As I’ve told you, I’ve moved a lot over the years. I can’t even count the number of times on all the fingers and toes. Some of these moves had to happen very, very quickly, given my often poor choices in my love life. Others were far more predictable, some even planned.
None have even come close to the disaster that has been the Florida to Washington Follies. I would say I can’t even begin to tell you how everything played out, but well, that’s what RobZerrvations are for.
It all began with a need to be in Seattle. This has been well documented here. The State made me an offer I could not refuse. But getting here was much more difficult than I imagined. After all, I ended up in Florida with all my worldly possessions in the back of my Windstar. But the move back was going to take a very large truck and tons of logistics.
I thought I had everything handled. I found a company online that would ship my car to Seattle. The price was about what I expected, so I made the order and plopped down the money on my credit card. They sent an acknowledgement and everything seemed hunky dory, at least for a week.
But the week went by and I never heard from them, then another week. It was time for me to fly out to Seattle for the final time and my car was still stuck in Florida. To make a long story short, it’s still in Florida as of today. At this rate it may never get to Seattle, largely because the first company was a fraud, I had to invoke the bank and it’s nearly impossible to get a car out of Florida in April because all the snowbirds (i.e., “old f**ks) are shipping their cars back to the Northeast. There just aren’t a lot of car carriers coming west, even though we all know this is the place to be these days (Seattle was just named the Best Place for Hipsters, as we all know).
Oh well, so the car was a bit of a logistical nightmare. At least the move would be a snap. Instead of doing the rent a truck and driving thing, we decided to spring for a real moving company. They were scheduled to pick everything up Wednesday, April 25th so the Janmeister could fly out on the 26th. Midmorning I get a call from a teary Janmeister. The moving truck wasn’t showing up. They couldn’t find a driver. As we know, trucks don’t drive themselves. So all our stuff would be remaining in our condo while Jan caught her flight.
Jan had diligently packed the house in the intervening two weeks since I had left. She had it all mapped out, right down to convincing the Goodwill truck folks to take all the furniture that they wouldn’t put in their truck down to the dumpster in exchange for making them breakfast. Freaking brilliant, by the way.
As you could guess, this created complications since there would be no one to supervise the loading of our stuff. Frantic phone calls flew back and forth. They didn’t know when they would be able to pick up our stuff, then it might be Thursday, then next week, perhaps never, and finally Saturday, three days late. That was the bad news. The good news was they would actually be shipping our stuff to Seattle, not warehousing it somewhere in the dimly lit warehouses of Fort Pierce, Florida.**
Jan’s car was being shipped out Thursday, shortly after she flew out. Her car is leaving Florida early. Mine is still there. I think it likes Melbourne, since that’s where it spent a large part of its life as Diablo’s ride, not mine. I really should have just driven it through the middle of the house we had both once owned and left it there for all the trouble it has given me. It just doesn’t want to leave Florida.
So, the good news is we have a house, but it won’t be furnished for two or three weeks. We have one car on the way, but it won’t be here for another week. We have another car waiting for a ride, but it doesn’t seem to be that excited to leave the state, even though it has our inflatable bed that was to be our sole piece of furnishing until our real bed arrives, if it ever does arrive.
All of this is costing us an absolute bundle as you might guess. I could have not only gone on a cruise to the Caribbean in one of those big suites for what it’s costing us, but purchased one of the islands we stopped at along the way.
But I have renewed hope that everything will show up… eventually. There’s little else that could possibly go wrong.
Still, I can’t shake this feeling that I am going to come home from work one day, tune into the KIRO evening news and hear about a horrific pile up on I-90 in Montana. I would see the video feed showing a large moving van that had collided with a car carrier, bursting into flames. And as the camera zoomed in, I would see the Black Widow, its plastic doors and fenders melting in the inferno and all my most private possessions, blowing across the highway, state troopers chasing after an errant pair of black boxers with metallic skulls that was heading for a field of wheat.
At this point, I just wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Lord knows everything else has gone wrong. And I so loved those boxers.
In the Emerald City, wondering if the Black Widow is having a night on the town in Melbourne, if it is indeed possible to have a night out on the town there,
– Robb
** They didn’t show up on Saturday, by the way. It’s Monday and supposedly they will be there today… Supposedly being the operative word.