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.
No comments:
Post a Comment