Post Moving Depression

(it's ok, Mom. I'm not really depressed)

But...

I realized this week how little I like moving.

I mean I like the opportunity to purge through stuff that we don't need and the chance to organize (again) from a fresh start..

But really. It's not a fresh start.

All your crap from you last house ends in your new house and the end result looks like the last house threw up it's contents and spewed it across the entire house, yard and garage.

Seriously. I've been unpacking for a week and I've got... the kitchen unpacked. And the linen closet. And guest room.

But the laundry has piled up and it didn't help things one bit that the week before the move the laundry piled up until I finally washed it and tossed it into garbage bags marked "fold, sort and put away" I had 6 contractor bags of "fold, sort and put away" clothes. It's a wonder there was any left to pack. But not such a wonder why my kids had not been able to find clean pj's or long pants the last few days before the washing machine was hooked up.. which would have been yesterday.

All.. the luxuries of having working laundry facilities in your home.

So last weekend all (ok, the vast majority) of our household stuff was moved. A friend with a truck and trailer came and we ended up hiring 3 movers since our free help wasn't showing. Then the following day we rented an enclosed trailer to move the rest of our stuff..
And then the rain came. Lots and lots of rain. Monsoon sort of rain. And we did our best to unload the trailer in the lighter rain and wait out the down pours. And windy.. boy was it windy. I almost expected to see a weather person filming a 'hurricane update' it was so windy.

So. I guess it's not paradise here 100% of the time. Only 99%. Sadly it's not fun to move stuff that 1% of the time.

So after a week of rain we attempted move #2. Because we had a garage of business inventory that needed to be moved. And the grill, bikes, car top carrier, pallets that no one wanted for free, out door toys and all of Larry's tools. We filled our trailer, re-deposited it back at the storage lot and then filled a Uhaul truck.

When I say "we" this time I don't actually mean "we".
This time we hired help.

The kind of help that stands along the street at certain locations looking for work.
And my spanish is pretty rusty so I let Larry do the hiring part.

I guess what you do is you pull up, roll down your window and they ask "how many you need?" and you say "3" and then there's a race for 3 to get into your vehicle.

Just in case you want to hire some 'stand on the side of the road looking for work workers'

I know we'd been joking about it since we got here, but fear of arrest always kept us from doing it.. Welll.... NOW we actually asked local law enforcement about it and he said "well.. it's against federal law but we don't really enforce it here." Not only that but he told me they made $8-10/hr and they might approach you in the Home Depot parking lot for work as well. Interesting. No one approaches me in the Home Depot parking lot. I don't even see anyone doing any approaching.

Anyway... back to our workers... Larry said he was looking for 3 young-ish guys, knowing how heavy the diaper bales are. Cept 3 older men beat them to it. I'd guess 2 were in their 50's and a younger guy who served as the "translator" for them was in his 30's, maybe 40's. I use translator loosely because my translator capacity would be about his translator capacity.

And work they did. They made quick work of the garage and then cleaned it up and cleaned up the yard. Amazing. Larry and I were working on cleaning the yard and they saw what we were doing and followed suit. You don't see english speaking people with web sites looking for work doing that.

And then they came here and then emptied said uhaul.

And you know if it was Larry and I we'd have been doing that until midnight and then at it again tomorrow.  And much more sore than we currently are. I really like hiring people.

And we hired people to clean smelly house after we moved the household stuff out. And that house had never seen such clean. And I didn't have to spend the entire weekend doing it. I spent that time loading the remaining stuff in the trailer. (and wrangling kids out of the road)

And hired a babysitter to watch those same kids today for the major stuff moving time. Poor babysitter. She is an older lady who lived in our old neighborhood who would watch the kids while we went to bible study and other random occasions. We had her come to the new house the day after we moved and she was overwhelmed. And she doesn't drive that far so she brought her son who stayed the whole time with her.

So I asked her if she was free to watch them and she thought it would be better to watch them at her house.

ok. you asked for it. I know she enjoyed it, but was thoroughly exhausted after 5 hours. And she had a cat that the kids LOVED. Picked the poor thing up, carried it around. Even JM.

Well.. time to clean up enough to find the bed..