The big move - part 3

The timeline's getting kind of fuzzy in my head, but sometime on Saturday (that's Saturday April 25, the day after we arrived in Massachusetts) we made an offer on a house, which we call the Rambler house (since it's on Rambler Road). I want to call it the grandma house, since it looks just like my grandma's house. And it's occupied by a grandma right now. Complete with tacky fluffy carpeting in one room and wood paneling in another. And the woman who owns it is named Phyllis, which was James' grandma's name. So many grandma connections! But James (aghast at the thought of living in a grandma house?) persuaded me to call it the Rambler house instead. Anyway, we'd seen a bunch of houses with Marj that day, and after we were done with the touring we put an offer on the Rambler house. We got a counter offer almost right away.

And then suddenly we got cold feet. Phyllis is a smoker, and as a result the house smells smoky - not obnoxiously so, but it's definitely there. It actually isn't that noticable at first, especially if she hasn't just been smoking in the house. But we were nervous about buying the house with the smell. So we decided to do a lot of research online about removing smoky smells from houses - we weren't even sure it was possible, but luckily there are lots of solutions out there, starting with ripping out the carpet and repainting, something we'd do anyway. But before we made our counter-counter offer, we decided to look around and see what else is out there at that price range. Turns out, not much. We spent most of Sunday driving around on our own, doing drive-bys of houses on sale, and came away rather amazed that the Rambler house was so affordable. It turns out, the smokiness is what makes the Rambler house a possibility - every other house around that price was much too small, or was in a rough neighborhood, or was right on a very busy street. So with a little initial hard work, we'll be getting a good house with an attached garage and a big sunny backyard for gardening.

So we submitted our counter-counter offer, and then Phyllis came back with another counter. At this point, it came down to quibbling over a couple thousand dollars. We just wanted the house, so we accepted even though it was a bit higher than we'd hoped (but still very reasonable). So we agreed on a price! Then we had the home inspection - everything came out good, except we'll need to get a metal door to separate the garage from the rest of the house (I think it's wood right now, and a metal door is necessary for fire safety). A few days later, James and I met with the Mortgage Man and signed what seemed like several hundred documents just to apply for the loan. Once the underwriter approves the loan (and Mortgage Man assured us it'd be no problem), we'll be signing several thousand documents to actually buy the house.

If everything goes well (fingers crossed!) the closing will happen on June 5, and that weekend we'll get started ripping out carpet and scrubbing the house clean of smoke residue. (As a side note, my dad wanted to come up that weekend to help us move in, etc, and I'm trying to dissuade him because I never told them it was a smoker's house and I know he and my mom will panic at the thought. And I don't want them being all negative and stressful and hyperventilating over our house, which we're confident will be fine after a good scrubbing. Plus just having them around and being all pressure-y and GoGoGo! all weekend will be overwhelming, I'd rather they come after the honeymoon when things have calmed down!)

And after we scrub out the house, we'll be able to move in! It's amazing to think that after we get back from the honeymoon, we'll be able to move right into our little house.

The big move - part 2

We were able to sleep in a little bit the following morning, which was amazing. James' dad stayed home from work to take us to the airport. On the way there, he stopped at the hospital where he and Jeanne (James' mom) work, so we could pop in and say goodbye, which was nice. It was so strange to say goodbye to her knowing that we weren't going to be just a car ride away anymore. We also met the doctor that Jeanne works with, which later turned out to be fortuitous.

Mark drove us to the cute, sunny and remarkably empty little Bakersfield Airport and we hauled our two big cardboard boxes full of clothes (you can take a lot more on a plane in cardboard boxes than you can in heavy suitcases), James' computer bag, a duffle bag carry-on, my big duffel bag/purse/computer bag, and Winston's cage up to the check-in counter. The friendly ladies at the counter were very curious about Winston and they cooed over him a lot. But when it came time to actually check in, they realized that Winston would pose a problem since he's a rodent (apparently the chewing could be a threat to the airplane even though he was in a cage). One woman made a lot of calls about how to handle him, and the verdict was that he couldn't come aboard the plane. I was horrified at the thought of having to leave him in CA, even though James was assuring me that we could mail him through FedEx overnight and everything would be fine. I started to cry a little, and the ladies continued making calls, and they finally told us we couldn't bring him aboard unless we had a doctor's note saying that I was emotionally dependant on Winston and that I needed him to fly with me.

This is were Jeanne's boss came into play. Mark gave him a call, and the doctor faxed a note over to the airport, and we were allowed to bring Winston on board. It's a good thing we went to such a small airport with such friendly staff, because if we'd been at LAX, I bet they would've said no and that would've been that. Also, it's good it was such a quiet little airport because we were waiting at the check-in counter for quite a while but since there was no line at security (at all!), we were able to make our flight no problem.

