Semi-Trailer Tetris

Our stuff got here. Since I should be joining Joe in South Korea in a couple of months, most of our household goods are going straight into storage.

The semi-trailer with our stuff on it was dropped off the day before the unloaders were scheduled to unload, but there was no room for the trailer in the parking lot of the storage facility. So, after much discussion between me, the driver, and the storage facility lady, a conversation that was difficult because the driver had some kind of speech impediment, he left the trailer in the parking lot of the Rite Aid next door.

When he mentioned that he had a key to the truck, I got all excited because I wanted to see if my plant was dead yet. He said he'd leave the trailer unlocked for me, and was even kind enough to remove the giant metal and wooden bulwark inside the trailer that I probably wouldn't have been able to get past.

So for the last part of the conversation - the important part, about getting a driver to the storage facility the next day to move the trailer into the storage facility's parking lot - I wasn't really paying attention. All my mental energy had been redirected from trying to understand the truck driver to thinking about my plant. I didn't really know what was going on, but I assumed everything would be fine, because that's usually how things work.

After the conversation in which I was blissfully unaware that nothing was actually worked out, the driver left. I said 'bye to the storage facility lady, then went next door and climbed into the trailer.

My plant wasn't dead, so that was cool. But somewhere between Georgia and Virginia, the truck driver had apparently braved the perils of an earthquake to get my stuff to me on time, and everything in the trailer had fallen over or shifted.

A stool leg had gone through the cloth on our box spring. The teeth of the gears on my bike had chewed up the side of our aluminum trash can (which had been round but now had sides.) The plastic tub I'd positioned to catch the worst leak in the trailer's roof was at least three feet away from where I'd wedged it. And that was just the stuff I could see from the front. I absolutely dreaded seeing what else was back there.

Next day, a lot earlier than I expected, my phone woke me up because the moving crew was calling to tell me they were with the trailer. I asked them where it was. They said it was in the Rite Aid parking lot. I said I'd be right over, then called the moving people's office to ask when the driver was going to be there to move the trailer. They had no idea what I was talking about.

So after about fifty billion phone calls, some made while I was driving from my house to the trailer and the moving crew (where I was supposed to have been an hour ago,) it was worked out that the moving company would have another company send a truck to move the trailer.

The moving crew and I sat around for an hour and forty-five minutes. In case you find yourself in a situation like this, know that a moving crew might charge you $80 an hour for wait time.

Finally, a truck got there and moved the trailer. The crew started untangling the mess that was everything we own while I stood around feeling useless. I'd asked them to put the furniture and big appliances in the very back of the storage unit, and to unload that stuff first, so they started with the couch. I saw them closely examining part of the first piece of the sectional. Another bit of information: "Hey, ma'am....was this like this before?" is the worst thing you can possibly hear when your moving truck is getting unloaded.

Those places where the leather is scuffed and scratched? No, my couch was not like that before. I had done such a bad job of loading the truck that I had turned our poor 8-month-old couch, one of Joe's and my three major "us" purchases, into a victim.

It was really awkward with those three guys there, but after the stress of that morning, seeing that damage kinda made me cry a little bit. I know, I've been doing a lot of that lately (see last post.) So I got that out of the way, oversaw the putting of the couch into the storage unit, and then I went and ordered pizza.

A few long, hot hours later, they had everything unloaded and put away. I stuffed a bunch of boxes in my car and signed some papers and that was it.

Well, except for when they brought my plant to the apartment. My plant (the peace lily Joe sent me when he was in Basic) is huge and heavy and I can't carry it by myself. I was going to return to the storage unit another day with a smaller pot and put it in there and move it that way. Instead, the guys offered to take it to the apartment for me. They loaded it onto their van and followed me home, then carried it up the three flights of stairs for me. AND THEN they even unloaded all the boxes in my car and carried all those up the stairs, too. I think it's 'cause I was nice to them and tried to help but actually just got in the way and also because I made them feel bad when I cried over a piece of furniture.

I made another trip to the storage unit after they left so I could get more boxes. I estimated that I'd need two or three more trips to get everything I wanted. I ended up staying in the storage unit for about an hour, reorganizing, climbing around on top of things like I was navigating a cave. At one point I was sitting on top of the refrigerator, moving boxes around, and the timers on the overhead lights ran out. It was dark and scary. To make matters worse, I had walled myself in. I had to climb out a different way than I'd come in. The broken plastic tubs and slippery weight-lifting equipment made for a treacherous journey.

It didn't take two or three trips to get everything; it only took one trip because my car is incredibly spacious and wonderful and I love it and everyone should own a Passat.

