24

Previously on 24:
It has been 11 days since our stuff was picked up by the moving truck and we left Chicago. We are exhausted from horrible trips to Philadelphia, followed by living in an empty apartment for over a week. We’ve been told that their stuff will arrive on Sunday morning at 10:00 after already being delayed several times. On Sunday we reach the driver, Troy, again and are told it will be more like 2:00. At 2:00 we are told it will be 4:00. At 4:00 when we have heard nothing we call the driver again and are told by his sidekick, Pops (seriously, he went by Pops) that they now have a flat tire and have no money in their account to get it fixed. We are told that the truck will arrive Monday morning at 10:00am. We wonder how a person who drives across the country for a living can have no funds for situations like this. Expecting several days to go by without ever seeing our belongings, Hubby’s parents take us out to get us a TV so that we can at least have something more to do than play cards on the floor (they were there visiting to help with Sam while the movers were there. So much for that.). We come home and hook it up only to find out that the cable does not work. Hubby nearly has a breakdown…

The following takes place between 6:00am and 7:00am:
Monday morning Sam gets bitten by a horsefly while I am changing his diaper. We still have no internet, no cable, no air conditioning, and still no furniture. Nothing can be done about any of the utilities since it is Memorial Day weekend. Sam hasn’t slept at all because he is constantly sweating so much that his bed is wet.

The following takes place between 10:00am and 11:00am:
Troy calls and says they are still in D.C. with another stop to make. He intends to arrive later in the afternoon.

The following takes place between 1:00pm and 2:00pm:
Troy calls and says they are about 20 minutes away.

The following takes place between 2:00pm and 3:00pm:
The truck actually arrives (much to my amazement – I was sure they come up with some new excuse to get through to at least Wednesday), but Troy says that the truck can’t get up to our building because the parking lot is too narrow.

The following takes place between 3:00pm and 4:00pm:
I call my mom to have her give me phone numbers for every truck rental place in the area (remember, no internet). After several calls a truck is reserved for the purpose of shuttling our belongings between the big truck out on the street and our apartment building.

The following takes place between 4:00pm and 5:00pm:
Troy and Pops are loading the new little truck from the huge one, as we discover that the elevator in our building is out, as is most of the electricity. It is up to about 86 degrees in the apartment.

The following takes place between 5:00pm and 6:00pm:
Pops indicates that he is very concerned about how they are going to get all of our stuff up the stairs without an elevator. They have been told by maintenance that the elevator will not be working for at least 2 hours. Hubby and I point out that we could have lived in a building without an elevator at all. What would have happened then? We just moved out of a third floor apartment in Chicago and we had no elevator there for the movers.

The following takes place at 5:58pm:
Miraculously, the elevator is fixed. It begins.

The following takes place between 10:00pm and 11:00pm:
Despite a working elevator, and the fact that it only took two trips between the two trucks to get all of our stuff to the building, it takes Pops and Troy, with Hubby’s help, 6 hours to unload our stuff (no, we do not have all that much stuff. We live in a two bedroom apartment, how much can we have?). My dresser is broken, as is a shelf unit, a glass door to a bathroom storage cabinet, the ironing board and several boxes appear to have been crushed. But it is all there. At 11:00pm they left our apartment full of our furniture, clothes, and boxes.

The following takes place between 6:00am and 7:00am:
We wake up in our own bed.

Later on 24:
The air conditioning gets fixed just as Sam really starts to lose it from lack of sleep. Several other items are broken. Hubby has it out with our moving “coordinator” and gets a call from the big honcho at the moving company. He doesn’t answer this call so that he can better prepare. The internet gets connected finally around 9:00pm but goes in and out in its connection. We’ll see if I am even able to post this. The cable got fixed at 5:00 but has just gone out again as I write this. Hubby is now laying on the floor staring at the ceiling rubbing his forehead, periodically sitting up and turning the TV on to see if the screen is still black. It is.

I keep asking myself: Did we make the right decision when we decided to move to Philadelphia?