For the record, this move has been such a nightmare, it quite possibly beats out the one that Josh handled solo while I was at my sister's wedding, at which time nearly half of our furniture was left behind.
For those of you who love all the details, read on. For the rest of you, we're here. We're safe. And our info is:
302A NE Westwind Drive, Lee's Summit, MO 64086 816.524.8577. My email address may be changing soon since SBC is having difficulty in transferring our DSL contract, so you may get an email from me about that later. You can always reach me on my spam addy though: [email protected].
Anyway, here's the rant...
Friday, May 7th: We picked up the moving truck and were charged $120 more than the rate I negotiated with their toll-free line, because the reservation agent failed to store the agreed upon rate in their computer. I'm in the middle of disputing this charge with Budget's headquarters, as they were wanting paper documentation of our TELEPHONE agreement with the reservations agent. Sigh.
Saturday, May 8th: Helena was in major melt-down mode as she watched her home disappear into the back of a truck and kept trying to hide her favorite toys and videos so we wouldn't pack them. As a result, I went ahead and packed up the kids and left Chicago around 2:30pm (following an hour of errands), while Josh and our friends loaded the truck. Our friend, Lori Neff, cleaned the entire unbelievably messy apartment on her own. (I'm nominating her for sainthood.)
By 9:00pm I was in Des Moines (the 2/3 mark of this normally 9-hour drive). About 20 min south of Des Moines a HUGE thunderstorm hit. We're talking sheets of rain, blinding flashes of lightening, and terrible road conditions. At that moment, one of our minivan's tires blew.
So here we are - me, a panicking 9 year old, a sleeping toddler, and a loudly-yowling cat, sitting on the side of the road in the middle of farmland for two hours. We sang songs, tried (unsuccessfully) to calm the cat who yowled louder with every flash of lightening (he'd been in the crate since 1pm and was not in an obliging mood), and prayed that the semis barreling down the hill behind us would be able to see us before they slammed into our van. Well, I kept that part to myself and spent time telling Ethan how completely safe we were.
Finally a state trooper came and parked behind us for about 30 minutes with his lights flashing in order to give us some visibility while we waited for the tow truck. The tow truck driver then informs me that our spare tire is not going to get us the remaining 3 hours to Kansas City and that we should just go to a hotel for the night and get the tire fixed in the morning.
Minor problem, though. I, in all my great wisdom, had handed the credit card over to Josh before I left town. I had no cell phone (neither did he), no credit card, and only about $15.00 in cash. (I can hear the Onestis yelling at me now!)
So I head for a gas station and call my sister, Kristiana, who had moved to KC the week before. And here's where the miracle happened - Josh was on the phone with her when I called. He had been having so much trouble getting though that same storm, that he had just pulled over at a hotel in Des Moines.
He gave Kristiana some terribly vague directions (no exit name, no street, no distance) to a Super 8, then he hung up. As I stood staring at the directions I had jotted down, I certainly wasn't tired, frustrated and ready to kill him at that moment.
Thankfully, the same trooper who had been parked behind us on the highway chose that moment to show up and help direct me to the proper hotel. And by the way...HE WAS AT A MOTEL 6...NOT A SUPER 8. Good grief.
Anyway, so around midnight I managed to find him, we snuck the cat in the motel room, Helena cried most of the night, and we got about 5 hours of sleep.
Sunday, May 9th: Now we're at Mother's Day morning in a motel room. I found a Wal-Mart with a tire center that was open and took the kids there with me to get the tire fixed. Josh took the cat and headed on to KC ahead of us.
When I get to the Wal-Mart, the guy fixing our tire gets hauled away in an ambulance (never did find out why, but he was puking blood), which meant we spent 3 hours there waiting for someone else to fix our tire. So 27 hours and $250 after leaving Chicago, we finally arrived in Lee's Summit... But the fun didn't end there, folks.
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