Move-in Day

Moving house is always bound to be frustrating. Things will inevitably go to poo. But seriously, today was a solid big brown TURD of a day. I'm not known for my patience and well known for my colourful language so I gave it full throttle today.

So, we were up very early to pack the car, drive to the house and avoid the morning traffic as much as possible. Did this reasonably well thankfully even though some road directions are closed/changed in the morning so the GPS was doing 360's trying to find alternate routes. 

We arrive to find our wheelie bins overflowing - they should have been emptied yesterday but I think they didn't empty them cause they were too full. Everyone else's bins were empty so I feel like a bit of a loser on Day 1. First domestic chore - empty bin somehow?

I moved the car down the street to make room for the removal truck. I couldn't get the key out of the ignition, no matter how hard I pulled or wrangled. And the car wouldn't even start. Mass swearing in the car. Great start to the day. I went inside and asked Deb to go try the key. She came back shortly - with the key. Crisis averted, sigh of relief. She told me to make sure car is in PARK else the key won't release. Seriously, cars are too smart these days.

The key goal for today was to receive our stuff from Aust and get a mattress delivered - so we have somewhere to sleep tonight. Now every half hour an UPS or Fedex van would pull up and the guy would bring up parcel after parcel. We were not expecting any of our ordered furniture to arrive but it came flooding in - but no mattress yet. Deb has ordered enough rugs to carpet the street but at least they bring colour to the house. Our removals came, we are missing one box but I think they repacked it into another box enroute as we don't seem to be missing anything. The bikes all arrived so that's what matters. And one broken plate - that would be Deb dropping on the kitchen floor. 

We got our cable connected in the arvo. The two dudes were excellent. They loved our accent and we said we loved their's = Jamaican. I was too embarrassed to say I loved the movie 'Cool Runnings'.  His handshake made us nearly breakdance. It had this slap shake thing to it. Very cool indeed. Cable TV now installed - tick. Now gotta get that TV mounted on the wall. 

We gradually assembled the furniture while we waited around. I saw a pile of wood, brackets, screws - it was like a mini-Bunnings store on the floor. Deb said this was the the little filing cabinet drawers! WHAT ?? How many bits does it take to assemble some drawers. Please note, these are NOT the drawers I picked. Deb didn't like mine so she picked these instead. They might look nicer but after I've hit them with a hammer in frustration they won't look so nice !!!   I bet mine would have come assembled. So I looked at that pile of rubble and said, no, now way, not now, not today - pushed it to the corner. 

In the meantime, we have an 'electrician' working in the background because somehow, yesterday we lost power to the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen/dining room lights and the heater. The first guys to come were, switch flickers really. They then called in the big gun who had a bigger tool belt but he just flicked more switches and poked power outlets with a light flashing tool. So all day, he fiddled and dicked around with the fuse box. It's amazing how the F word sounds the same in Spanish. He spoke little English so our 'technical' conversation was a script almost taken from a Seinfeld episode. By the end of the day, I was downstairs working with him trying to understand what he was doing - I still don't really know but we made some progress. I'm not sure how qualified or trained he was but suffice to say, he was touching bare wires on breakers and sparks were flying. It reminded me of my early tech days in training - scary shit. We could hardly understand each other but we agreed on some logic and he'll come back tomorrow with more breakers to tidy the fuse box up. The house wiring is very confusing to say the least so pray we get success tomorrow.

And back to that mattress. It was organised 10 days ago to be delivered today. Long story but this was the ONE thing we needed TODAY. And yep, you know where I"m going, it'd didn't come today - I rang good ol' Macy's, where's my bloody mattress. Oh, you haven't organised delivery she says!! Well I exploded. And they can't deliver until Monday. Then I melted down. Our furniture has been ordered through the rental company so will have to wait until tomorrow to see what the hell went wrong. So no bed to sleep on until Monday. Next chore for tmrw - find something to sleep on besides the dog beds.

And finally, the crap useless internet people. Everybody says they are dreadful and we had a shocking time just organising the internet connection. So it's not surprising that the installation date today was actually a figment of my imagination. No, apparently the email I get today says it's Friday !  So the lady on the phone just told me a pile of crap. 

We came back to the apartment tonight for a bed and warmth. We had a nice dinner and I enjoyed a Stella cider - very nice actually. But the best news of all today is that the dogs are on the plane to LA. We got an email from Australia to tell us they were cleared to travel and were very good buddies. The US side call to say they will be delivered to us at home on Friday morning around 10am. How bloody exciting. I stopped by the petstore on the way home tonight and grabbed a couple of bags of dog food and nibbles. At least they will have food cause we got nothing in the house at the moment besides two bananas.

So it's been a long annoying shitty day. We move out of the apartment in the morning  ( even though we thought we'd moved out this morning) and hopefully the non-English speaking sparky electrician will finish in time for me to go and find where the shopping centre is. Time for a hot shower and good nights sleep.