Yesterday was just one of those days. I had the honor to write and send both a “Congrats on your New Baby” card and a “With Deepest Sympathy” card. Cue Alanis Morsette’s “Ironic.
One of my best friends from optometry school just had a baby. And I could have sworn he said they were having a girl…well, to my surprise we get the birth announcement that Leon made their way into the world on Labor Day. I didn’t want to confirm the sex of Leon and make things awkward because it’s not the most gender neutral name out there…So I kept my card and gift to Leon and THEIR parents gender neutral. Animals wearing binkies. Completely harmless. Only downside is, Leon’s parents aren’t on social media so I won’t see if they are wearing cute pink or cute blue onesies. Upside is, Leon’s parents aren’t on social media so they won’t be seeing this blog post!
One of my other best friends from optometry school lost her mom this week. And this one really stings. It’s not because she said that I was the “prettiest white girl she’s ever seen” (she has 3 daughters who are all Caucasian) while being a little drunk at my friend’s bachelorette party and feeding the dog weed gummies; but it’s because she was such a great human and will be sorely missed.
Additionally, I, like many others in the hockey community, have been completely rattled by the tragic killing of the Gaudreau brothers. Such an unfathomable loss.
These type of events really put things into perspective. I find that I’m holding Dr. Greys Anatomy just a little longer before we go to bed, being a little more patient with her leaving her dirty socks on the floor and making sure she knows just how much I appreciate her and all she has done for us as a family. I’m sure she feels a little smothered right now.
It can be tough writing a blog about events that really don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things and I find that I’ve been putting off writing a new post for these reasons. I even went for a 30 minute run in the heat of the day…and it’s 103 degrees outside. But here I am, waiting for my love to come home from work typing away, hoping to make at least one person smile or laugh today. I think we could all use some of that.
So here we go…Murphy’s Move.
I thought our move would be easy, and that was my first mistake. We were only moving 20 minutes down the street and a good portion of our stuff was still packed up from our initial move to California. We still had moving boxes, moving blankets, tape, packing paper and bubble wrap. It really seemed like we were good to go.
While Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy was hard at work painting the kitchen cabinets in our sauna of a garage, I was in the air conditioned home packing boxes. Most of our boxes were labeled from the move prior, and the smart thing would have been to try to pack up those same boxes with their respective labels. I put very little effort into that and that was my second mistake… our boxes weren’t clearly labeled so when the time came to find something really important, like medicine, I had no idea where it was.
We decided to get rid of our sofa. We promised ourselves that when we bought a new house, we’d get a new sofa to go along with it. Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy hated the sofa I bought before I met her. It really wasn’t comfortable, you just kinda sunk into it, the material wasn’t super conducive to allergies, and I think the back support broke in one of the three moves it had been through. I once pulled a muscle in my neck by just sitting in it and putting my arm up along the back. The icing on top of the cake was the Universe’s Cat Distribution System brought us our Boba who was just a tiny little thing…but also had fleas and loved our broken couch.
So we went couch hunting, in the dead of summer…wearing shorts…our sweaty legs would stick to the sofa. It was great. We went to several different stores but in our heart, we knew we’d end up with a Costco sofa. It’s just too good of a deal to pass up. We ended up getting a leather, reclining sectional sofa for a great price and were so excited for it. There was another one available online only that was white leather that we thought about getting, but between 2 cats, future children, and me who drops food like it’s no one’s business, we decided this was not the best option.
So come trash day, we drag our flea ridden sofa to the curb—our waste management company allows for 1 free pick up of large furniture items a year and we decide we are going to be without a sofa for at least 2 weeks while we move and wait for our new, luxurious sofa to be delivered.
Fast forward to moving week. Well, Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy and I learned that we did not have enough time to finish the cabinets, have the walls painted, have the baseboards painted and installed for our new floors, and have the house cleaned come moving day. Looking back on things, we should have repainted before installing the floors, but we thought we were on such a tight timeline with the tile installers that we wanted to get that done first. Our tile guy was going to have his painter come by and paint the baseboards for installation, but he was going to paint them inside as our garage was not big enough so we needed to prep the floors that were just installed. It took me 3 whole days to prep the floors with brown resin paper and frog tape. By the end of the weekend I had bruises all over my knees.
All the hard work was done—the house was prepped and ready to paint. But we have really tall ceilings….and there was an area around the skylight that needed to be painted from a leak.. the Mrs and I looked at each other “What if we just hire a painter?”
Let me be clear, we didn’t NEED a man in this situation. We could have done it ourselves. We were prepared to wear our ski helmets while climbing the ladder to paint the ceiling and skylights. We had a plan to do it ourselves…we just didn’t have the willpower nor the time. So no, we didn’t need a man, but we really wanted one.