We landed in Philadelphia around 10pm on Wednesday. We had Thursday to recover a little bit and to do some errands like buying Winston a new cage. He travelled in a cat carrier, and we threw out his regular-sized cage back in LA. It was too small for him anyway. We went to petsmart and got him a huge cage, which he loves. On Friday, we meant to leave for Boston in the morning, but somehow we didn't get on the road until early afternoon. The delightful result of this was that we hit rush-hour traffic all the way across Connecticut. We didn't get to our apartment/extended stay hotel until after 10pm. At which point the leasing office was closed. And the "late night check-in" phone number didn't work. And we didn't have the code to the late night check-in key box, where I knew our keys were waiting for us. So we ended up having to go to a Motel6, which was beyond sketchy. There was a guy checking in before us with a woman that we had reason to believe was a hooker. Classy place.

But anyway, we had a place to sleep, and it was warm, and dry, and the sheets at least appeared to be clean, so it was fine. The next day, we were pretty steamed that the leasing office hadn't sent us the code to the lock box so that we could retreive our keys. We went back to complain, but they didn't open til 10am, but we had an appointment with our realtor at 10. Which was annoying because we were all pumped up to complain and demand a refund or something. But we had to go meet Marj and we spent several hours looking at houses with her, then James and I continued to look on our own for a while.

We finally made it back to Princeton Properties (the extended stay hotel), and checked in. The room's small and not fancy but it has a little kitchen and an air conditioner and a TV with cable and we're making it work. The dresser is small and we each have three little drawers, so we're basically living out of boxes for the next month or so, but it's fine. It's nice to have a place of our own, actually! Living with my brother was nice, and had its perks, but it's also nice to have privacy and a place of our own.

Next up: the house!!

The big move - part 1

The past few weeks have been such an exhausting whirlwind that it's hard remember everything that happened.

James and I had our last day of work on Friday, April 17, and our start date in Massachusetts was April 27, giving us just one week (and two weekends) to pack up and move across the country. And even though we'd been packing up what we could for a while, it was still a hectic and remarkably time-consuming process to move out. We barely finished, actually.

We scheduled the moving truck for Monday April 20th, and our flight home was scheduled for Wednesday. But the flight was leaving out of Bakersfield, not LA - we had to drive up to his parents' house on Tuesday in order to make the Wednesday flight. We were flying out of Bakersfield so that we could leave our car at his parents' house until June 21, when we'd fly back after the wedding and start our cross-country roadtrip honeymoon.

Because we were renting space on a semi and not a normal-sized truck, we couldn't have the trucking company bring the truck to us - we'd have no place to put something that big anywhere near our apartment. So we rented a Uhaul and planned to drive our stuff over to the trucking company's hub in Compton (which, in case you didn't know, is a notoriously sketchy part of the greater Los Angeles area).

By Monday afternoon, we were still busily packing away by the time 5pm rolled around, and we still hadn't loaded anything on the big truck - just the Uhaul. And this was after we were up late packing the night before and we started packing at 5:30am that morning. So we decided that since we thought we were over half done, we'd take a load over to Compton, pack the truck loosely, then finish with the other load the next day. And that's exactly what we did, except for the fact that we were nowhere near as done as we thought we were. Everything was taking about twice as long as we expected it to. It was exhausting and seemingly endless work - oh, and by the way, we had the joy of experiencing the first heat wave of the summer those few days. And we were working all by ourselves, since we couldn't ask anyone to take off work to help us - and the trucking company wasn't open on weekends. That meant a lot of heavy lifting (the guns I have now! My word!) but luckily we bought something called the ForeArm Forklift, which made all the heavy lifting possible.

Even with all of our tireless work, we finished up packing the semi around 10pm - Tuesday, when we'd originally thought we'd finish up Monday night and drive to Porterville Tuesday after lunch. It was a surreal feeling to be standing in the semi at 10pm, eating a Snickers bar because we hadn't had time to eat and were about to fall over, and realizing that it would be 3 or 4 am by the time we'd reach Porterville. By the time we returned the Uhaul, went back to El Segundo to drop off some moving equipment that we'd borrowed from my brother and said our goodbyes to him, it was after 11pm when we started out for Porterville, and after 3am when we rolled into their driveway. I'd been worried that our flight out of Bakersfield the next day was at some horrific hour like 8 am, when Bakersfield was an hour away from Porterville and we'd have to be at the airport two hours early, so we'd hardly be able to get any rest before we'd have to be up again. Luckily, though, the flight was in the early afternoon, so we could get some sleep!

To be continued... ;)