"You pick me up and take me home again."

Title: 400 Lux - Lorde

Moving

card board boxes, disarray, chaos, packing, trucks, labeling…

Packing and moving have turned into things I have no desire to ever do again.  A few times, Vito & I said "We're moving once more (back north) and this is it. We'll never move again."

Maybe moving is not hell for everyone. Perhaps it's exciting with a promise of fresh beginnings.  Or perhaps you had an experience, like us, where the moving process was one big, terrible, no good time. Over & over again.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? It's a very good place to start.

Friday

• Vito's car started having problems.  Our mechanic was already finished for the day.  The dealer could not fit him into the schedule. The car was nearly un-drivable. Thankfully we have a friends who works on cars and was able to fix his car. 
• We had plans to meet with friends for Vito to say goodbye and they were canceled at the last minute.
• We had a last date, which was dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and the service was terrible.  Vito's "medium rare" steak wasn't even pink on the inside and the manager asked him if he was sure he knew what he wanted.  I finished my entire meal before Vito even received his.  A complete mess.
• Went to pick up the moving truck at 6pm and it was not ready.  The person who rented it before us was 4 hours late bringing it back and still wasn't there. It took 1.5 hours to get a truck, which they gave us a different truck than the one we reserved.

Saturday

• I barely slept, less than 4 hours.
• It rained while we packed the truck up.
• The 10 hours drive turned into a 13.5 hour drive because of traffic
• We arrived at our house in Clemson at 1am to find that the rental property did not leave the house key under the mat, as promised.  Vito tried to break into the house but was unsuccessful.  So we checked into the last room available at a hotel at 1:30am. We had to sneak the cat in because they had a no animal rule.  Vito then had to run out and buy a pad lock and take it to the moving truck.  When he returned to the room after 2 and we found a huge bug on the wall.  I made vito flip over every piece of furniture in the room to make sure there were no more bugs in the room or I'd be sleeping in the car.

Sunday

• After 5 hours of broken sleep, we stayed awake at 8 and called the rental property number.  The guy couldn't help us and told us we had to wait for a call back, which could take up to 24 hours.  Mind you we had Vito's cousin and boyfriend driving 2.5 hours to come to Clemson to help us move in so we needed to know whether to stop them from making the drive.  Luckily someone called back within the hour and said the key was under the mat at the rental property building, not the house.
• Vito drove to the rental property building and searched every mat and none of them had keys under them.  So he had to wait 30 mins for someone to show up and give him the key.
• The couch wouldn't fit in the living room and the box spring wouldn't fit up the stairs.
• I saw my first live cockroach in the kitchen. (there have been none sighted since.)
• The internet was promised to be hooked up.  And then when we called, because it was not hooked up when we arrived, they said it would be another 2 weeks.

Monday

• This was the day I was to travel home.  Tuesday I had an appt for my stomach that took 6 weeks to get in and when I asked to reschedule, they said it would be another 6 weeks.  
• I tried to leave Sunday night but when I went to take a shower, the hot water heater was not turned on.  I desperately needed a shower from all the moving and to help keep myself awake. So instead I decided to lay down for 3 hours for a nap, would wake up for a shower, and leave.  This would have been a great plan if I had set my alarm for 12am instead of 12pm so I woke up at 6:00am with no way to make it to my 2pm appt.
• I left and drove my overly emotional self back 10 hours all by my lonesome.

It was the longest weekend ever and has convinced me that we are cursed with moving. Silver lining, we were reminded how blessed we are to be surrounded by helpful friends and family who woke up early or made long drives to move around our heavy stuff.

So that's our horrific moving story.  I hope to start some wedding recaps soon as I expect to receive our wedding pics this week! 

So moving: horrible or we just had a really bad experience?

"I just want to know today, know today, know today know that maybe I will be ok"

Title:  Ingrid Michaelson - "Be Ok"

Me? I'm a planner.  Not that I mind change so much.  With going to so many new and different schools in my life, I learned that change is essential.  And sometimes I can feel it in my soul if things get stagnant.  That I need change.  Something new.  Something to keep life exciting.

Things I don't handle well? Knowing change is coming but yet I don't know in what way.  I need to plan.  I'm a worrier.  If I don't know what to worry about, I can't start planning.  And if I can't start planning, my worrying can get out of control.  

That all being said, I'm dealing with big changes coming my way at the moment.  

Marrying my love in about 5 months.

Dealing with whatever is going on with my health.

Working on living a healthier lifestyle.

Moving over 600 miles from the only home I've ever know.

Talk about major changes right?

Talk about worrying.

And planning.

And worrying some more.

Stress.

Tears.

And more worrying.

You see, Vito missed math and decided he wanted to go back and pursue his education.  I support him whole heartedly. So the process began of taking the GREs, which he kicked ass, taking the subject test, which he did okay at, and applying to 18 different colleges.  

So began the waiting game.  Our lives were about to go through some major changes but we didn't know where or what that would mean.  Seeing as I stated before about needing to plan, you can already piece together how well that went.  Out of the 18 colleges, Vito was accepted to 6 of them but only 3 of them offered financial aid.  Those 3 were listed at my least favorite colleges on the list solely because they were so far away from home.  

I've lived here for 22 years.  My family and friends and work and church are all here.  The thought of moving far gives me anxiety.  So began listing the pros and cons.  There were lots of tears.  Lots of anger.  Even more prayers.  Eventually we came to a decision.  We will be heading down to Clemson SC this fall.

I won't pretend this is easy.  Or even a happy time for me yet.  I know in my heart this is what we need to do.  I support Vito with everything I have and I know this is what he needs.  But I am going to miss everyone and everything else in my life I will be leaving behind temporarily.  It's a 5 year program which feels like eternity on this side of things.  But I know once we are finished down there, it will feel like no time at all.

If y'all have some extra prayers, please send them our way.  I know there are good things coming our way, everything is just very overwhelming right now. 8)