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.
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