Back at the apartment, I finished unloading the last load of boxes around 6:00 PM. It was a good time for a shower, some dinner, and some League of Legends with my brother and his fiancee. But then I was like, "Yeah, that would be nice...but you know what you could do? You could wash the car. Go home and instead of crashing for the night, just turn right back around and take Passat to a car wash." The idea put this big grin on my face, so that's what I did.

The move was finally over. Washing the car as the sun set was the most relaxing, most satisfying part of the whole day. And then I got a Chik-Fil-A spicy chicken sandwich, some waffle fries, a Coke, and a banana pudding milkshake and devoured it all on my way home, driving my nice clean car, with moving-truck dirt all over me and sticky sweat between the vinyl seat and the skin on the backs of my legs and sunburn on my shoulders, and I was happy.

There and Back Again: I Have No Washer?

I spent Monday driving from Georgia to Virginia. It took eight hours, two Krispy Kreme Chocolate Iced Kreme Filled donuts (and, of course, a thing of milk,) a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit, a grape-flavored NOS energy drink (kinda gross but kinda grew on me,) and a bag of Skittles Blenders (kinda gross and did not grow on me.) The trip was long and I got bored. Skipper, one of my two birds, was bored, too. That's why she shrieked for six of those eight hours.

I had only gotten two and a half hours of sleep the night before the drive, because I had to stay on schedule, and the schedule said "Finish Cleaning Georgia House, Sleep For a Few Minutes, and Get to Leasing Office in VA Before it Closes At 6:00 PM." (The schedule for the previous five days had been packed with packing and cleaning and running errands and loading things onto the moving truck and eating junk food and being uncomfortable in the disaster area that remotely resembled the home where I'd spent nine months with Joe.)

So after all the driving, at around 4:30 in the afternoon, I took the I-95 exit into Fredericksburg. I was struck by the familiarity of the area. It felt like I'd only left earlier that day. That "I'm home" feeling was dismaying. I don't dislike Fredericksburg; it was good for us here. It's just that I closed that chapter in my life. I didn't expect it to open again.

My GPS was set to the address of the apartment I'd pretty much committed to leasing but had never even seen pictures of. The GPS was taking me deeper and deeper into downtown Fredericksburg. Busy roads, car dealerships, old houses that had been turned into run-down TV repair shops and personal injury lawyers' offices: This wasn't the quiet neighborhood nestled conveniently between my two workplaces that I'd envisioned when I chose this apartment online.

Finally, I made a turn down a short wooded road and parked in front of a newer little white building behind a sign for the apartment complex. I was sticky and sweaty and tired, the car was stuffed with stuff, the birds were in the back seat, and the dog was crammed into the passenger's-side footwell where he'd lodged himself at the beginning of the trip. I rolled the windows down a bit and got out of the car to go sign the lease.

My contact greeted me at the door of the stylish, modernly-decorated little office building and started talking about the complex's amenities while I tried to look interested instead of tired and distracted. "You can walk your dog wherever you want, there's a park right down the road, we have a pool and a fitness center, and there are washers and dryers inside the buildings for you to use." Wait...what? There isn't going to be a washer or dryer in my apartment? Don't these people know washers and dryers are supposed to be in every dwelling, like running water and a fence around the backyard?

"I guess I better check out the apartment before I sign," I said, wanting to make sure the walls weren't rotting or anything, even though it didn't matter at that point because I didn't have much of a choice. She handed me the keys to the apartment. "You're in building two, on the third floor," she said. I got back in the car and drove over to the building. I was hoping the apartment's design would be modern and interesting; you know, recessed or decorative lighting and a countertop between the kitchen and the living room so I could put barstools there and use the countertop as a table.

I walked up three flights of stairs and I unlocked the door to a newly-carpeted, freshly-painted apartment that had probably been built in the late eighties. There were only a few overhead lights of any type, much less of the fancy type. There was a gas stove - I'd been careful to avoid gas stoves in all my previous rentals (so that I wouldn't blow anything up.) The kitchen had two entrances and no view of the living room and nowhere to put seating. The bathroom was tiny and dated. And there was no washer or dryer, and nowhere to hook up a washer or dryer.

It was getting late and it was going to rain soon and I still had to drag all my stuff up the stairs and I had to hurry up and call the internet guy and I was exhausted. On the verge of panic, I searched the apartment again, but I still didn't find a washer & dryer hookup. So I stood in one of the bedrooms and started crying.

