Her Bad Mother

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Survivor: New House Island

Have finally - four days behind schedule - received the contents of our household, which are now sitting nicely in our new driveway in a big storage pod that we must painstakingly empty ourselves, having blown our moving budget and stock of personal favors on getting people to drag our shit out of the snow over the past week (including, but not limited to, making private arrangements to have our street - our old street - plowed so that the storage pod could finally be removed from its snowbank and transported, four days late, to our new house). Have also, finally, after three missed service calls - missed because of move hellishness and winter storm fuckage - got wireless internet service and cable connected and can now sit on one of our brand new (purchased in desperation) mattresses on our pretty new hardwood floor and catch up on everything that we have missed lo these interminable four days of camping out sans furniture and appliances and toothbrushes and everything else that we had packed in expectation of unpacking almost immediately.

(No, we couldn't go stay at a hotel, because we had to be at the new house at all variety of odd hours to accommodate move-related service calls, most of which we missed because we had to spend so much time at the old house - an hour away - dealing with the endless loose ends that became badly unravelled when our original moving plans got messed up.)

It's been hell, I'm exhausted, I'm crabby, and I need to sleep for, like, two weeks. Could somebody please tell Santa to bring me peace and quiet and somebody who could put my house in order? Thanks.

(I sound much pissier than I actually am. I am, as it goes, very happy to be in my new house, even though it's mostly empty; my exhaustion and crabbiness don't preclude moments of bliss as I look out our pretty picture windows at an expanse of snowy trees and pretty old Georgian houses covered in fairy lights and listen to the sweet, sweet sound of quiet. But now would not be the time to send me bad news. I'm just sayin'. Listening, gods?)

(PS: even though we finally have wireless service, our provider is messing with us and our old e-mail accounts aren't working. I can only, for the time being, be reached at herbadmother at gmail dot com right now - so if you've sent me messages at my other account, I haven't received them.)

(SIGH.)

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Come On A' My House: NOT

Here's a tip, if you're ever contemplating a household move, especially if you're contemplating making that move in the dead of winter, when horrendous winter storms tend to hit and shut down roads and services: do not plan to make that move on a Saturday.

When something goes wrong on a Saturday, it usually cannot be fixed until Monday, which means that you may face having the entire contents of your household packed and padlocked and inaccessible for 48 cold and snowy hours, which means, further, that while your old house might be satisfyingly empty, your new house will also be empty, and you will have nothing to sit on or sleep on and nothing to wear and nowhere to put your food. Also, because such things never happen in isolation, the cable and wireless hook-up guy will not show up to the empty new house to perform the vitally important task of setting up your cable and wireless network, so you won't even be able to curl up in a corner of your empty-but-nonetheless-pretty new house to bitch properly to the Interwebs about how badly things are going, and instead be forced to wander around your empty, cold old house looking for weak neighborhood signals to steal when you should be cleaning instead. And you will be very, very crabby.

Just thought I'd share that.