Helena Handbasket (Part 1 of 3)

If I were to create an alter ego for myself, one that would go back to February first and relive this month for me, I would call her Helena Handbasket. Horribly cliche, a tad overused, full of spunk and way more prepared, I'm willing to bet she would have handled everything much better than I have.

I'm assuming that you remember 'The Move from Hell'. Oh? You didn't read that part? Okay, I'll recap. It would not have been so bad if Alyssa weren't going through separation anxiety. She wouldn't let us out of her sight without screaming loud enough to wake up the entire apartment complex. Most of our furniture required two people to load into the POD moving container, so we had to get some help. Well... that was an adventure in and of itself. Fast forward to the moment we figured out that all of our stuff was not going to fit into the POD. Go a little further to the point where we were madly shoving things into our cars, trying to get the last few piles taken care of. When we realized that no amount of cramming (I earned my Gypsy stripes there... no one thought I'd get as much to fit as I did.) was going to get everything in... we started to give things away and throw the rest into the garbage.

If we had been smart about this, we would have put all of the important stuff into the POD first, knowing that with our luck we would run out of space... Yeah, well, eff you too. We put the heaviest things in first since we knew that we would need to hit as close to 8 thousand pounds as possible. Turns out, we were going to get rid of a lot of our heavy stuff. In fact, when we unload the POD, I think we'll just take most of it straight to the dumpster.

I gave away things that were mostly sentimental in nature, and things that I wanted to keep... somehow, when it came down to the end, we were left with most of my stuff.

Anyway, after all of that drama, we finally made it out of Las Vegas five days behind schedule. With the baby in my car and the cat in My Husband's, we set off on our whirlwind adventure.

We drove as long as we could and made it to Luke AFB to stay the night. It was about 3 in the morning when we finally got checked in, and they only had one option for us.... fortunately, it was temporary housing for officers and we got to stay in this pretty awesome 3 bedroom house. There was one minor setback, however.... they didn't allow pets. We actually had to sign a form stating that we wouldn't take our pet inside.

Sorry, Professor Chaos... He spent the night in his crate in the heated utility room. We didn't leave him out in the cold, but I felt so bad that he had to stay all cramped up at night. He did get a nice bath, though.

The next morning, we checked out of the room and went across the street to eat breakfast. While we were there, we called ahead to our new base to see if their temporary housing allowed pets. They said that they did not and that there was no room in the pet boarding, so they gave us some local numbers. We weren't able to find anything suitable and realized that it was going to be cruel to keep our kitty cooped up for who knows how long while we found housing.

We made a very hard choice and took Professor Chaos Alastor Moody: Eater of Crepes to a no kill shelter in Phoenix. We paid $51 dollars for them to take our cat and promise not to kill him unless he became too aggressive. I bawled like a friggin baby.

I was so messed up after that... like... seriously. I'm tearing up now.

Anyway, that night we got to our new base and checked in to the temporary housing. It turns out that they do have pet friendly accommodations but none were open at the time. ... I felt like an ass.

While trying to fall asleep, I considered asking My Husband if we could go back to Phoenix and pick him up if he had not been adopted yet. I decided that I would ask him when I woke up.

Well, when I woke up, I was going to go to the bathroom and get freshened up a little before addressing the cat situation and I heard my cell phone ring. It was my mom. She was crying. My Mammaw had passed away that morning.

A few weeks earlier, I had tossed around the idea of running home after we got checked in here so that Mammaw could see Alyssa again. If we had gotten out of Las Vegas on time, we would have made it before she passed.... She was in the hospital because her lungs filled with fluid and when they had an indication that she was going to pass, even my relatives that were in the area could not get to the hospital fast enough.

We quickly made plans to go home.


To be continued.

game called on account of rain

So... some unusual weather has thrown a wrench in our moving plans. We were going to be out of here by Sunday, but now it will be at least Monday, possibly Tuesday. The POD will not hold all of our stuff, and patience is running quite thin.

I hope to never live in a place with stairs again. It makes moving heavy things even more difficult.

Also, my daughter seems to have become a wee bit suicidal. Or maybe she's just an adrenaline junkie. Between eating styrofoam, getting herself in the most awkward places, and pulling things over onto herself, she has racked up quite a tally as far as most injuries in a day go.

I have had to save her from certain doom more times that I would care to admit. And before you get mad and say that I was leaving my baby alone while I went off to do stuff... I wasn't. I was right there with her, except once and then I was a room away for about 3 minutes.

After this last bump, I've found myself doing impersonations of Professor Moody from Harry Potter-- "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Now that there are even fewer things to try and use to block her path, someone has to be holding her at all times. She crawls really fast, so she could get stepped on or kicked and we don't have a playpen/have room for a playpen that would be large enough to keep her happy.

Tonight we will be sleeping on an air mattress so we have to make sure everything else is out of that room, just in case she wakes up and goes exploring. Like all babies, she is incredibly curious so everything, no matter how silly, is a toy and goes straight in her mouth.

I hope that we will know where we are going to live soon so that we can go back to our closer-to-normal life.

the final countdown

A few days ago, my husband got his official orders and we are set to go. We decided to do the move ourselves to try and get some extra money. Since we don't know where we will be living or how long it will take to find a place (we are still trying to get on base housing but who knows how long the list is) we decided to use the POD system.

I know you've seen the commercials. It's pretty awesome. They drop it off, you fill it, they pick it up and store it until you are able to officially move in to your new place.

Awesome!

The day it was dropped off, it was just me and the baby. I tried to move things into it, but Alyssa has horrible separation anxiety (gee, I wonder why... ) and starts screaming if you leave her alone. Even if you are still in the room.

I tried to get some help from some of my local friends, but nothing panned out. I was frustrated, but I understand that people have their own lives and no one wants to help anyone move.

My husband found out that one of his really good friends was on leave and had gotten back in town a few days ago, so we called him to see if he could help. He said "Sure, I'll be there in 30 minutes".. I swear he was there in 10. And he brought help.

OMG. He is awesome. We got most of the furniture loaded and about half of the boxes. We're going to finish up tonight and then we celebrate with pizza and beer. Alyssa will be having carrots and a bottle.

This guy is a great guy. But if you want to hang out with him, you have to be prepared to hear some things that might offend even the least offensive person. You see, this guy is a slightly alcoholic, racist, possibly sexist, libertarian and he is highly offensive. It's a good thing we aren't easily offended!

I made a Facebook post about how I thought it was odd that he is the most reliable person we know. Whoa, I opened myself up for a shitstorm there.

I got a lot of angry calls/messages/emails over that one. I'm not sure if one incident was related, but I really hope she knows I wasn't trying to bash her. Ashlee, if you are reading this, I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings. It was never meant to. You know I understand that you have a life and if we had been able to bring her to you, it would have worked out perfectly.

Just so that we are all clear for the future, I will never post a passive aggressive, vague message bashing you in a public forum. Even with our old sitter, O, I spoke to her directly about the problems we had and then I used my blog to vent. 'Oh, she doesn't read it so you can say whatever you want'. No... she does read it. In fact, if you click on the link that says "a handy guide to recognizing the people I'm talking about" her picture is listed. She is a good friend.

Just know that I will never say anything behind your back that I won't say directly to your face. If I'm talking about a situation, we've already discussed it and found a resolution. Even if that resolution is to find a resolution...

I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me, so I refuse to do that to other people.

I'm very sorry if I've hurt anyone's feelings or offended anyone. That was never my intention.