...which I didn't really have time for. So I stopped and went back to the office and signed the three-month lease. Then I took my pre-payable laundry card, went back to my apartment, called the internet guy, and started dragging things up the stairs.

That's when Joe called. I started telling him about the apartment, and when I got to the part about the gas stove, I started crying again with all the heartbroken it's-not-fair-ness of an exhausted-for-days, sugar-crashing, PMSing woman who had just spent the entire day driving away from her home and who then dragged a 600-pound cooler up three flights of stairs and who hadn't had a shower yet.

He listened to like fifteen minutes of uncontrollable weeping and tried to understand exactly what was so bad about a clean place with plenty of windows where I only had to spend a couple of months. I eventually calmed down. When we hung up, my eyes were probably swollen shut, but at least I felt better and was still smiling from whatever he'd made me laugh about.

So I got rained on, dragged the rest of my stuff up the stairs, got my internet connected, and took a shower. Then I started unpacking stuff and then I ordered a steak stromboli from Sam's, a local pizza & subs place I'd been looking forward to. The food was hot and perfect and dripping grease all over my hands and the floor. I burned my tongue. It was nice.

Over the next few days, I finally got some sleep, got further away from the stressful moving days, saw the good things about my new place, had a successful clothes-shopping experience, bought some area rugs, and started back with my old job.

The rest of my stuff gets here on Tuesday. We'll see how that goes.

Numbers in Textbooks

I've always ignored the numbers in textbooks. (The ones I didn't have to memorize, anyway.) Things like this excerpt from Wikipedia: "Approximately 25,000 American Revolutionaries died during active military service."

25,000. Just a number. Numbers mean nothing.

Until Joe joined the Army. Then it became "25,000 men died"..."25,000 soldiers died"..."25,000 husbands died."

Those numbers catch my eye every single time now. Plaques in museums, articles on history - all full of numbers.

When I saw that Wiki page, all I could think of (despite the fact that, statistically, this isn't true,) is that there were 25,000 wives forced to temporarily lay down their dreams for their marriages who were never able to pick those dreams up again.

25,000 women who learned that their husbands had to leave them. 25,000 ways of coping with the panic of being separated from a mate...possibly permanently. So many tense, stifled last days together with so many plastic, manufactured, trying-to-be-happy moments - special last meals, special last kisses. Millions of different memories etched in 50,000 minds: of a sunny hour spent together smiling, laughing; a touch on a shoulder; the warmth of a breath; the feeling of being held; the sound of a heartbeat; the scent of security...each memory meant to be savored forever, but each fast fading as soon as it's captured.

Then: 50,000 first hours apart. 50,000 first days apart. Millions of moments unshared.

And 25,000 last breaths. 25,000 last I will love you forever's written at the end of 25,000 last letters.

I learned a lot of things when Joe joined the Army. One of them was that those numbers on the plaques and in the history books really do mean something.

But those numbers...you have to double them. It wasn't 25,000 lives lost, not 25,000 futures suddenly erased. It was 50,000.

Well, That Was Quick.

I mean, I knew I was adaptable, but wow.

Joe's been gone for one week now. It's been days since I last cried.

Maybe it's because I've been able to spend three Skype-hours with him each day, with more Skype and even League of Legends for hours and hours on the weekends.

Also, it's hard to be miserable when he's constantly showing me how much he loves me. He sends pictures of Korea and tells me about the cultural differences between there and America. He spends most of his free time in an echoey flourescent-lit room with hard chairs and loud people, just to be with me.

Still, it was difficult throwing away that weeks-old cheeseburger I dug out of the fridge. I couldn't leave it in there forever, but I was tempted to, because Joe made it when he was still here. But the towel he put on the back porch right before he left, the one I didn't want to move because he put it there and I didn't want to make him any more gone than he already was...I finally put it in the washer this morning. (It was blotchy, bleached where it had been exposed to the sun, and now I'll always think of it as the Korea towel.) I could probably even throw away the empty ice cream container on his desk without much of an emotional disturbance, but I don't know for sure, so it's still there. Just in case.

Our house became my house very quickly. I erased our everyday, sharing-everything lifestyle very quickly. I wanted to. I had to. Spend a few minutes each day cuddled up to a wall, sobbing, because something else reminded me that he won't be coming home anytime soon? No, thanks. Better to make this my place. "My" schedule (the one where I wake up at 4:00 in the morning because that's Joe Time.) My bed, my fridge, my food, my car. There can't be an Our right now.

Except for Our time...Our future...Our fingers blocking the vision of our webcams as we "touch" before goodbye......and always, always Our love.