Turns out…3.
So I have made it to New York in one piece. I apologize that I haven’t been updating, but I don’t really have consistent access to the internet yet (Time Warner is hopefully coming on Saturday to hook us up). From time to time we are able to connect with the 1 unlocked signal in the city, but it comes and goes.
The last few days have been a roller coaster ride of emotions for me. In fact, the act of moving really blocked out just how stressful packing and cleaning my old apartment was. Now that I’m a day or two removed from the whole experience everything that happened feels more like a dream to me.
Now I’m going to go through the hell that was moving. Bare with me, everything seemed 10 times worse when it was all happening at once. Thank god I had my boyfriend with me throughout it all, I literally would have fallen apart within the first hour of September 1st without him.
We got up around 5 to get ready, grab coffee and a bit of breakfast (I had a donut, breakfast of champions) and head out to Brookline to pick up our Uhaul. It took a while to get there but there were no problems picking it up or anything. But then we had to drive back to Cambridge.
I have said it before, I will say it again now: EVERYONE in Boston moves on September 1st. It is surreal how many vans and trucks are on those extremely narrow and windy streets. What was also a problem is the fact that I never drive is Boston and have no way of navigating unless on foot. The streets are almost never marked, and when I’m within my first 10 minutes of ever driving a truck, let’s just say I was not having my finest hour.
We eventually got back to my apartment, and by this point I had only barked at the bf about 10 times. We packed up quickly enough (thank goodness that much had already been organized) and as we prepared to leave, a cleaning crew came in. I’m so glad we spent so much time this weekend cleaning…
We got on the road around 8:35 and headed to Newton where our roommate’s parents live to pick up some of his furniture. Again, we got lost on the poorly marked Boston streets and what should have been a 20-minute ride took us over an hour. But we got there and loaded everything up.
Next was the 4-hour drive to New York. This part was a little easier because at least I felt more comfortable driving on the freeway then busy city streets. However halfway we got a call that the management company had not received one form from us (the form we confirmed in person at their office on Friday had been received) and got word that we would not be able to move in until the form was in. Cue my stomach dropping out of my body.
3-4 phone calls later, we are set to move in. 1 crisis averted.
Getting into the city wasn’t too challenging, so we got to the apartment, called the super and got our keys. Now here’s where the story starts going the fun route.
In order to empty the Uhaul, we were instructed to drive onto the sidewalk (full of trees, poles and laughing children) and then back the Uhaul into the courtyard. I’m not very comfortable doing this with a Uhaul, but did it. We unloaded everything and were able to pull back onto the street no problem.
Next, we went back to Manhattan to load up the bf’s apartment. He had all the furniture, so…all the heavy lifting still had to be done.
We finally loaded everything into the truck, and started back to Queens…at 5 o’clock. Anyone out there ever driven through Manhattan at 5 o’clock on a workday? It took 45 minutes to get from 86 to 59 street. Yes.
Then we had to cross the bridge at right at the end of the bridge the car in front of me pulled a slightly illegal maneuver, right in front of two police women, who thought it was fine to block my lane of traffic during the busiest hour to give this man a ticket. 234 honks later, I got to move, and made it back to my apartment.
I pulled onto the sidewalk to back in only to find that it was trash day! And the sidewalk was covered in trash bags and other household items. Quickly the bf, the female roommate and I tried to move them, getting essence of garbage all over us (some liquid substance that smelled of poop splashed in my face, that was pleasant).
After moving the pile, we discovered we hadn’t moved it far enough. So we left the Uhaul where it was and unpacked. The unpacking would have been fine if it were not for:
THE COUCH
This couch literally weighs 2 metric tons. It’s a fold out bed and is the vain of my existence. We got it up the stairs by sacrificing our backs, and when we got to the door of the apartment, discovered it was too big to get in. So what did we do?
We took the door off its hinge. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the hinges to our door were not spring loaded. Once we sold our souls to get the couch in we realized we couldn’t screw the door back on.
Whatever, that was the end of unloading, and we were grateful. Uhaul was already closed by now so I went and parked it for the night, I came back and the 2 roomies and I fiddled with the door until we somehow got it on. SOMETHING WENT RIGHT!
After that, we got food, beer and called it a day. My day ended up lasting 19 hours, and probably the 19 most stressful, mentally, emotionally draining hours of my life. When I lay down to fall asleep I barely could, I was too exhausted to sleep, and my mind was still racing.
Since moving in, we have unpacked most of our stuff (except the kitchen which I’ll elaborate on in a second) and tried to set up Cable. See, we can’t find a cable jack anywhere in the apartment, and as I’ve explained there’ve been a lot of problems with Time Warner, but now they’re telling me there’s no problem and they’ll come hook it up on Saturday. This whole not having a jack better not be a problem.
Most of the outlets in the apartment do not work, and also I couldn’t get the stove to work. We discovered it is because the gas was not turned on, so the gas company came out to check it out and discovered…
A possible gas leak. Not in our apartment, IN THE WALL. They said there’s no gas running to our apartment but the meter is still turning, which means gas is leaking somewhere, so they need to rip into our wall and find it. OH FUN!
Fortunately I can say, everyday is getting easier, and everyday is better than the one before it. I’m not freaking out the way I was on moving day, and there’s also a bit of comfort in that I can’t imagine any day in this apartment will be as bad as the one when we moved in.
On a scale of 1 to 10 September 1st gets a 2. It didn’t rain, there was electricity, we got into the apartment, nothing broke, no one I knew died, and the only thing I hit was another Uhaul. I officially hate moving.
This post is long enough now so I’ll end here, but I will say I feel like I have grown in maturity by at least a year in the last five days, and I feel closer to my boyfriend than I ever have before. I keep apologizing to him because I think in the last few days I snapped at him more than the rest of our relationship, but I was stressed. This has all proven not to be my finest hour.
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