pack more stuff in the truck. 

"That's fine," I say, "Just pack the rest of the crap and we'll deal with ice later.

 Quantum says, "well, we can make it to Ocala tonight."

An hour later we go down again. Same story. Meanwhile we're too busy packing and cleaning. Another hour. J is sitting on a box, dispensing wisdom from his packing crate soapbox. Little has moved. The cooler is STILL not in the truck. The generator has been pulled out of the pickup and been replaced back into the pickup in a slightly different configuration at least three times.

Another hour. Quantum and I are upstairs doing last minute stuff. We look out the window and our roomie CK, Steve and J have repositioned the generator again. The cooler still isn't in the truck. Quantum goes down to insist that someone put the damn thing in the truck.

The usual Florida afternoon storms are starting to pull in. Once again we give up. Driving through a Florida storm is nasty, and we still don't have the trailers hooked up yet,  We finally give up the dream of getting out of there once again, and return to our bare but still messy condo for the night and order pizza.

Are We Gone Yet? - The Move Odyssey: Day -3

Friday we finally had our stuff together enough to have the fantasy that we're leaving today. Quantum runs down to the tag agency to get the trailers registered. Wee! We're now committed to being in CO within 10 days.

Oh and by the way, the day we actually GET the tags counts as one of those 10 days.  Motor Vehicle of Florida doesn't have 24 hour days, no matter when you FINALLY get through their cluster of paperwork, just DATE days,  Gotta love it.

Well of course, Quantum returns from the tag office with the news that...even though we've contacted them at least 3 times in the past several months (including just two days ago) there's some problem with some clerk at the office who doesn't understand how this all is supposed to work, and no she won't give us a temp tag.

So Quantum runs off to the NEXT local tag agency (the good news about living in a metropolis is there's usually several of these, unlike when I lived in Bofuck NY).  They issue him a set of tags for each trailer and we should be good to go.

Except going isn't happening. By now its mid-afternoon, we still have a ton of shit that needs to be packed and/or thrown out. Most of the as-of-yet un-thrown out stuff is due to the fact that Quantum and I don't seem to be communicating well over this. I've given up waiting on him to pack things that I see as his personal items. He has some fantasy that he's not taking it with him or that maybe it's going to be packed fast...or maybe that its going to pack ITSELF, I suppose. So down to the wire, and with no direction from him other than "I'll deal with it," I'm packing everything of his that might possibly be something he wants to keep, plus a few last minute things of my own and the rest of the compter and/or kitchen things we couldn't live without till now.

Our buddy Steve is here, trying to help us wrangle the very confused and upset puppy, while also helping us evacuate all the unwanted crap from the condo. Chairs, coffee table, whatever, over the railing and CRASH on the ground below, hopefully splintering itself into easier to carry shreds. The furniture was nice when it was new, but now its so roached out and dog-eaten that even Goodwill would refuse it. Eventually we realize there's still too much to do and we call it a night.

The Move Odyssey: The Little Plan That Could

More than 4 months past our original move date and we're finally almost ready to move to Colorado. I'll leave the reasons for why it took us so long for another post. When I get over how ticked I am...someday. For now lets just say that it has to do with a scumbag neighbor who sold us a truck that blew up.

We bought a pair of old travel trailers and refurbished them, and packed every ounce of our stuff that we're taking into them. They're jammed full with barely enough room to move, let alone sleep.

The idea is that our roommate CK will drive the Dodge pickup with our heavier, larger trailer and Quantum will drive the Blazer with CK's smaller lighter trailer. 

We're giving our T-Bird to my niece, and thanks to confusion and procrastination on our parts and possibly my brother's also, my brother still hasn't picked up the car and gotten it up to GA.  And since the tags run out at the end of the month and we're concerned it'll get towed, we've decided that I'll drive it to Atlanta. And of course in the packing chaos the title got mislaid and we had to replace that to the tune of $85 that we can't really afford to be spending. Ugh.

Quantum has put together an itinerary with detailed mileage, elevation and rest-stops. It should take us about 6 days of driving at a slow pace that will allow us to remain energized and give us lots of time to walk the puppy.

So it's me and Quantum, our cat Squeaky, our 1 1/2 year old puppy Zen in our cars, CK and his three cats in the pickup. CK has laboriously built three large travel crates for the cats, made of PVC and plastic webbing. Nice and roomy for the kitties to travel in. Naturally these never end up being used.

The next part of the plan came about due to Florida's wacky motor vehicle laws. Since both trailers were built before titles were necessary for them, neither trailer has a title, all we have are hand scribbled bills of sale. Since the FL government wants to rape their citizens for every penny possible, we're supposed to go in and get a temporary tag, bring it to a weigh station somewhere, have it inspected and then based on that, they'll decide how much they can nail us for a permanent registration. Now since the temporary tag is good for 10 days, we figure that's enough time to get to our land in CO. After all, the idea is to live in these till we can build a house. We don't ever intend to drive them again.  So why actually spend the bucks to register them?

When we FIRST planned to leave, back in April and the truck blew up, we were right in the middle of Mercury Retrograde. For those who aren't familiar with astrology, it's a time when things like travel and communication tend to screw up. We'll guess what...just as we're getting ready to leave, Mercury goes into retrograde once again (it happens about 2-3 times a year). Oh the fun.

That's the plan. And you know what they say about the best laid plans....