We hired Fletcher’s painter, we will call him Syed, to paint the interior of our home. While it’s cosmetic, the house desperately needed to be repainted. It hadn’t been painted in probably 20 years and the areas that were painted were so patchy—you could see the old paint color coming through. Not to mention the scuff marks left by Eileen, Eileen’s movers, Eileen’s movers that were actually us, and the floor guys.
Syed and his team were able to paint the entire interior of our house and our baseboards by Tuesday evening, the baseboards would be installed Wednesday. We were to move in Thursday. Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy had the cabinets all painted and ready to go and it seemed like things were coming together, or so we thought.
On Wednesday evening, the floor guy texts me telling me we need to buy more baseboards. They ran out. I was so anxious that this was going to happen, but his guy measured and told us how many baseboards we needed, and I bought more than requested! So either his guy measured wrong, or the installers were wasteful during the install. Oh, I was so mad. “We no longer have a painter. The floors aren’t prepped for painting the baseboards and we move in tomorrow.” Not to mention, the baseboard place was closed for the evening! I ignored our tile guy the rest of the evening and sure enough when we showed up with our movers Thursday, his guys had installed the missing baseboard (just one area was missing in the primary bathroom) and were painting it and doing some touch up paint on the rest of the baseboards—which was great, problem solved but now our movers are navigating wet paint!
The move itself was going fine and the movers were ahead of schedule, which was going to be great for our bill but as they are setting up the guest bedrooms, we started to realize that we are missing out on some square footage we had at our rental. The queen sized beds fit into the guest rooms, but the corresponding dressers only do if you keep the drawers closed. Thankfully with our split king Tempur-Pedic beds, The Mrs and I share a room, so no one is using these rooms on a regular basis and we will be getting rid of some of the furniture if we have a kids; but, it’s always stressful moving and not having something fit. We then got a little anxious…what about our Costco sofa? Is our house really that much smaller than what we originally thought? Yeah we downsized, but only by 200 square feet. We looked at the measurements online and then measured our living room….yeah the sofa will fit, but it literally goes wall to wall. There will be nowhere for people to walk, and we will also not be able to have a TV.
FUCK.
The sofa was scheduled to be delivered that Friday! We already had 2 weeks of sitting on the floor while watching our shows and were so looking forward to that sofa. So, on our moving day, we did what any sane and reasonable person would do…we went to Costco and measured the sofa ourselves because someone wise once said “you can’t believe everything you read online.” Well, it turns out you can believe the Costco measurements that are online.
I tried to call Costco to cancel the delivery but they had already closed for the evening. We went back home to set up the internet so I could login to work the next day…Guess what also wasn’t working, our internet. I thought if I gave it to midnight maybe it would work. Maybe it just hadn’t transferred over yet. WRONG. We had to have an Xfinity technician come out, but the soonest he could come out was Monday. I was scheduled to work both Friday and Saturday. I chalked Friday up to “Admin” but had to take Saturday off unpaid. Thankfully I was up and running Monday morning and didn’t have to take any more time off.
We tried really hard to sleep in our new house move in day, but the house smelled terribly of paint fumes and it was the hottest day of the year, so we couldn’t open up the windows to ventilate without going into heat stroke. At midnight, Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy booked us a hotel. I woke up at 530 AM to call Costco to cancel the sofa delivery. The sofa was already on the truck, but it was no issue. They wouldn’t stop by, and they would refund us fully. It got real awkward when the Costco delivery truck showed up and rang our bell.
Oh, I didn’t even get to the part where the city shut off the water at our rental property in the middle of the day, limiting what we could and could not clean upon move out. Yeah…I guess they do that to “motivate” the new tenants to pay the utility bill? Why our landlord didn’t have these utilities in his name for this reason is beyond me, but probably similarly to why we had to buy our own fridge. I cleaned most things with 100% pure white vinegar–what we had lots of vinegar, but no water! I thought it was a great idea until the entire house smelled sour and not clean. Oops.
It just felt like whatever could go wrong did go wrong with this move. Thankfully the house is finally cleaned from all the debris from the floors, most boxes are unpacked, and the paint fumes have completely resolved. We are starting to feel really settled and at home here. And for those wondering, we do have a couch. Yes, it’s from Costco and yes, that’s a story for another time.
I hope you were able to laugh a little at my oversights and mistakes. I am a firm believer that you make your own luck, and I don’t know how much luck I made for myself or Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy during this move. What I do know is we don’t want to move for a very long time and if that time ever comes, we will be sure to measure before we move.