The other day my dad commented that between my sister and I, we must have spent and entire year of our lives searching and applying for jobs. It is true. A huge part of my life is job searching and applying; especially since usually I have been on contracts of 2 months to 2 years. Really, you have only just settled into the job when you start looking for another.
But, it is not the job part that gets me. It is the moving. I have moved 14 times since in the past dozen years. Fourteen! Many of these moves has been across hemispheres; once the move was from Cambodia to Chile!
Of the moves, packing is generally the worst. First of all, I procrastinate. For example, I move to Santiago this weekend and I have yet to pack one single item. Not only that, but I am choosing to write this instead of packing. Oy vay! Second, I am a pack rat. I accumulate stuff like no one else I know and it is hard to get rid of. Even living abroad, I do not have a simple two suitcases of stuff. No. In fact, in the last move from Polanco to Vina I had an entire car load full of stuff. Really, this is a sizable accomplishment seeing as I have no furniture to speak of. Just a little tiny dog bed.
The actual moving has been rough at times too. This time, I am not sure how I am physically doing it. The idea of moving my entire apartment by myself via turbus seems a bit unruly. Admittedly, it would be hard to be a worse move that the Milwaukee to St. Louis move of 2005. See, in that move, I was still jetlagged having just arrived from Cambodia. We took two cars: my mother and I in one, my dad in the van. Both cars were full to say the least. Somewhere in IL, my mother and I missed the turnoff. My father, ahead of us and equipped with a much better sense of direction, got on the right highway. He pulled off to the shoulder to wait for us. Meanwhile, we knew that we were on the wrong road, but it was not one that allowed us to make a quick turn around. In fact, we had to go for about 20 miles and pay a toll, only to be able to turn around and re-pay the toll on the way back to the correct turnoff. As you can guess, this put us back about an hour, which would not have been so bad. But… we missed the turn again. Well, not exactly missed so much as took the wrong turn. This set us back another 2 hours by which time my father was pretty annoyed at being stuck on the side of the highway and everyone was pretty hungry. We had pasta if I remember right.
So, instead of getting in at 7:00 PM we got in around 11:00 PM. I was moving into a building that had a no dog rule, but had made an exception for Harley. Harley refused to stay in the apartment by herself, so she sat in the cars as we moved stuff in. About 15 minutes into the move, my bike viciously attacked my mother’s leg. Being a bit stubborn, she tried to clean up the blood herself. When she showed my dad and I her wound, we both insisted that she go to the hospital against her will. She didn’t want to go in the car, because she would get blood in it. Finally, we forced her to go and I was left moving alone, at midnight, with the dog. Now that my parents had taken off with one car, I couldn’t leave Harley alone– so she had to travel up and down the elevator with me. I also had to lock and unlock the van in each step of the process. Harley did not do a good job to walking next to the dolly. My other option was a shopping cart, but it rattled and scared her when she was walking next to it. So, I filled the shopping car, put her pillow on top, put her on top and made about 5,000 trips up to my apartment.
My poor parents, at the hospital, were not fairing much better. My mother was not moving forward on the list of people to be seen as stab wounds and gun shot wounds poured in. My father stayed for a while, then came and helped me for a while, then went back to the hospital for a while and napped on the floor of the van with no pillows. All in all, they made it back to the apartment around 5 AM, just slightly after I had piled everything in. We made makeshift beds for ourselves and slept.
I can only hope that this weekends move goes better.
PS Thanks Mom and Dad for always being such great sports.
Posted in Harley the pup, Life in general, People I know
