If my last post didn’t make this clear, then surely this one will! R and Aunt M arrived around 5pm on Thursday in what they had started calling the “Mutant Canary Monster”. Two days of driving in a 22 foot Penske truck will apparently lead you to finding creative names for it. I welcomed them with hugs, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Obviously, they were pretty tired so the evening was spent just relaxing and catching up. I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain and started getting nervous for the planned unloading the next day. Sure enough, it was still raining in the morning, and when I looked at the weather report, it looked like there was only about a two hour window with little chance of rain and it was not in the afternoon that I had gotten scheduled open… Fortunately, the Specialty Grads got excused early from the morning training and I zipped back here to help unload. We also got some help from some of my co-workers. It is great to know that I work with some really nice people who are willing to take part of their free time to help lug all our crap up a flight of stairs. It made it go much faster. A huge thanks to J, E, A, and D! I feel lucky to call them co-workers and friends.
Of course, even though you feel a sense of relief at unloading the truck, that is really just the beginning. Then, you walk into a little space that is now crowded with furniture and boxes galore. You get that sinking feeling and start thinking to yourself, where should I even start??? So, what did we do? We went to lunch! After lunch, we decided to start by unpacking and organizing the kitchen. We have one of those metal utility shelving units and had the planned intention of using it to supplement our minimal kitchen storage and accommodating our massive collection of kitchen stuff (we like to cook, you know!). Well, two small problems were quickly discovered. 1). One of the four poles was missing. It has never turned it up and we concluded that while packing the truck in the dark the black pole must have gotten missed and is probably still sitting in the Extra Storage parking lot. 2). The little black plastic thingies that help lock the shelves in place and that I remember carefully packing into a Zip Loc bag are not in any logical place that we can find. They still haven’t turned up and with probably 85% of our boxes being unpacked I am just not sure what “safe and logical” place I packed them.
So, I decided we just needed to go to Target and get another one because we were going to need it. This is where it gets really fun, folks. As we walked outside, I checked out the sky and it was apparent that the day’s monsoon (see earlier post for explanation of Arizona monsoons) that had been building up for quite some time was about to let loose. I ignored the warning voice in my head and thought that surely we would be able to slip down the block to Target and back with little fuss. Heh… not exactly. While deliberating over shelving units, we heard the rain start pounding on the roof. By the time we got to check out, it was apparent this was a serious monsoon downpour. R took the umbrella and braved the rain to bring the car up to the door to throw the heavy box in. We headed towards campus and immediately encountered a gushing drain and ominous flooding, so I had us turn around to try another route onto campus. Um, that didn’t work so well either. After my directions led us to some accidental offroading over a curb into a NAU parking lot (in my defense, the water was deep enough that I could not tell where the entrance versus the curb was), we concluded we were just going to have to wait it out. The water in the street had to be at least a half foot deep, and we knew the Honda would probably not do so well fording through the impromptu river. We tried leaving and got closer to campus but still encountered flooded roads so concluded we should turn around and not risk it, so back to the parking lot we went. Finally, after about 30 minutes, we saw traffic picking up and it was obvious the standing water had receded. So much for a quick trip down the block to Target.
You would think this would be the end of the story, but we got home to discover that the shelf we bought was crap and damaged. So after all that, shelf # 2 was a bust. I volunteered to return it to Target and try Bed Bath and Beyond instead. This went a little smoother, and several hours later, we were finally back to unpack and organize with shelf # 3 in our possession. We called it quits around 8 pm and walked down the street to order a pizza. We were all dead on our feet and just sat there staring at one other and not really making conversation. The pizza was yummy, though! After that we headed back and got ready for bed because we had decided that we needed to get downtown really early to unload the rest of the stuff into Robert’s workspace and the storage that came with it. So, 4 am it was… Ugh.
We planned for this early morning unloading because downtown Flagstaff has limited on street parking and with a 22 foot truck we knew we would have even more limited parking options. Luckily, this plan did work well and we were able to park in front of the building. The next two hours were spent unloading a lot of really heavy stuff and carrying it up 3 flights of stairs. It was just the three of us as I felt it would be imposing way too much on the kindness of my new friends to ask them to a 5 am unloading party. Good times. After that, it was time to get rid of the Mutant Canary Monster, which should have been an easy and quick task… but I glanced too quickly at the directions and map and we ended up going left when we should have gone right. This led to R having to turn the monster around on a dead end road, which is not easy. Oh, and it started raining again. Needless to say, R was not being super happy with me. Finally, we got it returned and I know that was a huge sense of relief for him. On the bright side, I now know where the movie theatre, Wal-Mart, Basha’s grocery, and Home Depot are located.
It still seemed like no end was in sight as we continued unpacking and sorting through our mound of belongings. We had intense debates about what furniture was reasonable to have in the living room and how it could be configured into a comfortable layout. With no resolution in sight, finally, we called it quits for the day and met some friends out downtown to try out Diablo Burger, which we had heard was fabulous. It lived up to the glowing reviews, and I will save a longer description for another post as it is a pretty cool place. On the walk home, we got caught in the rain again (are you noticing a pattern, yet?). At this point, we had decided that we needed to take a break the next morning and get out of the apartment and do something fun.
Sunday morning we slept in a little bit and then headed to the Farmer’s Market to pick up some fresh veggies for a home cooked dinner and scout out some breakfast. We ate yummy homemade tamales and split a cherry turnover. We really wanted to get out and get fresh air and do a little hiking, but the weather did not seem to want to cooperate and promised even more rain for most of the day. The weather in Sedona seemed way too iffy for the drive, so we finally decided to check out Walnut Canyon which was a short drive away and hope that the rain held off until we could enjoy our hike. Luckily the weather did hold out, and we enjoyed some cool scenery. More about Walnut Canyon and pictures with an upcoming post. Whew! That is two more posts I have promised to write. Maybe there is hope for me to continue having ideas I want to write about.
Sunday afternoon brought more unpacking and tension. Moving is tiring and hard work, which leads to frayed nerves and less patience. Miscommunications occurred and time outs were needed. We did come up with a new bedroom arrangement that allowed us to move my desk out of the living room and freed up some much needed space in the living room. I went back for shelf # 4 to allow the storing of pantry items and more of the kitchenware. When we finally called it quits around 8 pm, the place was finally in a semblance of order: we had places to sit and the majority of the boxes were unpacked. So, we are getting there. It needs some more pretty knick-knacky stuff to be put out and some pictures hung on the wall. There a few last boxes lurking that need to be dealt with, but it is finally starting to feel like a home. Best of all, we are still talking to each other and are still happy to be reunited. This post is dedicated to the fabulous Aunt M. Without her, we would not be organized nor have any sanity intact. She has gone above and beyond in her familial duties.
