Moving chaos

(My husband Sam and niece Audrey:

A fitting picture for a personal blog, venting about a chaotic few weeks)

I had a week off of work to move out of my apartment. We spent a few days in Flagstaff, AZ (Dec 23rd to the 26th) picking up some furniture and coming back in a UHaul. I was sick just before I left for Flagstaff and it got progressively worse. As I was returning the UHaul, I needed to get gas for the vehicle. I happened to find the one and only gas station in L.A. that didn't have enough height clearance for the vehicle and damaged the gas station's roof. Probably about $1000 worth of damage, which is that in between stage where it's not really worth it to get insurance involved.

I continued to be so sick for the next three days that I didn't get much packing done and had to sleep for a good 16 hours or so before feeling better. My friend Renee came into town the day that I started feeling a bit better and, fortunately for me, spent some of her vacation time in L.A. helping me pack and move. Not how I wanted it to happen, but so grateful for her help! And we were able to get some great fun times in the visit as well.

Monday we were out of the apartment...

Tuesday, Sam lost his wallet. It was eventually found and turned into the police, but in the meantime we had to cancel cards and are still awaiting new cards to come. What's most frustrating is that we had to cancel the same credit card 2 months ago due to fraudulent activity in Canada. Another dozen phone calls and website visits to set up automatic withdrawals...

Then Thursday, I got a call from my mom saying that she was in town, and when was I going to come by to pick up a few things from my Grandmother's house, because she was moving on Monday. All of this unbeknown to me, apparently no one told me about the last minute decision made a week before. I knew she was moving, as I had helped her go through stuff on several occasions since September, but to boil it down to "Everything needs to be out by next weekend because that's when you're moving" was necessary, but extremely stressful for everyone involved. I didn't get to see my mom, but stopped by my Grandmother's yesterday and will be there several times this week to take care of remaining items. My Uncle Randal and his girlfriend Cheryl have been up all night helping her and will be driving my Grandmother to Santa Rosa on 1 hour sleep. Yikes. Sam and I will be staying at her house for a week to help prepare things for the house to be sold.

Then last night I lost my phone. When using Sam's phone to try to find it, someone called his phone back, but just hung up after he answered. NO!! So now my phone is out there somewhere and I'm debating whether to get insurance to send me a new phone (which used to be $50, but somehow along the line was changed to a $100 deductible), or just hook up an old phone and hope someone turns in my phone. Either way, I think I'll have to switch to an iPhone when my contract is up. Especially if they are no longer with AT&T, which has deferred me from getting the iPhone with them thus far...terrible service in certain L.A. areas.

All that to say, the last two weeks have been one stressful day after another, but somehow I seem to be handling it better than I expected. Still stressed out, but maybe since I was expecting a bit of chaos, I was a little more prepared for it. I'm looking forward to relaxing once things get more settled...hopefully February.