Moving SNAFUS

This is the 5th move John and I have done in the 8years we have been married, you would think we had come across each situation, but this move proved to bring a new set of unexpected challenges. Moving with a three year old is hell. Maybe it's just our three year old, but he was so strung out by the time he and I left for my parent's house. He's still strung out and since school doesn't start for another month we don't have the forced structure, and we don't know anyone for play dates, this has created a huge, unexpected concern. We are coping daily, but it's really hard to see him like this. Here are the good ones though, that we can sit back and laugh about now. -the day I was supposed to leave we got a call from our bank that John's debit card had been compromised, so we had to close it. Fortunately I have a limit on how much can be withdrawn at a time and the bank caught it. But we don't have a back up source for cash, except our savings account, which is tied to the same debit card. This has all since been remedied, but woowza it was a learning experience. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal because we would checks as a back up, but we had two checks left and we had them ear marked for purchases. We used 12 checks in the past 10 months and four in the past month, again, lesson learned. - John reserved the moving truck 20 feet. He thought it would be enough space, why he didn't order the 24', I don't know. When we moved out of NYC without a child we used a 17' truck and moving to Philly we used a POD. Well the truck is 20' I clouding the small space above the truck's cab. The main section is only 18', and was not large enough to accommodate everything (20' total wouldn't have been large enough either). Fortunately we already had a storage unit, things there are staying put for now. - The moving company didn't notify the movers that we have a piano. They were one guy short and had no furniture dollies or other equipment, so John had to help and the three of them dead lifted the piano, twice. One of the movers sprained his wrist in this process. He stayed around for an hour more while the owner of the company came to the house. Of course the transmission of the moving truck he was driving at the time fell out on the intestate so he was an hour late. Must add that we were compensated for this, since it ended up taking 4.5-5 hours, versus the 2 we were quoted and paid for. - the day after the truck was loaded we had our cleaners scheduled to come and give the place a final once over. They had forgotten about us, showed up 40 minutes and forgot their cleaning supplies. Of course all of our supplies were packed, so John went out and bought a few. - since we tried to keep things fluid we didn't book hotel rooms in advance in case we didn't need them. Well, we live at the beach, and guess what? Hotels. Expensive in the summer at the beach, or sold out. We found one hotel for $250, a Hampton Inn, I am not paying $250 for a Hampton Inn. Then we got some good news, we could get in a day early, so no hotel needed. - John meets with the management company and tours the new place, gets the keys and decides to take the kayaks and bikes to the storage facility here to create some space. What I forgot to mention earlier is that the tow dolly we had reserved wouldn't work with his car since its an AWD and we had to exchange it at the last minute for a flat bed. Thankfully Uhaul had them available. What a flatbed meant for us though, that no one warned us about was the clearance on the side rails. John drove his car onto the trailer and went to get out, but couldn't open the door. The rails were too high for the lower clearance of a car. John had to climb out the window, finish putting things into the driver's seat, turn the car back on to roll up the window , THEN had to figure out how to turn the car off and get his keys out. He ended up leaving the window down just enough to reach in, thankfully there was no rain. The dolly was a lot bulkier than he expected and while pulling out of the gas station he clipped it and dented the fender. -john arrives at the storage facility and signs the contract, he gives them the credit card and it won't swipe. He's calling me, but I was unavailable. He pulls out cash, the amount due $104.90 the amount in his pocket $105. The facility had told us that we had an interior unit, a 15x5 interior unit. We needed an exterior door though, since we are storing planks of wood and our kayaks. John gets there and there is no exterior door, he has to go into a hallway and then make a turn to get into the unit. He managed it with the kayaks, but we are looking for a new place, since we aren't sure the 30+ planks of wood will fit. Doesn't everyone have 30+ planks of wood. There is a story there for a later date. - I dropped Brooks off at his God-mother's and drive down here, through the many, many acres of corn fields. Beautiful sunny weather for most of my drive,. I arrived about an hour before the movers. I had color coded all of the boxes into 4 categories, bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen, office and storage. We planned on the bedroom boxes going into Brooks' room, the other household boxes into the dining room, the rest would be left on the sidewalk and loaded back onto the truck to be taken to their other destinations. Apparently moth nature had other things in mind. Shortly after the movers arrived a rain to rival Noah's flood came upon us and the guys had to just bring stuff in. We should have rescheduled, but were so strung out we couldn't fathom doing that. Stuff was everywhere and totally unorganized. It's taken, I'm estimating, an additional 4 days to unpack - and finally......my drive train cracked on my way down. I hit something on the freeway and the car was jacked out. I made it down here safely. We must have some good karma though. The day before John had gone to put air in one of his tires and stopped at a gas station, with a huge beer store. They didn't have a tire station, but John was able to pick up some good beers and CHEAP! He was directed next door to a tire place for the air. He went there and even though they err getting ready to close they were happy to help him, this is like 5 minutes before they were closing. The next day we bring my hobbling car in, they were beyond nice again and I was so relieved that he had already made a contact with someone. So, yeah we learned a LOT this go round. Reading it all in one place makes it sound awful, and there re definitely awful moments, but they all happened over 5 days it ended up feeling more like a comedy of errors.