Monday, July 16, 2012

Moving Day

330am Can't sleep. Apparently going to bed at 1230 wasn't late enough to sleep through the night. It's going to be a busy day (little did I know how busy). Try to fall back to sleep.
400am Give up trying.Too much on my mind. Get up, head downstairs. After all, we're moving today.
5:30am Get dressed. Head off to early early minyan.
6:30am Return home. Make coffee. Must be at new house by 7:00am to meet house cleaning crew. (The house is still a mess from the construction, with dirt, dust and debris everywhere. Did I mention that the movers are coming today? And the workers are still working?)
7:00am Arrive at new house. Drink coffee slowly. Feel caffeine slowly pumping through veins. How did people live without coffee?
7:15am Cleaning crew has not yet arrived. Begin to worry that the guy decided not to come. Decide that I might as well install the ceiling fan in the kitchen while I'm waiting.
7:30am Construction crew arrives. They're putting the finishing touches on our bedroom (at least most of them). Gingerly call cleaning crew. He's on the road, and apologizes that he got out late. Phew!
8:00am Cleaning guy arrives. I give him instructions, asking him to wait to clean the master bathroom as the workers are still working there. He begin spraying water all over the house with a hose. When I ask him what he's doing he says, "Don't worry. This isn't the first house I've cleaned." Whatever.
9:00am Finish installing ceiling fan. It works. That's a good thing.
9:15am Notice that the cleaning guy can't reach the top of a window. I climb on the ladder to reach up. He holds my legs so I don't fall. Turns out he's a really nice guy, which I didn't know when he spent twenty minutes screaming at me the day before.
10:30am Rena calls me slightly in a panic. Moving guys are coming at 12:00pm, and there's still random stuff strewn around the house. And we've run out of boxes. Again.
10:45am Bezeq guys shows up to install our phone and internet.  
11:00am Run home, stopping at the local shopping center to scrounge for boxes. None to be found, probably because Rena's already collected them because when I arrive home, there's a new pile of boxes to fill.  Eat breakfast. We continue to pack frantically.
11:30am Get a call from the contractor calling me back to the house. He's got questions about the Shabbat timers they're putting in, and needs my input.
12:00pm Neighbor drops off second cup of coffee. Thanks! Movers arrive and begin loading boxes into truck.
1:30pm Call old home. Movers are there moving stuff. Run home to direct them. The mover came on time, but it's just him and another guy. It's going to be a long day. Also, I kind of expected them to bring packing materials, some cloth to wrap the furniture. Nothing doing. They put the stuff straight on the truck - which worked out in the end, because we only moved about 500 feet.
1:45pm Construction crew finishes the master bedroom. Cleaning guy moves in to clean, while they turn to other final tasks.
2:00pm Still at old house. First truckload nearly full. Quick falafel for lunch. I think I ate most of it standing up.
3:00pm Movers arrive at the house. Floor has finished drying perhaps 10 minutes ago. I'm a traffic cop, trying to direct them where to put different items. Note to self: movers don't like moving things once they've put them down. They'll do it, but let you know about it.
4:00pm Back to the old house for the second round. By this time, everything is pretty much packed up, but the movers have to take apart a crib and a bunk bed, so I've got some time. I call a neighbor for help taking down some shelves from the wall. (they're stuck) He says he'll be right over. We (me and Simcha) start sweeping the floors. It's amazing and scary (and disgusting) how much dirt accumulates under and behind your furniture.
6:00pm Movers still disassembling. Neighbor drops by with power tools, and takes down shelf in seconds. He then lends me some plaster, so I begin patching the holes in the walls where we hung pictures. (In Israel, when you rent a home, you have to leave the house in the condition in which you found it, which means whitewashing the walls.) Rena feeding kids dinner cooked by the neighbors on the back patio of the new house.
8:00pm Movers finally ready to go. Second truckload full. Back to the (new) house, where I discover that the kitchen contractor has finally returned to finish the kitchen. (We think that the phone call saying, "the movers are here, and we need to put our dishes away" convinced him that we were serious.)
8:30pm Get a phone call on my cell from the States for a prearranged (weekly) conference call. It's important, so I take the call. Hopefully what I said made sense. 
9:00pm Movers assembling bunk bed in boys' room. They actually borrowed the drill from the kitchen guy (who they know). 2 year old daughter seems finally to have had enough, and is about to explode. Older daughter actually gives her a bath (she was literally caked with dirt) during the pandemonium and takes her into the only room with a bed to try and get her to sleep. Good luck.
9:30pm Movers still assembling bunk bed. With overtired two-year-old, I start reassembling crib. They come take over, and then begin to reassemble closet in same room. Rena takes over the care of the toddler who finally falls asleep. (In retrospect, we probably should have planned for her to sleep at a neighbor's house, but who thought that it would take so long?)
10:30pm Back to the old house for the third and final trip. Not much for me to do, so I run around patching holes for the second time.
11:00pm Kitchen guys finish as much as they can and pack up.
11:15pm Back to the new house for a final time.
11:30pm Movers finally leave, with all our stuff in the new house.
12:00am Dinner. A nectarine. Don't have energy for anything else.
1:00am Conk out. On my old bed, but in my new bedroom, of our new home. Which we own - at least partially. The bank owns the rest.
It's been a long day. Baruch Hashem.

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