The joy of moving

It was finally moving day. Although I should say, moving is not really something you do in one day. It’s many days. In actual fact it’s months.

1. The pre-move packing.
2. The shoving of furniture and boxes into the moving van.
3. The unpacking into the new home.
4. The organizing after moving.

Okay, I’d done the pre-move packing and now it was time to shove the furniture and boxes into the trucks. All I can say is thank God I upgraded one of the trucks to a bigger model. We just fit everything in…and I mean just. My son-in-law, Ryan was great! I could have bowed down and kissed his feet for orchestrating everything. He was the Ring Leader and told us clowns where to, how to, and what to pack in first, second and third. I would have probably needed 4 trucks if I’d been in charge. A word of advice…study up on how to pack up a moving van. It will save you time, money and frustration. We did the major amount of pack up in late afternoon into the evening. It was dark when we decided to call it a day. We then had the first part of morning to finish up the odds n’ ends.

All that was left in my house that evening was my mattress on my bedroom floor. Everyone was gone. It was strange and a little eerie to sleep in the empty house for the last time and the tough part was, I knew that the following night I’d be sleeping in a motel, not my new home.

Morning arrived along with my son-in-law Ryan and good friend Terry. We packed up the stragglers that remained in the garage, along with my mattress. We had left the chest freezer until last. That was fun!
Note to self: Remember to plug it back in.
The weather had been good to us. The rain held off and everything went according to plan. Last thing to do was to get my cats into cages. I had borrowed the confines from my daughter and my Mom. Although, I believe I did most of the worrying for them, let me say, that the moving process for animals is a traumatic event. Of course they are like part of the family and I didn’t want to lose them or freak them out too much. They are outdoor cats, not really cat box trained I might add. My plan was to sneak them into the hotel room to save them from being in the animal hospital overnight. Honestly, I didn’t know how they were going to react being confined in a hotel room and using kitty litter instead of the neighbor’s garden. I could just imagine them howling in the middle of the night and waking other guests. The guests would then complain to management and we would be escorted out of the hotel with no place to go.
Senseless pre-worry…I know.

The trucks were parked at my oldest daughter’s house overnight and my youngest daughter, my caged up cats and I headed over to the motel. I had booked early arrival and I had also booked a ground floor unit at the back to make it easier for me to evade being seen carrying my cats into the room. I believed my plan to be flawless. Unfortunately what I didn’t account for was the maid to be cleaning the room next to ours. When we pulled up into the motel room it was pouring rain. There was one cat in my daughter’s car and one in mine. We obviously could not get them into the room until the maid left. We casually smiled at the young woman and made our way inside our room. I felt guilty. I could just imagine my furry friends wondering what the hell was going on. Needless to say, we waited and waited and waited and waited. I swear that maid was there for what seemed…hours. I finally made an executive decision. I would unpack my suitcase, take the suitcase to the car stick my cats in there one at a time and bring them in. It worked!
The cats adjusted in the room, and to my amazement the day and evening went hunky-dory. It was almost like camping in one big tent.